lucky is home

i am not going to make generalized statements about blind dogs here..because every one is a unique individual...and like all dogs (or people for that matter) they each have their own unique personalities in conjunction with their blindness too.
so here i speak only of lucky...not every other blind dog in the world.

i could feel her tightly lidded panic when they led her out to me. she was cooperative, she was slow moving..she appeared quite calm and collected as she came towards me but she really wasn't.

she reminded me of my mother when she was in hospital and newly diagnosed with terminal cancer. she was 4 days post op from a massive abdominal surgery, one day post chemo treatment and she phoned me at 6 am to come and bring her home. i asked if she had been actually discharged yet...she said that yes she was. by the time i got to the hospital 20 minutes later, she was fully dressed and with her fully packed suitcase and waiting for me at the elevator. i was a little bit suspicious so i just checked with the nurses before i loaded her into the car...and no she had not been discharged yet, the doctor hadn't even been in yet to see her.

my mom really needed to get out, my mom needed to get home right that very minute..i could feel the panic inside her even tho she appeared perfectly calm.
i took her home.

anyway..that is how i felt when i picked up lucky..she was holding it together but she needed out of there right now. she did lose it a bit while trying to get into the car but once she was in she shoved a lid on everything again. but i did not see her tail wag, or her even really acknowledge me until i got her back into the mp room. then she looked at me with her unseeing eyes, wagged that gawd awful current rat tail and said...yes, this is it, this is right, this is where i am supposed to be.

lucky lives in a very small world..this is by her very own choice...jazz who was also blind chose to live in a much bigger world...you could have dumped that dog in the middle of times square and it would have been a great adventure for her.
i had to stop writing for a minute...i heard a sharp..bark, bark, bark from outside. i went and looked and it was lucky calling to me from the mp porch to come and give her a hand. she wanted to come out to pee and poop but she has temporarily lost her confidence in her ability to step off of the porch without a friend standing there.

anyway...she is done with her personal business now and is back in her area having a drink so i can keep writing for a minute or two before it is time for barn bedtime.
my point here is this...for lucky, this 3 day trip to emergency was almost more than she could stand. and i know that all dogs are anxious and frightened when they are sick and in the clinic but i think for a blind dog like lucky, it is harder than most. she just had no frame of reference to steady herself...no faces to read, no smells she understood, no activity around her that she could watch and decipher as to what was happening there. was someone doing something, was someone going to be doing something, was something about to be done to her personally or was someone just walking by her pen?
she did not know because not only could she not see but she did not understand the people or the activities or routines surrounding her.

poor lucky..i knew it might be bad for her there, but if i had thought about it more..i would have pulled her out sooner.

so...as to her health. still no answers. a third set of xrays gave little more info...maybe pneumonia, maybe a cancer, maybe a lung abcess...maybe not any of the above. clinically she is not much different then when she went in on saturday...bottom line is...they don't know but she is currently somewhat stable so they sent her home.

she is on 450 mgs of baytil daily and to see our vet for follow up and repeat bloodwork this week. if she has any greater difficulty breathing (she is still coughing and gagging and trying to clear her chest) i am to get her back into the vets right away. i am to continue with her chest physio to keep everything moving in there. i dropped off her digital radiographs at our vets on the way home so dave can look at them and see what he thinks. but at this minute...i am no wiser about what is happening to her than i was 3 days and 2 thousand dollars ago...and that totally stinks.

except..lucky is home and she is very glad about this so i guess for tonight at least, we will both be thankful.
i don't know what is coming for her if anything at all....i don't know if i should be really scared or really hopeful...i just know that at this particular moment, both lucky and i are happy she is home.

Lucky is happy and comfortable in the world she knows