Her Beautiful Eyes: They Tell Even More About Her Than We Thought

It may be that Mabel's a little clumsy. It's hard to say. We certainly have witnessed her simply not paying attention to what's around her when she's excited, but during a visit to get the stitches out of her ear today, I relayed my concerns about her seeming clumsiness and other matters to the vet who has been caring for Mabel since we found her (and who is remarkable in the patience and time she gives us; we love her, and so does Mabel). She listened to me and examined Mabel and was able to tell us within minutes that there's more to Mabel's issues than clumsiness.

Suddenly, her turning into walls sometimes makes sense. Suddenly, we realize why there are times when she acts surprised by something for no apparent reason. There are half a dozen habits and behaviors and incidents on which we are reflecting while saying, "Of course--how could we not have noticed?" because watching her now, it's just so painfully obvious in all of her movements. And I'm horrified now by the number of times I've said in exasperation (as if she could understand me), "Mabel, would you watch where you're going?"

Mabel is blind in her left eye. And normally, even if she'd gone blind in the eye, Mabel's pupil would still constrict in response to light shining into it, but it doesn't; this indicates that the eye is blind as a result of optic nerve damage--which the vet tells us was likely caused by trauma.

Every time we think our hearts have broken for her as much as they can, we figure out another little piece of her sad history.

Now that we know about the blindness in her left eye, we can approach her needs better both in and out of the home (e.g., making sure that when other dogs or people approach to meet her, they don't come from her left and startle her), and we're so sad for her, but we know that she's OK and that there are worse diagnoses. We don't know how long she's been blind in that eye, but she's done fairly well so far, we're sure that she'll get better and better at compensating as time goes on, and now that we know, we can be better about not creating or contributing to circumstances that could be difficult for her. For example, I'm now thinking back to one of the instances when she stumbled down the deck steps--she likes to keep me in sight at all times, and I was accompanying her down the steps on her left side. When she stopped partway down and turned so much that she stumbled down the last step or two, it was because she was trying to see me and had to turn her head and body that far to do so.

Adding another injury to the list of known injuries that Mabel has suffered was not what I wanted to do today, but we're glad to now know what's going on. It will be better now. Everything will be better for her now. That, we are promising her.