Joey has had a tough few days –- we think he had a stroke last week, and he has been struggling ever since. He and I spent Valentine’s Day at a doggy neurologist -– she’s an amazing veterinarian, searching for the cause of my dog’s hyperextended head, his sad darting eyes, his pain…
She decided he needed an MRI, which was risky because of his age (he’s a teenager at 13!) and because he has a heart murmer. But he came through like a trooper. The vet had braced me: She feared cancer, some sort of brain mass or an inner ear disease. But all she found was Joey’s smart brain -– a relief, but we still don’t know the root of his troubles.
Why am I blogging this? Because Joey made some progress over the weekend. Because I have hope. Because so many friends have reached out to say they are here for us (when we ended our marathon day with the doc, there was a card from all the neighborhood dogs in our mailbox…). Because my long-distance pals who read this blog will want to know.
And because I’ve searched the Internet for four days, looking for anything that could help Joey. I’ve probably read 100 sites, for instance, explaining canine vestibular disease –- Joey might have an idiopathic form of this.
I don’t think anything could have highlighted the reality of my business more than this for me. How we get information, how we reach out, how we communicate has changed rapidly and forever. Newspapers and their web sites -– including ours at the Herald –- are working hard to be at the forefront of that change.
As I combed through site after site, I realized how impossible it was to tell which site I might be able to trust most. And that is what we at the Herald must instill in newspaper readers and online visitors: Trust that the journalists in our newsroom will dig as hard as they can to find accurate, truthful and insightful local news.
Back to the real reason for this blog: my pal Joey. Here’s to you, buster. Thanks for being a fighter. I’m a lucky mom.
Joan
Here's Joey celebrating his 13th birthday last Dec. 10:
