The broken heart is mine. The bad liver is Sophie’s. Sophie was rescued by a very active volunteer who has helped Animals Taiwan Kaohsiung in many different ways. She was going blind.
Tim had to leave Taiwan unexpectedly due to a family emergency so we took her in. We had her spayed and vaccinated and we also carried on treating her blue eyes. This condition is basically an inflammation of the cornea which causes the eyes to become blue and deformed at which point the infected animal becomes blind. It can be treated if caught on time. It’s also known as canine hepatitis.
Her right eye healed up, but her left eye showed no improvements at all. She’s almost blind in one eye now.
A lady who feeds many dogs near our house offered to feed Sophie everyday. We tried to find her a home and we are still trying, but for now, she has become our third CNR case. She now lives on the street.
Problem is this dog fell in love with me. She doesn’t mix up very well with the other dogs fed by the nice lady in question either. They often attack her so she misses out on her daily feed unless I feed her myself. That doesn’t help her new found love for me…
I park my bike in B2 and every time I take the elevator down to B2 to get my scooter, she is waiting for me. EVERYTIME. She finds her way in when cars open the garage doors and she spends almost the entire day in B2 waiting for me except for when I go outside with her and the other dog currently staying in our house(Lucky). I try to force her to stay outside. I’ll go up from B2 to first floor with her in the elevator many times daily and I push her out of the elevator, then I go up to my place, but she finds her way back to B2, and she keeps waiting for me. It breaks my heart because she can’t be trusted around cats and kittens so she can not come into our house. If we miss her for one minute, she could kill one of our cats. If we take her in, we are bound to have our cats attacked, and some of them are just fearless innocent kittens. So it’s not just a matter of keeping an eye on the dog if we take her in, but the cats too. At some point we’ll make a mistake and our cats will pay for it. We can’t take that chance.
Another part of this problem is I’m sure we will soon get in trouble with other tenants in our building. Not all animal lovers and some of them are actually scared of dogs. Sophie scares them when they come out of the elevator. Not that she would bite, but some people are just scared of dogs. It’s quite common here in Taiwan.
The worse part of this problem is that in the following weeks after we returned her to the street, her eyes began to go blue again. Despite weekly injections, daily oral medicine and eyes drops, here eyes are getting worse at an alarming rate. I treat her everyday and I take her to the vet often and yet, she’s going blind. The vet thinks that her liver was damaged by the hepatitis virus. 
I’m at a loss. Soon to have neighbours complaining I’m sure, unable to take her in our house and she will be blind within 4 months at this rate.
We at Animals Taiwan Kaohsiung(founded in April 2006) have about one fifth of the volunteers the Taipei branch has, about one tenth of the revenue, but almost the same amount of animals under our care. Don’t get me wrong, things are going very well. It’s just that Sophie comes in as a real bummer and I needed to vent.
I’m not hoping for much to come out of this thread BTW. The wife is out for dinner with a friend and I’m home alone so this is a bit of a rant more than anything. I have time to write. Thanks for reading through this long post.
