Virginia Beach, Va. - A blind pit bull at an adoption center in Virginia Beach has finally had surgery to help him see for possibly the first time ever.
The dog, Marco, had eye surgery at Animal Eye Care in Virginia Beach on November 12.
"It's difficult anyway to find a home for a blind dog and then it's difficult to find a home for a bully breed ," says Georgia Obenaus, CEO and Founder of Go Rescue Pet Adoption Center. "That's really what made us push forward to try to get the funding for him, to take out one of those issues."
NewsChannel 3 first spoke with Obenaus back in September, after Go Rescue Pet Adoption Center collected the last of the $3,000 they needed to pay for the surgery, with the help of the community taking action.
She has made it her mission to find Marco a home since she brought him into the center in November of 2013, knowing it would be a risk.
"He didn't have a chance of adoption, he didn't have any hair, and he had open sores on him and he had a skin infection," she says. " I knew I should take a dog that was more adoptable, and at that point I didn't care. I just took him."
After about two hours, Marco's eye doctor, Dr. Brad Nadelstein with Animal Eye Care, brought him back in to Obenaus' arms, cataract-free.
"The procedure is done the exact same way it's done with people, but what we're gonna do is use ultra-sonic power to break up the cataract and suck all the material from the eye, and then once we remove the cataract, we're going to take an artificial lens that's made of acrylic and we're going to insert that back in his eye which is going to restore his vision," he told NewsChannel 3 before the surgery.
With his eyesight back, Marco now needs the community's help just one more time to get results.
"This is not his entire story this is just the beginning of his story," says Obenaus. "We're hoping that everybody out there, even if they're not the right home for him, they share his story, and help the right home come forward."
For those who are interested in adopting Marco, call the center at 757-432-9222.
