What I’m trying to capture here is a summary of Oskar’s progress over the first week.

Day 0

very drowsy looks very much worse for wear. Seems happy to be home with us and won’t leave our side. He’s really unsure of the cone. When he catches it on his blind side he freezes, not clear on what has happened and how to resolve it. The cat approached him on his blind side to sniff him, he jumped out of his skin when he sees turns and sees her. Hopefully she won’t see this as a sign of weakness.

Going out at night seems pretty frightening to him as he stops and stares and won’t leave my side or wee. I have to lift up the bowl of water so that the cone doesn’t get in the way, after which he all but drains it! He seems to take a lot of comfort from being in his normal environment. It really was the right choice to bring him home right away.

Day 1

a continuation of the first day really. He now makes sure he is never far from either Dawn or I. He has even started curling up under my desk again, which he’s not done for many months. Still struggling with the cone, but you can tell he’s figuring out paths around the house and garden that minimise it catching on items. The cat spent some time on the bed with him, which is unheard of. Struggles a bit on the walks around the park as he often catches the cone. He keeps away from people and other dogs.

Day 2

first day of significant improvement. It looks like he’s starting to figure out his new view of the world, and without the haziness of the anaesthetic and ketamine. He’s now doing complete laps without the cone catching, and when it does he just presses ahead to clear the obstacle. He’s started to play back with the cat, when she mock charges him. Good to see she won’t be able to bully him as she’d hoped.

He feels back to his happy self wagging his tail when he see people and dogs he knows, and the routines have started to get back to done normalcy. Some bruising had started around the eye but that is expected. He still wants to keep either Dawn or I in visible range and panics a bit if he loses sight of us.

A dog park friend comes round to wish him well and bring him a soft toy. He greets her with a standing hug and is so happy with they toy, taking it everywhere with him. He’s not wary of having the cone put on after meals, in fact he leans in for it. He’s figured out how to turn a large bit of wood he normally chews on so that he can get at it with the cone and uses the cone to prop it up.

The worst of the last few days is passing as we can start to see how things will likely go back to normal. The thing that now seems to be bothering him the most is the cone, but even that is not that much. In fact seeing how happy he is on our walks make me wonder if his eye had been bothering him more than he was letting on.

His eye looks a lot better than what I had had in mind, the surgeon did an amazing job of it.

Day 3

This was a day of incremental progress. He’s spent part of the day on the sofa whilst we were working, as he would normally do pre-op. On our walks he has met a few of the regulars all of whom have given him lost of fuss which he is lapping up. Part of me still feels that he seem happier, almost lighter than before.

The bruising is spreading a bit but not by enough to be concerned with. It’s healing well.

He’s so good with the cone now, waiting patiently as we fiddle to get it n after his meals. At one point he came back into the kitchen, looked at Dawn and then the cone, actively asking for it to be put back on.

In fact he’s now handling it so well we started wondering if it even worth setting up the training classes.

Day 4

Bruising is still spreading, but it doesn’t appear to be bothering him, other than t starting to itch in the evening. God job he had the cone on! It was the first day he was happier spending time on his own.

I took him on our normal Saturday stroll around Malmesbury and he is doing well on all counts; he has figured out how to navigate the outdoors with the cone. And knows which spaces will work. He even made it through a kissing green by sitting and waiting half way for me to swing the gate. Very impressive. He’s a bit more nervous inside the coffee shop as he’s not able to place all the sounds.

Day 5

This is the first day I let him off lead for one of the smaller fields around Avebury. He was very good at not running too much all over the place and really enjoyed the space! The swelling in his eye was markedly reduced, in fact it looks pretty good. The hair is also growing back quite quickly now. It won’t be long before we’ll be back to normal. It really was as the surgeon told us, within 3-5 days dogs work they way around the loss of an eye.

Day 6

Today was the big day. We had an appointment with the Ophthalmologist for his first checkup. It was amazing to see he was unphased by going back to the veterinary hospital. His checkup on the whole was very positive as we got the news that the tumour they removed was benign and that the enucleation was curative. Less good were the results regarding his joints. It appears there is quite some evidence of hip and elbow dysplasia. We will be going back for further analysis. And as bad news normally travels in three, we were notified of a potential other issue: his kidneys were too small. We will have to do some further analysis on what could be the cause so we work out a plan to compensate.

Day 7

We’ve decided that we could start being a bit more lenient on the cone and now take him out without, on his leaded walks. Honestly if you weren’t looking out for it you would not even know he was missing an eye. We met people along the way who asked after the status of his leg, and were surprised when I mentioned about his eye. I think a lot of this is because of the colouring of around the incision, where the bruising is still dark. That will fade over time and the hair will grow back but hopefully some of the dark discolouration will remain.

Seeing him making his way about without the cone it so gratifying. All we are waiting on is for the stitching to heal up fully and then I really do think that we are pretty much back where we started.