9 week old blind puppy??? PHOTOS!!! - Page 2

I probably wouldn't put her to sleep.  I have a 5yr old girl who is working lines,  and she is blind as a bat.  She gets around just fine.

but I understand a rescue with many dogs, not having the room,  or time to place a handicap pup.  it is just easier to put the pup down.

Poor pup.  I have a 3yo  female who was probably born blind, I adopted her at 6months knowing she was blind, she really has no handicap and others who have met her agree.  She gets around just fine, and can map out a new area in minutes.  She plays fetch, swims, runs, plays, is obedient.. really a great dog, If you can get her into a good rescue I think youd be surprised that someone might her.

I wish I could offer her a home, but I understand the reasons for the procedures in place.  It would take a special home for a dog like that.  All the same, I hope she turns out not to be blind.

As for the moron who wanted a puppy to protect his little girl from Mountain Lions, bears, etc...Only the rare dog has what it takes to deal with these kind of threats, and no child does.  Not even twenty minutes ago, I was out working in the squash patch, and turned to look down the road, and saw a bicylist going down the road...and a black bear crossing the road not far behind him, only about 75 feet from the end of my driveway.  Makes me a bit worried. 

The old dog we had that died a year and a half ago...She was a little Border/ Lab mix, and the best dog in the world.  But if something threatened her people or her territory, such as the 75 pound mountain lion that appeared down by the shop when my husband was taking the Thanksgiving turkey down to our neighbor's house, she became a lethal little thing.  She wouldn't utter a sound, just come out of nowhere like a streak of lightning and hit it.  She had a way of killing that involved a suprise blow from her chest, while delivering a simultaneous bite to the throat.  The big cat ran off, but was found dead a week or so later.

The funny thing about that old dog was that she wouldn't hurt anything, unless it had demonstrated a threat.  And she is sorely missed.

Just the same, no one should get a dog with the intention of turning it into a protector against wildlife.  That's dangerous for the dog, the child, and is just plain stupid.

Crys

Steph, I appreciate the rescue work you do, but I'm afraid you're back in the dark ages as far as disabled dogs are concerned. The enlightened rescue groups do not execute disabled dogs for the crime of having a disability. It is not humane to kill a blind puppy, just as it would not be humane to shoot your neighbor's blind child in the head to end her "misery." I've had quite a few blind dogs over the years, including a GSD who was born blind, and all of them have enjoyed their lives immensely.

My born-blind GSD also had epilepsy, bad kidneys, and unilateral hip dysplasia. She was also mentally subpar, she was an Ambred hock walker, and she had a neuro disorder that made her circle to the left much of the time. I got her a total hip replacement, put her on phenobarb to control the seizures, and didn't spoil or coddle her. The first time I took her to the dog park, she was terrified and flattened herself to the ground. Get up, I told her, get up. I gave her no sympathy at all. And suddenly her head went up and a light came on in her blind eyes and she let out a joyful bark and began racing madly around. And the joy never stopped from then on. She was the happiest dog I have ever known--her sheer mad joy was breathtaking. And she ran and ran and ran. Although the ophthalmologist confirmed that she couldn't see a thing, she almost never crashed into things. Like many blind dogs, she used her sense of smell and echolocation (like a bat) to get around. The other dogs loved her dearly. She lived to be seven years old, and then the seizures became uncontrollable. She went into status epilepticus and was euthanized.

I am always amazed that people who execute blind dogs assure us that this is the humane thing to do. How would they know anything about how blind dogs do? The only blind dogs they know are dead because they executed them.

And how bizarre that aggressive sighted dogs are worth saving, but a sweet blind puppy will be executed. It's a lot easier to find a good home for a sweet blind puppy than a nasty biting adult.

Even in the 1920's, there was at least one dog person who knew better. He was Albert Payson Terhune, and he was a Collie man. Here's his story about his blind dog:

Fair Ellen; Sightless—and Happy
From The Way of a Dog, Chapter 15, by Albert Payson Terhune.

