On blindness: Rena's story

[k9diabetes]

Rena's story saved my sanity when our diabetic dog Chris lost his sight to diabetes-induced cataracts.

I just heard from Rena's mom last week... So many years after we both lost our diabetic dogs to age and diseases other than diabetes, there's still a connection there through Rena's story helping me with Chris and Chris and Rena's stories helping others.

I just sent this link to someone and thought it really should be posted prominently here as well.

http://www.caninediabetes.org/pdorg/...nique/rena.htm

As for Rena, she has adjusted to being nearly blind amazingly well. It was awful at first because she ran into things and hurt herself. I seriously considered putting her down. I thought her quality of life would be irretrievable. I was actually grieving over this. In about 8 weeks she began to get a feel for life around home. Our daily routine includes crossing an irrigation ditch on a 12" plank. She fell in once or twice at first but now she can run across it. For hiking we have gotten her a set of boots. We have cactus here and they are not always easy to avoid. The boots also help Rena avoid lacerations from rocks and sticks she isn't able to see. We now call them her magic boots because when she has them on she thinks she is invincible. Rena always could hike the pants off us. She would go all day and still be perky. Our other dog, 3 years her junior never could keep up with Rena. We went through a year or more of reduced activity but now Rena is back almost as strong as before and at the end of the day, stronger than the rest of us -as long as we keep her sugar levels within reason

There's so much of value in Lynne's story of Rena.

Stabilized is a relative term. It wasn't that we found the Magic number of units of insulin and the correct diet and nothing changed after that. I thought it would be like that. Living with diabetes and treating diabetes is as much art as a science especially when you are interpreting the signs and symptoms across species lines. There's quite a bit of "winging it" and balancing activity versus inactivity and caloric intake. We live a non-traditional lifestyle and setting a rigid schedule is not practical. It has been possible to work Rena's diabetes treatment into our lives and to continue on.

Natalie