August/September 10

Those Last Few Seasons
by Chris Smith

t was the fall of 2008 when I started noticing problems with the eyesight of my yellow Lab, Libby. She had been getting OCD about walking on shiny surfaces and up and down snowy steps for a year prior, but things had progressed rapidly to the point where she needed to be coaxed up dry steps and wouldn’t cross a wooden floor if a T-bone were on the other side.

A look through an ophthalmology scope and consult with an eye doc friend confirmed what I feared – cataracts, and quite advanced at that, for she was only eight at the time. My dog was having a tough time seeing, and for a retriever, that’s huge. But still, because eight isn’t ancient in a Lab, I wasn’t ready to start a new dog, so I waited to see what 2009 would bring.

What it brought were a few more problems in the months leading up to bird season, namely arthritic knees and a host of the typical Lab lumps they all seem to get and you hope aren’t worse than the benign, fatty ones (although some felt and still feel more solid than I’d like). Her eyesight had worsened. In fact, there were times when I’d be standing next to her in the semi-dark of our living room early in the morning while she was dozing on the couch (I know, guilty as charged), and she’d wake more or less because she smelled me, her hearing having diminished proportionally with her sight. If I didn’t move, she would stare off in a direction not at me, only acknowledging my presence with a good morning wag and sniff if I moved.

I’ve been around blind dogs before, and my old girl was becoming just that. With a nearly blind left eye myself thanks to a high school baseball injury, I could relate all too well with her – we were down to one good eye between us.

By this time, it was August, and if I had thought about getting a pup, I’d missed my opportunity. I like a puppy that’s born in January or February (and will be 10 months or so when the season opens), and I pick her up at the earliest possible time; I think it’s the best thing for the dog, her training, and her bond with owner and family. A pup now wasn’t going to do me any good.

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