TOP Express | DENIM Vigoss | BOOTS Stuart Weitzman | SUNGLASSES Karen Walker | WATCH Daniel Wellington | PHOTOGRAPHER Vic Cas

Hi guys! I wanted to share with you what happened to my Ellie belly. I call her Ellie belly because she is always on her back propositioning belly rubs! I have been avoiding this post for awhile because it’s not fun to talk about sad things in life, but I wanted to share Ellie’s story. For those of you that have been following me for awhile know I was in London over the summer. While I was there I dropped my puppies off at my sisters house (not really ‘dropped off’ because she lives across the country, haha, but I flew them across the country).

My sister called me one day and said Ellie’s eye was bleeding. I said to take her to the vet. My sister is the best babysitter, I can’t think of anyone better to have helped my pups during this time. No one knows what to do, but this was the only thing I could think of to help her being so far away. The vet said they needed to operate because she had an ulcer in her eye and she may loose it. My sister had the vet call me as her mother and care taker and the vet said basically ‘you can pay this many pennies to save her eye, or this amount of pennies to loose it. Make a decision right now.’ I told her to do everything she could to save it. I didn’t care about the pennies. I can worry about those later.

The vet did. She put a graph on her eye. It was kind of gross, it looked like a pink flap of skin over her eye which the vet said would turn grey over time and kind of blend in with her eye color. And to see through her eye would be like always having a piece of mud in the middle. The amount of medicine was insane. She was on seven medicines about four times a day.

When I brought her back to New York, I was very overwhelmed. Her schedule was reduced, but still pretty high maintenance in terms of doses. Drops in her eyes, medicine. It was several times a day. She was a good patient though, she let me put drops in her eyes and give her pills wrapped in cheese like she knew I was taking care of her.

A few weeks later I woke up and her eye was not a full globe and she wasn’t acting normal. I knew it needed to be removed. I gave her pain pills and then took her in a taxi to the Animal Medical Center. There they told me the ophthalmologist was not there that day and that I would need to make an appointment. I was shocked. How did this massive animal hospital not have an ophthalmologist there, or on call? They recommended Blue Pearl.

I called Blue Pearl and they have several locations but only one ophthalmologist. She was in Queens that day and the receptionist told me to make an appointment. I knew she needed surgery like.. right now. I asked the receptionist if I could go to the Queens office and wait in the lobby for her to see me. She said yes, but there was no guarantees she could see me. So I took Ellie belly on the subway to Queens and waited in the lobby for two hours. She was finally available. I told her I had been stalking her all day and I felt so lucky she was able to see me. She responded by saying I wasn’t the first person to tell her this. Apparently there is a complete lack of dog ophthalmologists in the city! If you are looking for a job, I highly recommend this career! She took one look at Ellie and said she could see the graph the previous vet put in, but that the eye needed to be removed.

She asked if I could bring her back to Manhattan so she could operate at that office. She operated and removed that eye. Ellie is back to her old happy Ellie belly ways, she just doesn’t have that eye holding her back anymore.