One Year — In a Good Way. A Not-So-Shaggy Dog Story.

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Today is an important day: it's the one-year anniversary of She-Wolf's diagnosis with diabetes. Yeah, it's a disease we both know all too well, but in dogs, it tends to have graver consequences much faster, and that's what's significants about today.

You see, on this date last year, as I stood holding her on the table in the vet's office, I was told that she would be fully blind within two months. Questioned closely, the vet conceded, "Four months at the very outside." Unfortunately, he was projecting from the date, and we knew, in retrospect, that she'd been living with the disease anywhere form two to four months already. Her symptoms simply progressed slowly enough that it wasn't obvious — except, of course, in hindsight, at which point we kicked ourselves for not getting it earlier.

So the upshot is that, according to his basic estimate, she should already have been fully blind; with good prospects, possibly by late January; at the very most, by late March.

Exactly one year later, She-Wolf still has her sight.

[Knocks wood] 

Yes, she has developing cataracts. The one in her left eye is very small yet; the one in her right doesn't obviously appear to have progressed much beyond what it was a year ago. It's taken work. It's also taken a willingness to listen to our instincts and our own knowledge of this disease, rather than the conventional wisdom. It's taken dedication, because no matter how tired we are or how terrible we fell, the fact of the matter is that she has to have her blood tested (yes, with a lancet) twice a day, and she has to get insulin injections twice a day. We monitor her food intake, we mix diabetic dog food with good-quality regular dog food in various proportions, we feed her at odd times as well as usual ones; we give her supplements every morning — three of them — designed to preserve her eyesight; we adjust her insulin levels up and down based on her numbers, rather than following the accepted protocol for a dog of her weight. In short, we manage it much as Wings manages his own, understanding that many variables go into it, and that we must be flexible enough to respond to fluctuations and changes.

And She-Wolf is the best patient anyone could have. If, at 9AM, I haven't yet called her in to have her blood tested, she comes to the door on her own. She comes willingly to get jabbed, twice in the morning and twice at night, because on some level she put it together immediately — that those jabs with the needles at the vet's office made her feel good again, when she'd felt miserable for weeks.

A rescued rez dog, a Pueblo dog, abandoned and starving, who showed up at the gallery one freezing cold late autumn morning in 2008. She had no commands, no nothing, but she figured out "sit" and "lie down" on the very first try. She went home with us the day before Thanksgiving that year, and she'll be coming up on her six anniversary with us next week (the 26th).

There will come a day when the disease takes its toll. We'll make whatever adjustments and accommodations she needs at that point. For now, it's enough to celebrate a full year in which our little girl can still see her world.