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Ballet Cherri
Cherri with Seeing Eye Dog
Cowgirl Cherri
Hula Cherri
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My 6-½ year old best friend, Cherri is a Miniature
Chinese Shar-Pei. I cannot begin to tell you what a wonderful girl she is and how much I
love her.
I first began to notice that she was not herself at
the end of November in 2005. Cherri seemed to be afraid of going for walks especially at
night. She used to love walks at any time of the day or night and I was shocked by her
starting out like she wanted to go for a walk and then pulling to go back home right
away. I took her to the vet. after a few days of this behavior. I thought that it might
have been triggered by an incident a few nights before when she accidentally walked in
tar and we had to spend many hours cleaning her feet, which she really hates anyone to
touch. I really thought she was mad at me for the thorough foot cleaning. The vet.
checked her and even did blood work to make sure that she was okay. We never thought that
it was her eyes. She seemed fine until January 19th. I woke up to let her out in the
morning and she walked right into the wall. I knew that something was wrong. I waited for
my vet. to open and when I called him he told me to make an appointment with the Dog
Ophthalmologist. It was that day that I found out that my little girl had
Glaucoma.
Over the next 5 months we went to the dog
Ophthalmologist many times and tried surgery, laser surgery, eye drops and many other
things but nothing was helping – we could not control the spikes in pressure. At times
her pressure would be as high as 70. She had so much optic nerve damage that the
Ophthalmologist said that in early May that we should give her an injection in her eye to
make her left eye blind. I agreed with Dr. Marrion and in a very simple procedure,
Cherri was made blind in her left eye. Her other eye began to have a lot of huge
spikes in pressure and eventually in June, it was decided to not put her through all of
the pain as she would be going blind soon. In June, we gave her an injection into
her other eye. She was totally blind as of June 13th.
Knowing that she was probably going to go blind, I
put my bed on the floor so, that she has been able since day one to get on and
off of the bed by herself. She was able to go in and out of the house right
away by herself when I left the door to the yard open. For a few weeks, our walks
basically consisted of going down to the end of the driveway or to the next house and
turning around. Today, on her walks, she knows exactly what cats she wants to visit
and where she wants to go. When I am walking her, most people do not even realize that
she is blind. Cherri is still the happy and loveable girl that she always was and
has adjusted very well to her blindness. It took me a lot longer:)
Story by: Stephanie Conway
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