Annie Maggard

It’s been a rough couple of days, and for some reason I feel the need to tell you all about it.

Any of you who know me at all know that I love the shit out of my dog. Like, maybe more than anything. When Wednesday hurts, I hurt.

Over the last few months, Wednesday hasn’t acted like herself - increased appetite, weight gain, restlessness, labored breathing, pacing. I took her to the vet, but he couldn’t find anything wrong with her bloodwork, and suggested that the problems might be behavioral. I tried a lot of things - daily routines, pheromone treatment, stricter training - but nothing seemed to help. So after awhile I thought maybe I just wasn’t being a very good owner - maybe I wasn’t giving her enough attention or exercise.

Then, while my friends and I were cooking out Monday evening, someone tried to feed her a potato chip, and she didn’t take it. She didn’t even really look at it. He dropped the chip on the ground, and she circled, trying to find it. Something wasn’t right - my dog loves food, and had never had any trouble finding it before. I thought of our walk earlier in the day, when Wednesday ran into the tire of a parked car. I had laughed at the time, because she is a goofy dog and always sort of did klutzy things. But by Tuesday morning it was obvious that something was wrong. She was stumbling and running into things head-on, looking confused and disoriented. I was afraid that she had had a stroke or a seizure. I took her straight into my vet, who saw that her pupils were extremely dilated and not showing proper responses to light.

This morning a canine ophthalmologist diagnosed her with Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration Syndrome (SARDS), which is a rare condition that caused her to essentially lose all of her vision over the course of the last two days. All of the behavioral changes that I had noticed over the last few months commonly co-occur with SARDS. Unfortunately, there is no treatment, and Wednesday will likely be blind for the rest of her life.  The ophthalmologist prescribed a hormone therapy that may allow her to see some light and dark again, if we are very lucky, but I’m not holding out too much hope for that - the damage caused by SARDS is almost always permanent.

Mostly, I am glad that she is okay - that she isn’t dying, and isn’t in pain. But it’s a weird thing to have happen. One day she was running around the house like any other dog, and today she is blind. She is learning quickly, though, considering she only lost her vision two days ago. Already she tracks voices, smells, sounds.  She is learning commands for going down steps and avoiding obstacles. She still jumps to the window to bark at things and wags her tail when one of us comes to the door.

I know she is going to be alright - she is a tough dog and a smart dog. But knowing that she is sitting in complete darkness now makes me hurt in a way I can’t really describe.