Our beautiful Pekingese rescue dog loses an eye

The last few weeks have been challenging but we are hopeful that one day there will be a happy ending to this story. Last year I rescued a Pekingese dog off the streets. He was alone and I had no way to carry or lead him to safety so I used some cat treats I had just bought. He was very trusting and sweet. I managed to lead him a few km to a local vets where he walked himself inside to the start of a new life away from the dangers on the streets, at least that was what we all hoped for.

I was relieved, after many rescues ending badly soon after the rescue. Things started well, he was disease free and stayed in the vets for about 3 weeks while getting vaccinated against dangerous diseases. During this time I found a pet boarding home for him to stay in after leaving the vets. The lady from the boarding centre picked him up and took him to his new home. I chose this boarding home because they have a big yard for the animals to run around in and I’d seen other rescuers using them before so it seemed like a trustworthy option.

We were sent videos every few days showing Lumi running around in the yard and interacting with a few other dogs now and then. We weren’t having much luck finding him a home during this time but were thankful he seemed to be happy and it was a bit of an upgrade compared with life in the vets.

A few weeks ago, all of a sudden I got a phone call from the lady who owns the dog boarding home. Even before answering I felt something was wrong, my heart sank. She told me Lumi had an injury close to his eye, that she was very sorry but he got into a little fight with another dog while she was cleaning and had a deep cut. The lady took him to her vets and told me that the vet said his eye was ok and he would just need several days of wound cleaning and anti-inflammatory / antibiotic medicine to help heal the wound. I was relieved that the wound appeared to be healing when a day or two later she phoned me again.

She told me the vet said they can keep treating the cut to see if the gap will close up, but they will probably need to remove his eye! We were in shock! We couldn’t believe it, after being told he was healing suddenly he needs his eye removing. It was time to move in and take Lumi away from her and the vet she was using. It became clear that the lady was downplaying his injury, perhaps feeling guilty because it happened under her watch, or maybe she was overly optimistic that he would recover and she wouldn’t have to share the severity of his injury with us.

We informed our vet that we trust and quickly went to take Lumi there. The lady refused to pay any fees if we didn’t use her vet ( a much cheaper and dirtier veterinary practice)but we knew there was no way he was having any more treatment there.

When we got to Lumi he looked so innocent and as you can see in the photo above his eye looked terrible. He was a little nervous but calm as we put him into our carry cage. He’s very light but the cage was much heavier and it was difficult lifting it a few hundred metres down the street on a foggy dark night with busy traffic filling the roads nearby. We put him in the cage to try to keep him as clean as possible, rather than walking on the pavement.

We got in the car and took him across town to our vet. She was waiting and after we sent her photos on the way, we knew it was likely they couldn’t save his eye but hoped for a miracle. We arrived, worried and hoping maybe they could do something to save his eye.

Unfortunately they couldn’t because the wound was too bad, his eye needed removing as soon as possible, it was the only option. Words can’t describe how we felt at this point. Hearing the vet say Lumi’s eye needed to be removed was a gut punch. I tried to stay strong for him, but inside, I was a mess. It’s one of those moments you’re never really prepared for, no matter how many rescues you’ve been through.

We were upset that the lady in boarding hadn’t been watching him carefully. Accidents do of course happen but this was a very bad injury and even though she was sorry in her messages, it didn’t always feel genuine, especially when she insisted we use a vets that wasn’t a good option at all. We also felt so sad that this strong and beautiful little guy who had already been through a difficult time abandoned on the streets, now faced surgery and would lose an eye. He was brave though and calm considering he must have been very uncomfortable by now.

Our vet offered to do the surgery immediately, it was the best option and he was soon having surgery. We’ve had to wait outside this surgery theatre a few times while Lychee our kitten had surgery a few times. Waiting during Lumi’s surgery was agonizing. Each minute felt like an hour. I kept replaying the ‘what ifs’ in my head, wishing I could have done something more to protect him. Time always ticks along slowly in situations like this and this day it wasn’t only the effect of time slowing down, it was a long time and actually took about 90 minutes to complete the surgery. Eye removal surgery is quite common for dogs and relatively safe, but still major surgery.

Surgery went well and Lumi was shivering a little bit afterwards, which is to be expected. We kept him warm but the shivering can also be a sign of pain. This was to be expected after having an eye removed. The vets continued to clean his wound, give pain relief medicine and other medicines, which I think were antibiotics or anti-inflammatory to try to prevent any infections.

One of the most risky things about dog eye surgery is making sure the wound stays clean and that there are no other infections. I knew these vets would do a good job of keeping the wound clean and monitoring Lumi during recovery and they did. His wound was healing well and after about 7-10 days he had his stitches removed.

Lumi has his favourite veterinary nurses who he licks and fully trusts to lift him up and move him around when needed. You can see how affectionate he is towards them. With people he doesn’t know as well, he is a little nervous and will sometimes shake or be a little jumpy. We are starting to slowly build a connection with him as we visit every day, feeding him chicken and letting him lick it off our hands to build trust. He is slowly trusting us but still won’t let us put his harness on to take him for a walk, only his favourite nurses who he spends all day with can do that. We are confident he will let us soon, it’s just going to take more time and patience.

Even though we can’t put his harness lead on, he will happily eat chicken, let us stroke him and take him for walks. Lumi has a special strut when he walks and his little legs move so quickly. We can’t believe Lumi has lost an eye but all we can do is keep him safe and do the best we can to help him feel fully confident again and find him a forever home. For now he will live in the vets where he has many walks each day and someone keeping an eye on him all day long and every hour or so throughout the night too. We will continue to visit him often and share what is happening with you, both here and in videos which will be posted on our YouTube channel soon.

If you’d like to help support Lumi’s $207 monthly boarding fees, even the smallest donation is helpful, you can do so on our donor box page here. If you can’t, no worries, but please consider sharing our website, YouTube and story. If you know anyone who would like to offer Lumi a forever home please email us and let us know. We are trying to find out whether Pekingese dogs can fly overseas to be adopter or not, it seems like only some airlines will accept them because of their small nose and the greater risk associated with this.