Early in life, I feared blindness. The Deuce came.
We were close to two miles from the road when he chased a small animal and made it across the road. He heard me coming through the woods after him. I ran nearly 4 mph with two other leashed up dogs. But Deuce was faster.
That’s when he lost an eye thinking he could outwit a truck and get back across the road to me before I scolded him. The accident broke his back and two front legs. Normally a slow driver, I drove over 100 mph the ninety miles back to Anchorage.
He had six surgeries and came home in a nearly complete body cast. Soon, he healed, but lost sight in his other eye. I became his seeing eye person, but not for long. He mapped out the house, our back yard, and our friends’ homes and yards. When we walked on the trails, deep in the woods, and I took him off leash to let him swim in the lake, he evaded the leash coming out of the lake and ran on the curving trail until I caught him–just to show me he could. Then the vet told me Deuce was deaf as well.
That’s when I stopped fearing (mostly). Stopped letting little things bother me (mostly). I have a way to go before I’m as brave as Deuce. The photo shows his “good” eye, though he can’t see out of it. He sees with his heart. I hope you have a Deuce in your life.
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This gave me goosebumps! What an amazing pup!
Once when taking my daughter’s dog to the Vet on Tudor, I saw a young woman trying to unload a rather large dog from the back of a Bronco. I wondered why the dog didn’t just jump. I approached her and asked if I could help. She said her dog was losing its sight. I talked to the dog and slowly petted it and eventually lowered it to the pavement. She put a leash on it and took it inside. As I waited for Katy’s shot appointment, I saw the woman crying by the counter. The vet was explaining to her that the dog was now totally blind yet would be fine as they get the majority of their information from their nose. He asked her if she had a fenced yard, which she did. He told her that the dog would be fine, and she should enjoy him as she did prior to its blindness. As I helped put the dog in the back of the Bronco, she was already regaining her composure assured by the vet’s knowledge that her dog would be able to navigate in a dark world.