Tag Archives: eye

Making introductions…

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Tonight, we bid hello and welcome to the two newest members of the family. Both were adopted Saturday from Cecil County Animal Services. 

Anya, (AKA Anyanka; AKA Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins; AKA Aud), is a gray shorthair with very subdued tabby highlights. Her age is estimated at 6 months. She’s named for a powerful vengeance demon largely because she clawed through and escaped her temporary cardboard carrier on the drive home Saturday and promptly laid her vengeance on me while I tried to extract her from the truck. She then made a break for it and sent me on a 30+ minute wild goose chase through the garage, only to be apprehended when she snuck into the laundry room for the food I put down as a lure.

Cordelia (Cordy), is a brown tabby and about 3 months old according to the shelter staff. Her name derives from her being attractive, popular, and thus far, entirely untouchable. Her modus operandi for the most part is to burst out of hiding for a mouthful of food or a drink and then retreating immediately back to her spot. I get it. It’s a process.

We’re working through all the usual new home issues, but also fighting a pretty nasty eye infection for Anya. In the last 36 hours it went from a minor concern that we were going to address through the shelter’s vet partners, to being outright alarming to the point that I decided couldn’t wait. As of early this morning, we’re working with the local veterinary ophthalmologist to try getting things under control. I’ve got four prescriptions that’ll need to be given three times daily for the next two weeks. I fully expect to need a blood transfusion by the time we’re done with this effort.

I’m obviously quite insane to take on this project, but with my long history of pets with medical problems, at least I had some forewarning about what I was letting myself into – with absolutely no chance that she’ll just get turned back to the shelter for being too much of a project for someone and thereby further diminishing her chance of finding a permeant home.

For now, our newcomers are sequestered in the guest bathroom until they decompress and now recover. I’m willing to let that phase of things take as long as it takes. Jorah has been interested and makes regular trips back the hall to investigate all the new smells. So far, though, he has been unfailingly polite with not much undue barking or whining.

This wasn’t exactly the plan, but here we are. With no regrets and a whole lot of nerves.

Updates on a chocolate lab…

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A couple of weeks ago, I took Maggie in to the vet for her regular checkup. As they get older, I approach these visits with increasing trepidation with every dog – mostly out of the fear that the vet will find something that should have been obvious to me, but that I missed simply due to familiarity, or that the regular blood work will show something new having gone out of whack since the last visit. For better or worse old dogs are just like old cars or old people – sometimes shit just stops working for no other reason than it’s old and broken.

Given Maggie’s last six months and the extensive vetting she had to get over her stomach trouble, I had lots of tests forming the baseline. Some of them I was expecting to be bad just as a matter of course. Others I expected to have gotten worse over time. It didn’t quite work out that way.

Maggie’s blood work came back with all the key data points “in range.” Even if it’s being held there through the advanced application of chemistry, it was as good a result as I could have hoped for – and not the one I was expecting. At a minimum, I went into this series of tests assuming that we’d be dialing up her medication to hold the same ground.

There’s no hiding the gray in her muzzle. My girl is still and old dog. She’s still got Cushings. But for the time being it hasn’t gotten worse. It’s still being effectively managed with her current dose of medication. Believe me when I tell you I don’t take that for granted for even a moment, because I know just how quickly the opposite can become true.

Although Maggie’s checkup was mostly good news, we’re headed over to the veterinary ophthalmologist in two weeks to get some small lumps and bumps looked at. One is purely cosmetic and has been there for a few years now, though it’s gotten bigger and is prone to bleeding when she rubs it. The other, most likely a small benign tumor or skin tag, is starting to form on the inside of her eyelid. This new one is the most troublesome to me since it’s in direct contact with her eye, though I’d like to see them both gone for her comfort and my peace of mind.