Zoe and the thorn UPDATE

As you know my dog Zoe took a thorn to her right eye almost two weeks ago and ever since then her internal eyelid has been sewn shut. She was in obvious discomfort but fortunately didn’t mess with her eye at all. She was so good that in the first day I was able to take off the weird cone-like collar the vet put on her. This whole time all she did was lay on the couch though. She looked pitiful.

Well, this weekend the stitches started slipping and by Monday I could see part of her eye showing through. I called the vet and took her in this morning. She was supposed to get the stitches out this Thursday (Nov. 13th) but since they were slipping the vet took them out today.

AND her eye is healed! Hoo-HOO!

Man, what a relief! The whole episode cost me $288, but I don’t care. It’s so nice to see two healthy big brown eyes looking back at me again. She is acting like a new puppy again too – been bouncing off the walls all day! It’s good to have my friend back to her old self.

On a related note, I asked the vet about this internal eyelid – I had never heard about this before. He said that only a few animals have it – wolves, dogs, cats, and bears. It’s just another eyelid that comes up from the bottom of the eye. When the eye is open it slips down past the eye into the front of the eye socket. They assume that it is just extra protection for the eye when the animal is wrestling down prey. The really weird thing is that cats have direct control over this eyelid – apparently they can blink with either set or do both sets at the same time – for the rest it’s use is strictly involuntary.
Weird.