Teeny's Little Sister is Having Eye Surgery

Many of you are familiar with Tootsie, Teeny's miniature schnauzer little sister, who makes fairly regular appearances on this site (such as here and here). What you probably don't know is that Tootsie has been steadily going blind because of congenital cataracts in both of her little eyes. This has been going on for about a year now.

Our girl is only 5, but cataracts are apparently common amongst schnauzers- even at such an early age. Tootsie lives in a controlled environment, so this hasn't affected her quality of life much. She's mostly an inside dog, with a doggie door giving her access to our backyard as little or as much as she wishes. There aren't many surprises or new things she encounters on a day-to-day basis. But for those of us who know her well, we can tell slight differences. What others might write off as clumsiness (her running into the coffee table), we know better (she misjudged the distance between it and the couch). When I drop something (which happens often!) she gets more scared than she used to. It's been hard on us to watch. We've cried, talked about how unfair it is, wondered why we weren't able to protect her from this, been to specialists (dog opthamologists are a special breed of people... NoOffenseToAnyOutThere), and agonized over what to do. But we love her so much, and there was really only ever the one option for us: cataract surgery.

Every day I am so grateful we are able to afford to have the surgery done; many families cannot. Cataract surgery is 95% effective, according to our doctor. Tootsie will be having her surgery on Wednesday, January 19th. After the recovery period, she will be able to see again - and we couldn't be more excited for her!

Is anyone else out there going through this? If so, please know you are not alone. It sucks. Sorry, but there's no better way to put it. If anyone has any advice for pre and/or post surgery, I'd love to hear it. Likewise, if anyone is going through the beginning stages of this please don't hesitate to ask me for hints or tips - limited as though it may be, I am more than happy any advice I might have to give.