I worry about the dogs in my life the way I worry about family. Maybe that’s crazy but to me they are family. That’s why when Jake went out of town recently I offered to keep his dog Jackson for a few days. I wanted Jackson to be well taken care of and who better to take care of him than his family? Jackson is a sweet, overly rambunctious lab mix who loves being at my house and especially loves playing with Emily’s dog Lola. They've played many times before and to say I was shocked Friday night at what happened between them is an understatement. What triggered their fight I don’t know and ten days later I still can't believe it happened. Yet it did, right in front of my eyes, and no matter how loud I screamed or jumped up and down in panic I could not make them stop. The fight lasted probably less than a minute and felt like an eternity in slow motion. After it was over I rushed Jackson to the back yard and ran back inside to check on Lola. When I looked down at her face I could not believe what I saw. I saw her left eye outside of its socket. My initial reaction was no, no way; that is not what I see; that CAN NOT be what I see. And then in a flash came horror, sick to the pit of my stomach over the top horror.
I remember the day Emily and I brought 6-week-old Lola home. She was a dynamo, a funny fur ball with eyes. As a pup those eyes were a bit cockeyed but as she grew older they straightened themselves out. The way she looks out of her eyes has always amused me. They give away her every emotion. Sometimes I can tell by looking at her what she’s thinking or what she’s going to do before she does it. She can get nothing past me with those eyes.
Lola’s a Shih Tzu and what's referred to as a brachiocephalic dog. Other dogs like her include the Pug, Boston Terrier, Pekingese, Boxer, Bulldog, dogs with shortened noses (flat faces) and prominent eyes. Their short nose and shallow orbits cause their eyeballs to be in a more prominent position than other breeds.
What happened to Lola’s eye Friday night is called proptosis. It can happen during head trauma when the eyeball (the globe) moves forward out of the orbit causing the eyelids to clamp behind the eyeball itself. This in turn cuts the blood from the eye and causes a lack of oxygen to the retina. It can lead to blindness within minutes. After Lola's injury, Emily and I frantically rushed her to the 24-hour animal emergency center in Collinsville (thank God for centers such as this). After examination the veterinarian on call said she thought she could save the eye by placing it back into the socket and doing a procedure called a third eyelid flap. The third eyelid is the pinkish flap of tissue seen in the inner corner of the eye. This lid sweeps over the eye to clean away debris and protect it from injury. The flap procedure is used to protect the cornea as it heals. The animal is anesthetized and the third eyelid is drawn up over the eye and sutured to the upper lid. It then covers the entire eye allowing it to heal. After the cornea has healed the stitches are removed and the lid returns to its normal position. This is what we hoped for Lola.
But just three days later some of the stitches broke loose and scratched Lola's cornea. Her regular veterinarian, Dr. Fischer, of Bellemore Animal Care decided to remove the remaining stitches in hope they had been in long enough to keep the eye in its socket. Unfortunately this wasn't the case so another procedure called a Tarsorrhaphy was performed on her eye. With this procedure, her outside eyelids were sutured closed with two small stints on the outside of the lid to make the stitches tighter and less likely to pull loose. After a week they would be removed.
We didn't make it a week. In three days one of the stints pulled loose meaning yet another trip to the vet to have it removed. Lola was left with one remaining stint to keep her eye partially closed and in place.
The next day Dr. Fischer removed this final stint and as of now everything is as it should be. Everything except for one thing. From the beginning we were told Lola had a 50/50 chance of keeping her eye and that most likely she would not be able to see with it again. After examination Dr. Fischer sadly confirmed this. Lola is blind in her left eye. Our hope now is that she can at least keep it. She will have to continue wearing the Elizabethan collar she hates for at least two more weeks to protect the eye from further injury. By then, barring complications and a little luck, Lola should be out of the danger zone and we can remove the collar for good.
It was discovered early on that Lola is probably the worst dog patient on the planet. Giving her three medications and applying eye ointment every six hours has been an impossibly difficult feat and no fun at all!!! Emily and I have tried every trick in the book and rarely has the same trick worked twice. Finding various ways and combination of ways to smuggle medication into ice cream (store bought AND Weathervane), orange sherbet, yogurt, peanut butter, bananas, hot dogs (fat free and regular), chicken (cooked chicken breast for Pete’s sake), beef, turkey (from the deli!), all kinds of cheeses…sigh, every kind of food imaginable…it's all been a joke! Lola continues to outsmart us. If there’s a pill within a mile she knows it. And the eye ointment! OMG, forget about it. Difficult obstinate contrary clever Lola.
The past ten days have not been easy. Emily and I have at times been sad, mad, tearful, sleep deprived, and really really irritable. We’ve turned on each other and at times been at our wits end with trying to care for Lola. And then we think about poor Lola and what she herself has been through. That’s the worst. This little dog has experienced more pain than any animal should. She has suffered the most but still her sassy spunky spirited self shines through. She may be blind in one eye. She may ultimately lose that eye. But Lola is the same lovable brat she’s always been. God love her. She's still Lola and nothing changes that.
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| picture of an obstinate Lola |
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