Many people struggle when diagnosed with a chronic disease or the loss of a sense. Depression and anxiety are not uncommon. However, one Poodle in Idaho has dealt with both while continuing to smile and live life to the fullest – with a little help from her canine sisters!
According to The Dodo, Margaux the Poodle was nine years old when her family noticed a problem. Her owner, Scott Jordan, told The Dodo that “She had this horrible infection on her paw…We thought it was some rare snake bite.”
When he took Margaux to a specialist in Boise, they soon learned that it was something much more than a snake bite. After several visits, the specialist gave a diagnosis to Margaux’s family. The beloved dog had an autoimmune disease, diffuse pyogranulomatus inflammation. In a video on Facebook, Scott describes it as “most similar to Lupus in humans. Her body just starts attacking itself.”
In the years since, the family has been able to manage Margaux’s condition with medications. There were many times when they thought they would lose Margaux, but “she kept bouncing back,” says Scott in a video on Margaux’s Facebook page. He continued, “As a result she’s become known as the Awesome and Amazing Margaux.”
This summer, three years after the initial diagnosis, the now-twelve-year-old Margaux began to have more problems. First one eye became affected, causing great pain to Margaux. Because of the pain, Margaux needed to have that eye removed in August. While she was healing, her other eye also became affected and needed to be removed. It was at that point that the family discovered that Margaux had also lost her hearing.
The family was worried. As Scott said, to “try to figure out how to teach her what life is like in the darkness was a real difficult thing for us.” However, her canine sisters jumped in. Chloe, Suzie, and Rhonda all take turns leading Margaux on family hikes, making sure she doesn’t go off trail. Scott said that her sisters “know they have a job to do” when holding Margaux’s leash. He thinks that Margaux even prefers being led by the dogs than by him or his wife!