Cottage life with Errol and Chance, Pt 2: What’s it like to live with disabled rescue dogs?
Over the last few years I’ve learned that you need four things when you care for dogs with special needs:
Patience
Compassion
Never-ending love
Resourcefulness (which includes financial adaptability)
Errol during his first few days with us
We’ve learned on our feet here, partly because we did not know all of the health problems our first puppy had. He came to us with an eye infection (so the eye was never covered on insurance). But then that eye turned out to be going blind, then got repeatedly infected, then needed surgery, then more surgery. And much of that was in lockdown, whilst being made redundant. Numerous kind souls helped us crowdfund, to ensure Errol got his surgery. (And a bunch of people trolled us for doing so, but such is life: these people walk amongst us and on our timelines, and find enjoyment in peculiar things.) And I started a little online shop to help keep some money coming in to cover his medication et al. It was hard but he survived, kindness outshone meanness, and we got through it.
Subsequently, Errol started to have seizures, and more investigations revealed a boot print just below his damaged eye: he had demonstrably been kicked in the head as a young puppy, so his eye, and his skull did not grow properly. As a result, he not only lost an eye, he has barely any tear duct, cannot moisten his own nose, has acute rhinitis, and epilepsy. So taking on a rescue turned into taking on a disabled rescue.
Errol slept a lot during his early days: partly because he’s a dachshund (!) but also because he wasn’t at all well
I’ll write more about how we’ve helped Errol live his best life and find the right treatment for his ailments soon - and about Chance’s journey. But, for now, my central point is to say that rescues all come with a history but also with an amazing capacity to overcome adversity, and endless love to offer, given time.
Errol came to us just a few months old, and we caught his problems quickly, even though we did not realise just how bad his eye problem was. Find out as much history as you can, would be my advice, but also expect the unexpected. Watch them closely: look for signs that things might not be good in their world. (Again, I’ll post more on this soon.)
We could not have predicted the troubles that lay ahead of Errol, nor could we have predicted a pandemic and a massive drop in income. But we’ve worked it out: we asked for help when we really needed it (thank you again to all those amazing people who helped with our crowdfunder), and we looked for others streams of revenue, like my shop. I won’t deny that every month is a challenge, to make sure that Errol has everything he needs - from medication, vets visits, to time, love, and all the cuddles he can ever desire (even on Teams meetings), but we do it because we love him.
He deserves to live his best life, and if all my clothes come from charity shops, and we are always looking for ways to save money: that’s ok. We have two dogs who live a wonderful, happy life in our little cottage, and they enhance our world with their every breath. We are all living our best lives.
