In some patients there are increases in appetite and water consumption. Pets who develop SARD are often older than 6 years of age. Examination of tissue specimens from some patients at research institutions has indicated that the retina in these pets is totally destroyed and cannot regenerate .
Blindness occurs essentially overnight.
A typical pet would have gone out on a walk with the client one day or evening and been normal. The next day, the patient would begin to bump into everything in the house. Examination by a Veterinary Ophthalmologist reveals that the patient has normal eyes with no evidence of significant cataract development and no evidence of apparent retinal disease. Because there are no ophthalmic findings which indicate SARD, patients with apparently normal eyes and acute vision loss should have blood tests performed to rule-out systemic disease as a cause of blindness. The reason the diagnosis is important is that if systemic disease or optic neuritis is causing the blindness medication may restore vision.