Everything Changes

It has been a tough old month so far. Lyra was a little off colour at the beginning of the month so we trotted her off to the V.E.T. Conjunctivitis was the general conclusion – the pollen count was high, it being peak yellow season, and there was a lot of it about. A course of eye drops was suggested and we all took turn to be the bad guy with the dropper. A corresponding course of expanded treats was deemed appropriate and we bought everything from dried goat ears to tripe sticks as pick me ups. An offering of bone shaped German biscuits was deemed particularly satisfactory. Even the cats seemed to come out in sympathy (or at any rate reduced levels of hostility). Lyra seemed to be perking up under this new regime and we had some lovely walks through the bluebells and around the headrigs. We began, finally, to feel like spring was here.

The eye didn’t seem to be improving though and so back to Kelso we trotted. This time the diagnosis was more worrying. Possibly glaucoma. We left with more eye drops, pain killers and a very uneasy feeling. Ever the Pollyanna, I focused firmly on the bright side and Lyra, mum and I explored the rhododendrons in Dundock woods and had a glorious romp down by the river in the sun. And then the axe fell. Lyra was referred to an eye specialist and he explained that the glaucoma had worsened and poor Lyra had likely been blind in the affected eye for the last couple of weeks. It would have to be removed.

We all rather fell apart.

Lyra came back from the operation looking like she had done five rounds with Mike Tyson. She was worrying at the stitches and had worked her way around the comfy soft collar picked up at the vets. A blue lampshade was acquired. This was not popular and Lyra spent a couple of days working out the best way to pull it off by bashing it on the floor then standing on it. We moved swiftly on to a squishy pink sun bonnet affair. This was considered more satisfactory by the patient, though the fluffy petunia look did tend to attract bees when convalescing in the garden.

Our first walk out in the new chapeau was to Norham on a sunny Saturday. Comfrey was just beginning to flower and clouds of stitchwort had woven its way through the long grass. Lyra stood in the river with shoals of tiny fish teeming round her legs, stuck the cone down and slurped gleefully. Somehow all my carefully garnered optimism ebbed away. The poor dog was hugged half to death that afternoon as we both lay under the big willow tree, Lyra snoring and me disintegrating. A dog becomes so much part of the warp and weft of your day, when the thread is pulled everything frays.

But life moves on. I have applied the curtain technique and firmly pulled myself together. (Though I have had a few wobbly moments just now, uploading the photographs of her tearing along the river path like a loon when, unbeknownst to us all, she had likely already lost the sight in her poorly eye).

Lyra has perked up enormously and has now made several promenades around the cow circular in her pink bonnet, receiving much sympathetic petting and not a few furtive dog treats. On an outing to the pub a few days ago, she was roundly kissed by her fan club of little girls (who abandoned the swings and rushed into the bar as soon as they spotted her getting out of the car). The stitches came out on Friday and fur is beginning to grow back over the shaved patch so hopefully we will be moving on from the pink bonnet look shortly (if only to cut down on the illicit treats). Having abandoned the Jane Austen look, Lyra will be working on developing a more dashing, lady pirate aesthetic. Lachlan is resigned to a future role as Jim the Cabin Boy to her swashbuckling Captain Lyra. Auditions for the role of parrot will be held later in the summer.