My name is Emily and my husband Lenny and I are trying to raise money to pay for our dog Opal’s vet bills. Opal is a 2-year-old black lab and recently we got some devastating news that the retina in her right eye is completely detached. A few weeks ago, we noticed that her eye was very red and she kept squinting it. We took her to our usual vet and they said it looked like she just had some kind of eye infection and they gave us some eye drops.

After 10 days, her eye still was not better so we took her back. A different vet saw her this time and did some tests on her eye and told us it looked like her retina was completely detached in her right eye and that they recommended we take her to the emergency animal eye care vet in Wilmington right away. They sent all of her records over to them and once we got there they were able to see her pretty quickly. They took Opal back and did some other tests and the vet working there brought her back out to us and told us that she is completely blind in her right eye and confirmed the retina is detached.

We were very upset to hear this and felt guilty since we didn’t know how long she had been living like this. They gave us some steroids, antibiotics and more eye drops to give her until a follow-up appointment we have scheduled in a week and a half to see if there have been any changes with her eye since doing all of the medicine. The vet also told us to be thinking about completely removing her eye since there’s a very slight chance she’d even be a candidate for the surgery, he did not have the best bedside manners when he was giving us all of this information.

They requested more blood work from our regular vet to hopefully rule out anything that could be hereditary because if it is hereditary there could be a chance that it’s something in her body rejecting her eye basically and we were told it could possibly happen to the other eye if that were the case. We have been struggling since we found out and are trying to stay as positive as we can and hope for the best outcome, which is hard since everything we’ve been told is basically the worst-case scenario.

We aren’t sure what the eye specialist vet will tell us to do when we go back on July 18th but we have already spent over $1,000 on appointments, medicine and blood tests/samples so we are worried to see how much more everything is going to cost in the coming weeks. We love Opal so much and she is our baby so of course we’d love to be able to do anything we can for her but with me being a teacher and Lenny just starting his own business, money is not something we have any extra of. We aren’t sure exactly how much everything is going to cost but we appreciate any amount that anyone is willing to give.

We are hoping and praying that there is something we can do to fix her eye, and if not, hoping it is not something that will happen to her other eye. Opal is full of energy and loves to go on the boat, go hunting with Lenny and loves to swim. We just pray she will continue to be able to do all of those things and that there is a way to help her.