Ruby

I got Ruby when she was a puppy in 2008 from the local animal hospital. She’s a Border Collie mix. She was full of energy from the start, and an extremely smart dog. I also had another puppy. I was trying to train both dogs to do tricks.

Ruby kept watching the other dog do the tricks wrong, but since she had been watching she decided to copy the other dog. It was hilarious. So, we added the weird way the other dog circled around to our routine because it was so funny.

That first year with her cost me plenty of expensive shoes and other things I really liked. I moved from NC to Los Angeles in 2009 and I was going to a studio apartment and I couldn’t take Ruby with my other dog, Rox, and my cat, Spiderkitty. Ruby went to live with my mom. I was only in Cali for 9 months, but my mom learned to love Ruby and Ruby loved her and so she kept her.

Earlier this year Ruby got a skin infection and couldn’t get rid of it. I took Ruby back this year. We treated her infection and she really didn’t get better. She progressively got worse. We did blood work, and learned she had diabetes and was in DKA. She ended up spending the weekend in the hospital. She finally got better. She started to heal slowly. Her infection was getting better, her mobility was improving.

Then about a two months ago, slowly her skin infection started to get worse. We went back to the vet and started another round of antibiotics. They didn’t help and she was spending her entire day chewing up her skin making it worse. She would also spend a lot of time scratching her face on my chair and had scabs all over her face and eyes. She had been on meds for itching, they just weren’t helping. Finally, the vet cultured her infection and turned out she has 4 different infections that were all resistant to the antibiotics she was taking. So, since Monday we started 2 new antibiotics. She is absolutely much calmer now: however, we finally put an e-collar on her when we cultured the infection. It was really traumatic for her, but she was doing so much skin damage we had to.

So, this last week, she started acting funny. She seemed like she didn’t know where things were. She couldn’t find the door to go out and pee. I had to tip her out of her bed to get her up. It dawned on me that she can’t see. The vet told me some things I could do to test, and she failed all of the tests. I think she can see light, but that’s about it. I was standing behind her with a bite of steak in my hand calling her and she just looked around confused trying to figure out where I was. I have to put her food down right in front of her so she can find it. She knows where her water bowl is so she can make it there okay.

I know her blindness is due to her diabetes, she takes insulin twice a day. I was upset at first, but since she seems to be getting better, I was just going to wait until her next glucose curve to get the vet to confirm her diagnosis, because going to the vet is very traumatic for her. Then today I started doing some research and I found some info that said she would actually be in pain if it’s glaucoma. Since, I’m not a vet and internet research can be dangerous I made an appt to see the vet the day after tomorrow. So, here I am, with a sick, blind dog, not sure if I can cope. I feel like once we kick this infection she might do well. After all she’s only 8 years old. So, I’m looking for some encouragement from people who know what I’m going through. She also does take insulin twice a day, fish oil daily, Benadryl twice a day, and Apoquel twice a day.