Biting the Hand

Biting the Hand

Yesterday, Kim had to take Blind Betty to the doggie eye doctor. I can’t quite bring myself to say canine ophthalmologist, but that is indeed what this specialized veterinarian is. When you think about it, fixing dog (and presumably cat) eyes probably isn’t so very different than fixing human eyes. An eye seems like something that may vary in size and acuity, perhaps even in certain receptor capabilities (Can it see colors?, does it rod & cone well into the night?, etc.), but in a optical sense they all take in light-based images and transfer them onto something like a retina and then the optic nerve passes that all on to the brain somehow. In the case of cataract surgery, the dominant cause of Blind Betty’s blindness (though she does have some diabetic glaucoma evident in one eye as well, which may or may not improve by virtue of the cataract surgery). Cataracts are an opacification of the lens of the eye, so replacing a lens with something synthetic that does the same optical function is what happens. Believe it or not, I found more than one website specifically on veterinary eye care for dogs and cats. This is now a relatively common phenomenon, but I will note that where there are many, many vets in San Diego, there seems to be only one veterinary ophthalmologist. That is probably (in relation to human ophthalmology) less about need and more about value in that some pet owners will pay the tab and some won’t or can’t do that for a pet. Blind Betty is lucky because she has us to pay.

Around here, we do not do cost/benefit analyses on pets and cat care. Betty is twelve years old and one could ask how much life value is there in spending a bunch on cataract surgery for such an old dog. But again, lucky for Betty, we don’t think that way in this household…much. So, since it has been determined that Blind Betty is a good candidate for successful cataract surgery, we are barreling forward. That has meant that Blind Betty had to go into the eye doctor yesterday and get tested (to determine that viability). She will go in again next week for further preparations and testing (less about viability presumably and more about things like fit of lens and effectiveness of preparatory eye drops she has to receive and such). Then she will go in for same-day surgery and come home for two to three weeks of neck cone recuperation with lots of added eye drops.

When people have to go through this procedure they can be reasoned with about the minor inconvenience of the necessary pre and post procedures (though when Kim had her cataract surgery she did not enjoy the neck cone one bit). With children and puppies (some dog breeds have a genetic predisposition to cataracts and need the surgery early in life, like my dog-in-law Teddy, owned by Jeff and Lisa), they can’t reason, but they are easy-going and more easily distracted, so they get over the whole process more easily. But an older dog cannot be reasoned with and is pretty much the beneficiary of whatever life experience it has had, and thus more problematic.

Blind Betty has had a particularly rough life we have had to surmise. After over a month with us and living the life of Riley with two home-made meals a day, lots of healthy treats and nice clean air conditioned comfort all around her, she should be happy and reassured. But old habits and old dogs are the things of legends and credos. Blind Betty still cowers and may pee herself over a simple, soft-talking attempt to pick her up. It is heart-breaking to wonder what this poor dog must have been through in her twelve years to make her so afraid of everything. Even Kim, her benefactor par-excellence gets some of this cowering reaction. Now try to put anything therapeutic into play. Kim has learned how to give her her daily insulin injection in the scruff of her neck when she is distracted with her savory meal (I say savory, because kibble is not enough of a distraction to cause her to not mind the injection, only wet dog food or Kim’s homemade brew). But eye drops are very, very hard. Let’s be clear, Blind Betty can’t see anything but perhaps a bit of light and dark. When you try to hold her to put something like eye drops in (something even I squirm about), she is a hot mess. She can yelp (she is otherwise almost totally silent), she can snap and she sure knows how to squirm and claw her way out of reach. Strangely enough, her cower instinct helps in that if you reach for her she is less inclined to run away and more inclined to stay in place cowering where you can gently grab her and start over again. About the only way to do this is to roll her on her side or back and hope that immobilizes her enough to sweet-talk her through it.

I have to hand it to Kim. Her dedication to suffering through the eye drop program with Blind Betty would test any normal person’s patience to a breaking point. But Kim, though saddened by the suffering it seems to all cause Blind Betty, muscles through and gets the drops in. She then spends many minutes petting and cooing to Blind Betty to remind her that she is loved and this is all for her own good. Blind Betty has no ability to comprehend that last bit about being for her own good and all she knows is that Kim is fucking with the part of her that worked least well. I should also add that the natural, presumably involuntary, reaction that Blind Betty has to fear or discomfort is to pee and poop herself. Poor Kim has to deal with that now on a regular basis and here’s the strange and unfair part. If you feed Blind Betty simple and cheap kibble (which she will eat in whatever quantity you set before her), her poop is predictably solid and easy to clean up. If you feed her good healthy homemade food, her system breaks more of it down and takes more of the nutrition out of it and leaves behind a much messier poop. So Kim’s reward for her canine culinary efforts is to get a runny poop to deal with. Simply not fair.

Yesterday, when the eye vet observed Blind Betty’s reaction to the eye drops, and Kim said she would put a muzzle on her to do it with less risk to life and limb, the vet said that maybe she should think about all of this in the context of whether we should have Blind Betty’s eyes fixed. Boom! That was hard to believe and somewhat upsetting to Kim. It has not deterred her determination to get Blind Betty’s eyes fixed. In fact a literal run-in with a barrel cactus that was poignant enough to scratch one of Blind Betty’s corneas, made Kim even more determined to go through with it. I feel for Kim, who wants nothing more than to help and love Blind Betty. It is becoming a trial of Job or her with Blind Betty literally biting the hand that feeds her and loves her. But I know Kim and if it causes less-Blind Betty to temporarily hate Kim, Kim loves Betty, blind or not, enough to see this through. What! Did he just do that?