The Dog has had his eye surgery and we’re both focussing on the positives

There’s a reason why God started off by letting there be light, even if it took me a while to see the bigger picture. I wrote a few weeks ago about The Dog going blind, and how he was coping quite well with the darkness.

Only he wasn’t really. As the days were getting longer, his world was shrinking. His daily walks had become an obstacle course of kerbs and cracked pavements, all of them conspiring to batter his poor shins and feet. He started to become afraid of the traffic he couldn’t see and though grateful — for the first time in his long life — to be on a lead, he was so obviously intimidated by the noise that his once beloved walks became a miserable ordeal. My lovely old happy dog was starting to hate his life.

And maybe we should have had the conversation then. But instead, I went on the internet and started reading up on the cataract surgery that I had declined back when the poor animal’s diabetes was woefully unstable. We’d had a conversation about it and the vet had agreed that it would be too much for such an elderly, wobbly gentleman to withstand. But now he was less wobbly and utterly miserable, and if the window of opportunity wasn’t completely closed, then I wondered if it might be prised open a little further. One referral later, and we’re in a veterinary hospital in Sallynoggin being assessed by an ophthalmic surgeon (who knew?)

Of course, The Dog nearly takes his useless eye out on the corner of a shelf on his way into the surgery, but at least the surgeon can see that he can’t see, if you see what I mean. There follows a great deal of struggling (The Dog), headlocking (Me) and complaining about Labradors (The Vet). And there is no good news. The earlier the surgery is performed the better the outcome, and The Dog is already completely blind. Labradors account for most of the 10% failure rate. He is as old as Methuselah. He is on permanent liver support and his diabetes adds an additional layer of jeopardy to proceedings.

In the end, the vet sighs deeply and tells me that with each dog he sees, he has to ask if there’s a good reason not to perform the surgery. And with this one, he can’t find a reason.

Two long, dark weeks later, The Dog’s cataracts are removed and plastic lenses put in their place. When I go to collect him, I smell him before I see him. He has had, the vet explains, explosive diarrhoea for the entire procedure and although they’ve tried to clean him up, his is still enthusiastically pooing for Ireland even as he lies on the examination table in a position in which I’ve never seen him before. When the table is lowered, it turns out that his back legs no longer work and I have to carry him out to reception, where I lay him down so that I can pay the shocking bill and he can poo all over the welcome mat.

The following morning, he, the sofa and the floor are covered in liquid poo, his legs still don’t work and when I shine my torch in his eyes, there is no response. I don’t know why I was expecting some sort of biblical miracle, but I am bitterly disappointed and feeling very guilty for needlessly putting him through the trauma of the surgery. But the poo stops, the legs start working again and a few days later, when I walk into the kitchen, he turns his head and I know that, in some vague shape or form, he can see me.

A week later the vet confirms that we have given him “a window on the world.” “This is Denis who had the diarrhoea,” he tells the nurse who helps me hold him for his examination and the way she nods makes me realise The Dog has been the talk of the hospital for the week. The Vet sighs again then, and tells me that the patient doesn’t have enough body fat for the lenses to sit correctly and in any event, his eyes were so decrepit that they were about to cave in on themselves or explode or something and they still might. To be honest, I am only half-listening. We have interrupted the world’s slowest game of ‘give me the ball’ to make this appointment and we are both anxious to get back to it. Because even the smallest, foggiest window is still a window. And somebody very special has found his wag again.