I’ve been kind of upset and in denial recently about one of our elder doxies needing an eye removed. It’s the best decision for him and his comfort, so to convince myself that the doctors and my partner were right, despite the expense, I’ve been reading about other people who had enucleation on their dogs. It will help to just think he’s giving us a permanent WINK.

I’ve already begun trying to look only into the one eye he has vision in, as there’s no purpose to look into both his eyes anymore. I need to stop trying to convince myself that the bloodshot eye is going to look back at me specifically. It went blind before we even got him to the first appointment, it happened so suddenly.

He happens to be the most affectionate to me out of the five little dogs we have, but regardless he deserves the best for his remaining years with this damned glaucoma. My gut reaction was that the prospect of removing it was incomprehensible and I didn’t see the humanity in it as I wasn’t aware of his being in any pain, but like when he threw his back out, he does hide the pain he’s in until something environmental becomes unwieldy, like climbing stairs. That’s when we finally realized he needed steroids and muscle relaxers to get back to normal a while back.

Now that I know he’s already blind in that eye, he dislikes getting many drops a day, and it’s probably causing him a lot more discomfort than we realize, I’ve had the realization that I cannot be selfish about this. Little kids in the park are already pointing out his red eye, now he’ll have one less red eye and maybe even a cool eye patch in time for Halloween (although I’m sure he won’t care for one). For the same reason we aren’t considering a prosthetic eye. They can add complications, and he definitely doesn’t have the vanity that requires one; it would be only for us, and it’s not worth putting him at any more risk.