Backstory
We received Deke‘s halo today and I must say he looks VERY handsome! His “seeing eye cat” needed to check it out and gave it two paws up. Thank you so much for helping us protect Deke as he enters his last stage of vision loss. You truly are angels.
Eileen M.
Backstory 11-9-16
“We were looking for a dog to adopt after we lost our previous dog 2 years ago. We wanted a medium size adult dog and were looking at rescue sites. At that time we were pet parents to 2 disabled rabbits. One was bound and the other has wry neck. I saw Deke on a website and it said that he was 4 years old, rescued from a hoarder and he had vision problems. Since our previous dog had been losing her vision prior to her death I was interested in seeing Deke.
We drove 2 hours to meet him. He was overweight and we were told distrustful of strangers, especially men. As soon as we walked in the house he rolled onto his back and it was love at first sight. We were told his vision problem was due to living in a dark boarded up house for 6 months. He was severely underweight when rescued, had to have part of his tail amputated due to gangrene and suffered from anxiety as well. By the time we adopted him he had been fattened up too much and was still very anxious. He also had terrible gas and diarrhea.
A couple of weeks after getting him home we took him to an eye specialist who diagnosed with with PRA, Progressive Retinal Atrophy for which there is no cure. She gave us a list of things to watch for as well as tips on how to ease him into his darkening world. That was almost 2 years ago.
Since then we took Deke for training to try to improve his other senses. He relies mostly on his hearing now. He has gotten down to his ideal weight and loves snuggling in bed with us in the morning. We also have 3 cats. Our male cat is his best friend. We refer to Tanner as deke’s seeing seyeing eye cat. Deke’s retina in his right eye is now fully detached and he is only seeing shadows out of his left eye. It likely won’t be long until he loses that as well.
He is a very exuberant dog. We tell people we wanted to adopt an adult dog and got a 4 year old puppy instead. Deke’s tail never stops wagging. He is nervous of cars, so taking him for walks can be challenging but we are working through that with him. Our house is a split level so we have a lot of stairs. He does amazingly well with them. But because of his exuberance, he crashes into the furniture and walls constantly. We just can’t get him to slow down so we really need a halo to protect his sweet face.”
Eileen M.
