Lennon

Lennon is a very old and very gentle cocker spaniel – with a full-length tail – who landed as a “stray” in a shelter, blind and deaf, with a hideously bulging eye.    He was so friendly and upbeat that he adjusted quite easily to a temporary foster home and then to his ODH Final Refuge family.     Our vet removed the bulging eye very quickly to take away the constant pain, and he will need a second surgery (hopefully cryosurgery) to remove a large eyelid mass on the remaining eye along with treatment for dry eye plus monitoring for glaucoma developing in that one.   We are working on the yeasty bare patches of skin he came with, treating his yeasty ears, and working on his dry coat but he feels far far better already.

He is such a sweet soul, trusting and cooperative despite being put in strange environments.   Lennon is extremely cautious about his movements – no doubt from fairly recent loss of vision – so we can’t imagine him “running away”.   Who knows how he became expendable but he has held no grudges.   This little guy spends most of his day napping as befits an old gentleman, but when he’s awake he’s wagging and we love him.

Update:  After only 4 months with his ODH home, we found a highly metastatic malignant melanoma in his lip, growing into his mouth amazingly rapidly.   This sweet dog had suffered through enough pain with his eyes, he didn’t deserve to suffer any more.   His tail kept wagging with any touch and he kept draping himself over his mom’s lap every evening, but he was in pain.     He was sent on with tears, but we were so glad to have shared those months with such a gentle, happy soul.   He was very much loved.