Little Creighton, the blind chocolate Lab puppy who came to us three weeks ago with bulging, painful eyes, is completely healed up from his eye surgery. Our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, was unable to save his eyeballs by using the intrasclera implants (like we did with Briggs the blind Beagle). This is because there was too much internal damage in his eyes. Both eyes were filled with blood, in fact. So Brenda had to enucleate, or remove, them. As part of this process she inserted a small marble-like ball inside the eye socket to keep the eyelids from sinking in.
Today I removed the staples Brenda had used to close up the incisions. Alayne took the photo above as I was just about finished, with only one staple left. I’m using a simple instrument that’s designed to remove surgical staples. It’s fast, easy and painless, and I was done in under a minute.
His face will look better in a few more weeks, when his hair grows back over his eyelids. They will also become less puffy. I will admit we miss his endearing, bug-eyed look with those big eyes he once had, but he is now pain-free for probably the first time in his short-life.
After a while, we get so used to seeing these animals without eyes — we have 13 at the moment … 7 dogs, 5 horses and 1 cat — that we forget what they once looked like. They just look normal to us! And they don’t care what they look like, they just know the pain is gone and they can go back to being happy, healthy, joyful animals.
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