The vet said my dog was ‘bright of mind and spirit’. May we all be like that in 2024

The vet peered into my dog’s eyes. She is a black cocker spaniel with silver ears and a silver muzzle, the silver the result of her 13 years in the world.

“Cloudy eyes,” she said. I nodded. We’d had this conversation before. I am not an expert on anything medical, whether to do with humans or creatures, but I am aware that cocker spaniels frequently have eye problems at some point in their lives.

“I think,” she said, “that I am going to refer her. Just in case it’s ...” She said some specific word but I stopped taking anything in after the “just in case” because I didn’t want to know. If I remembered the word I’d only Google it and that never ends well, once you go poking around on the internet for information on possible medical malaises.

The vet I go to, by the way, the Charlemont Animal Welfare Clinic, is one of the few remaining small businesses in an ever-growing forest of huge new office blocks and new apartment buildings. I have been going there since Boo, my dog, was a puppy. They are the kindest of vets to both their two and four-legged visitors, and their clinic is a true neighbourhood service, in an area of Dublin where neighbourhood services are increasingly rare.

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A referral was made; I was called soon after with a date and a time. And so it was that myself and my dog arrived at a location in south Co Dublin at 7.30am on a Monday morning, to await an 8am appointment with a canine optometrist. I had not known there was such a thing as a canine optometrist but that is hardly surprising, given my lack of knowledge about most things medical for people, let alone dogs.

Boo passed the time peeing on the grass and sniffing, as we walked around while waiting for the clinic to open. We were the first appointment of the day for Dr Eye Dog. He had a different name, but for the purposes of this piece, I’ll call him Dr Eye Dog.

Dr Eye Dog was like a courtly scientist. He was tall, with glasses, and wore a white coat. The room was very quiet and quite dim. We shook hands formally, names were exchanged and then he turned his attention to Boo. I can’t tell you in detail what he was looking for in my dog’s eyes but he had a lot of fascinating-looking instruments of a type I had never seen before. He shone little beams of light into the eyes of my wiggling dog.

“No action required,” Dr Eye Dog announced serenely. He said other things, about what happens to spaniels’ eyes as they age, and explaining what he had been looking for at the back of the eye with his strong little torch beams. But, as you’ll have guessed by now, I didn’t take any of that in. Once I heard the words “No action required”, I realised how much underlying anxiety I had had on behalf of my dog. She was not going to go blind, he told me, and she could in fact see very well, despite the cloudy appearance of her eyes.

Then he put some drops in her eyes and told me to go outside and wait 20 minutes while her pupils dilated, so he could do one last routine examination. Boo lay down on the floor of the reception area and promptly went to sleep.

I spent the time as we waited thinking about some of the many adventures we have had together over the years. The best day of her life – but not mine – was when she happened upon a 16kg bag of dog food in my absence and ate so much that when I returned to the scene of this canine crime she was lying comatose on her back in her bed like an upturned beetle, little legs extended straight up in the air, stomach swollen full as a football.

Everyone who has a dog knows that one day that dog will scamper away, although not when that day may come

There were all the walks on the beach; the swims in the sea; her unbroken affection for a toy called Chicken she’s had all her life; her silent, comedic appearance at the bedside in the mornings like a canine periscope, wondering when her breakfast might materialise; her travels all over the country with me when on assignment; her distinctive little doggy character.

Everyone who has a dog knows that one day that dog will scamper away, although not when that day may come. Sitting there, I was just relieved to know Boo was not going to lose her sight and that there was No Action Required on what the Just In Case scenario had been.

We were called back in at the end of the 20 minutes. Refreshed from her kip on the floor, Boo energetically bounded through the surgery door of Dr Eye Dog, tail wagging, long eyelashes batting.

Dr Eye Dog regarded her with a benevolent gaze. “She is bright of mind and spirit,” he proclaimed with a smile, before carrying out his final test. I had not expected my early morning visit on a Monday to a canine optometrist to result in what amounted to a philosophic declamation about my dog; a philosophy we should all aspire to.

And so, may we all be bright of mind and spirit for this new year of 2024, whether we be canine or human.

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