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Dog doing just fine without eyesight By Ashley Martin In the 11 years Sabrina Cataldo has had her purebred Chinese crested powder puff Amora, the dog has been generally healthy — until the end of August, when she suddenly went blind. “I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on,” said Cataldo. “I thought, ‘She’s getting older and older dogs go blind so maybe that’s what’s going on.’ I tried to take her for a walk and she was just weaving the sidewalk and falling off the sidewalk. It was just so devastating.” When blindness turned to swollen and seeping eyes, Cataldo took Amora to the vet and it turned out the dog had glaucoma. “For dogs the (eye) pressure builds up much higher than it does for humans, so their pain is even more exponential,” said Cataldo. The vet gave her several different types of eyedrops, but none worked, and Cataldo was left with a tough decision to alleviate her dog’s pain: remove Amora’s eyes, or put her down.
Q: What did you think of your options? A: I was sobbing in the vet’s office thinking, ‘am I going to have to put her down? Can I afford this? Removing eyes, this is insane; this just seems really extreme. I don’t want to be one of those pet owners who’s keeping their pets alive at any cost for themselves and not taking into account the quality of life for the pet.’ She’s 12 but with a small dog they can live quite a long time. (The vet) said, ‘She could have a good quality of life; don’t be afraid of having a blind dog. You just need to make sure you don’t move the furniture around.’ I didn’t know what to do, plus the cost of it. (Back at home,) even though she was in pain and even though she was blind, she was still trying to figure out where everything was and she’d still be wagging her tail and when I brought her food, she’d be eating it.
Amora licks Sabrina Cataldo’s nose at her home in Regent Park in Regina. Due to an illness, Amora’s eyes were removed. qc phoTo by michael bell
I thought, ‘You haven’t given up, so how can I give up?’
Q: How expensive was the surgery? A: I’d already paid $600 in vet bills in terms of all the tests and everything they had to do, and then it was going to be another $1,400 for the surgery on top of that. You don’t want to have to put a cost on your pet’s life, ever, but then it’s like where do you draw the line? I just wrote some stuff on Facebook and ... all these comments kept popping up, ‘I’ll donate, I’ll give you some money,’ and suddenly I’m getting all these PayPal donations and cheques from people and people putting ($20
bills) into my hand going, ‘This is for Amora’s surgery.’ So within a week I had raised half of the cost, and it was just people who care about animals, some people I had never even met before. I’m so grateful to everyone who contributed. It was between 35 and 40 people who donated, and some of them don’t even know us.
Q: How did Amora’s surgery go? A: They kept warning me she may not make it through surgery because of her heart murmur. (Afterwards,) they had her eyes sewn up when I saw her again. it was weird. They had her face shaved and all these iodine
stains on her face and these stitches in her eyes. It was so pathetic.
Q: How has she adapted back at home? A: Within a few days she figured out the house and where things were. I made sure not to move any furniture. The big thing was that the cats would walk in front of her and she’d walk into the side of the cat and get all disoriented. But now she just pushes through; she makes them get out of her way. Back when she had sight, I had taught her how to sit, stay, lie down, shake a paw, and there were some hand signals that went with that. I
got really, really good treats and honestly, within a couple minutes, she had relearned how to do the sit and shake a paw. She’s figuring out the yard. My neighbour, he just loves her, and he was talking and she recognized his voice and she went right up to the fence. She stood up on her hind legs and put her paws up to the fence so he could pet her, and that’s what she used to do when she had sight. Within a month, she’s just like any other dog. And I think a lot of times people’s pets go blind and they wonder ‘are they going to have a quality of life, and should I put them down?’ Animals really adapt.