If you would have told me five years ago that I would be the proud owner of not one but TWO blind dogs I would have thought you were nuts! What are the chances? But I wouldn’t change anything. I have two wonderful fur babies and I could not imagine my life without either one of them.

My oldest is a ten year old Yorkshire Terrier named Gus and he’s a hilarious, spunky, tough little nugget with some major attitude. In 2015, I noticed that he wasn’t acting quite right. He was sleeping too much and appeared to be in pain. We took him to the vet who diagnosed him with back pain and sent us home with pain medication. Something was still off. I took him to another vet who diagnosed him with an abscess in his anal gland which ended up leading to a surgery to have them both extracted. During his recovery he started walking into walls and his eyes were moving around erratically. We knew that something was still very wrong.

We were told about a specialty animal hospital not too far away and took him to the ophthalmologist. She could immediately tell that something was wrong neurologically due to the damage to his optic nerve which was causing the blindness. We went directly to the neurologist who after extensive testing diagnosed him with meningoencephalitis. He was put on a steroid treatment to combat the disease and I was so worried we were going to lose him. Luckily this was not the case. After a year of steroids and learning to live with his loss of eyesight he is the healthiest he has ever been and I’m in awe of his resilience.

At the beginning of 2015, before Gus got sick, we welcomed our younger baby to our family. His name is Bodie (after the ghost town) and he’s a four year old Australian Cattle Dog. He has SO much energy, the biggest heart and is fiercely protective of his family. About a month ago, he started to run into things around the house. Concerned that it could be like what we experienced with Gus, we tracked down the same ophthalmologist and took him in immediately. She couldn’t see any signs of an issue with the eye and put him on eye drops for glaucoma and asked us to come back in a month. At the follow up appointment there were already changes to his retina and she was surprised at the quick deterioration. She did further testing and he was diagnosed with Progressive Retinal Atrophy (PRA) which will end in complete blindness. This is a genetic disease and there is no treatment.

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Luckily I already have experience with blindness in dogs so I’m ready to help him along this journey. Both my dogs are happy, healthy and they are lot tougher than I give them credit for. When Gus lost his eyesight I was trying to find anything to help him and came across Muffin’s Halo. They have many different choices and sizes to help your blind dog adjust to their new normal. I would also recommend getting toys that make lots of noise so they can locate them, never moving furniture around and always talking to your blind pet in a calm and loving voice. They are going through an adjustment and just need your love and support.

If you are interested in purchasing noisy toys or Muffin’s Halo: