Sad but still so Thankful

I am thankful for R's absolute joy in living. He is leading the way for us humans, as we navigate this strange and scary new world of severe glaucoma.

We noticed over the past week that R's bad eye appeared to be red throughout the entire eye, not just the white of the eye. His formerly deep brown left eye now looked deep red. Thank goodness that we had an ophthalmologist appointment already scheduled for this week because we definitely needed one.

We were prepared this time, at least as prepared as you can be for bad news. As we'd guessed, tests showed that his eye was filled with blood, and the ocular pressure had gone up despite the eye drops that we were giving to prevent that from happening. None of that was good news.

R has showed very little sign that the eye was bothering him over the month since we last saw the ophthalmologist. He and his sister were a pair of clowns every time that I tried to photograph them. They even seemed like they planned their silliness with whispers behind my back. I don't know what they were doing in this one but it made me giggle uncontrollably.

Yet, given what is going on inside his eye, there is little doubt that it hurts him. So, we've made one of those very hard decisions that animal guardians must make for the love of their pet. We've chosen to have his left eye removed.

His left eye is now completely blind, and it must hurt him due to the high pressure and inflammation inside it. Moreover, the pathology inside that eye will give us information about how to best treat his good eye to slow down the progression to blindness.

It never ceases to astound me how life can turn on a dime from happy days to harder days. When you bring a puppy home, like R below with his departed brother and sister, you dream that the puppy's life will be nothing but easy.

That hasn't been even close to true for R. Less than a year after the photo above, he was diagnosed with elbow dysplasia and had his first of many orthopedic surgeries, something that I've written a lot about here. Since his CUE surgery 2.5 years ago, he has been nearly pain-free for the first time in his life. Then, his genes turned against him again as his defective eyes' degeneration became apparent. Yet, he has the most effervescent spirit imaginable.

Just like for his elbow, we will do everything that we can to make this new phase of life as joyous as possible for R. His spirit cannot be kept down - he is the living definition of "exuberance". He will guide us through this, and we will do all that we can for him.