She was the downiest and goldenest and prettiest and strongest of all that baby collie family; the greatest litter of pups, taken by and large, we have been able, thus far, to raise at Sunnybank. There were five of them. She was the only female in the lot. I named her "Sunnybank Fair Ellen" and I dreamed of a great future for her in the show-ring.

She was born February 25, 1922. Her sire was my flawless Champion Sunnybank Sigurd--the Treve of my book of that name. Her dam was my Sunnybank Alton Andeen, a Canadian collie of rare beauty and wealth of show points. Behind the golden baby glittered a long double line of champion ancestors. Do you wonder we hoped grand things for her when the fuzzy puppy coat should become rough and luxuriant and the pudgy baby body should grow and should shave itself into strongly graceful maturity?

On the tenth day, Fair Ellen's biggest brother--later to become my Champion Sunnybank Sigurdson--opened his eyes. Next day his fiery brother, Sunnybank Cavalier, followed suit. Champion Sunnybank Explorer and Sunnybank Jamie, on the twelfth day, displayed beady black eyes where puckered lids had been.

The fourteenth day—and the twentieth day—came and went. Fair Ellen was sturdier and cleverer than any of the others. She learned to lap warm milk from a dish while they were still hopelessly puzzled by the mystery of that new form of feeding. But—her eyes did not open.

Then, when she was a day or two more than a month old, the lids

Fair Ellen continued . . .

Then, when she was a day or two more than a month old, the lids parted. But no hatpin-head pupils shone forth. Instead, the entire eye was covered by a thick membrane, known as a "haw." That meant I must wait until she should be old enough and strong enough to stand the simple—yet perilous—operation of having the haws removed.

Meanwhile, she was queen of the broodnest quintet. She romped in clumsy vigor with her four less agile brothers, and she demanded and took the lion's share of the food-dish's cargo. She throve mightily, and she began to develop a trick of finding her way around the nest by sense of smell and of hearing.

When the pups were graduated to the big puppy-yard, it was the same. Fair Ellen explored every inch of the yard before the others could muster courage and strength to toddle halfway across it. There was no awkwardness, now, in her step. But there was, daily, more and more of caution in it. This, after she had collided painfully with water-dish and feed-pan and runway corners and with wire-swathed tree-trunks.

I was watching her with ever-increasing interest. I noted that she never collided a second time with the same thing. Always, thereafter, the wisely sightless baby knew enough to come to a halt before she could run into it, or else she made a wide semicircle around it.

Now, this implied not only brain, but a certain reasoning power. And it augured more and more for her future qualities as a housedog and chum. It is by such seemingly trivial traits that I decide what puppies are going to show the true collie cleverness, and which are likely to grow up less brilliant. There was nothing stupid about Sunnybank Fair Ellen.

I noticed something else-her brothers, Sigurdson and Explorer and Cavalier (Jamie somehow had found and swallowed a piece of glass on one of his rambles around the grounds, outside the puppy-yard, and had died) were as rough as young bears in their romps with one another. But, for some occult reason, they were queerly gentle with their eye-veiled little sister.

At last, when Ellen was three months old, I sent for a skilled veterinary to operate on her eyes. More than once, partial haws have been removed carelessly or awkwardly from a collie's eyes, and blindness has followed. I was resolved that this misfortune should not befall the little golden dog I was growing so fond of. So I chose a veterinary who was preeminent in his profession. He came and looked Ellen over. Then he said:

"I'll operate. But I warn you there isn't much chance of success. See, she carries her left eye half shut, while her right eye is unnaturally wide-open. Unless I am mistaken, there is no sight in either eye. I believe the optic nerve is dead in both of them."

An expert from Cornell's Veterinary College was sent for. He made a careful examination of Ellen's eyes. Then he corroborated what the local vet had told me. I bade the two doctors go ahead with the operation.

Skillfully, they removed the whitish membranes. Then I saw they had been right in their glum forecast. A thick gray film covered each eye. There was no sight behind the film. The tests showed that.

My beautiful little golden collie was stone blind.

She had always been blind. Always she would be blind. The springtime world around us was vivid with blue and gold, and ablaze with sunlight. But Ellen was living in eternal blackness. Ahead of her stretched a future without a glint of light in it. The thick haws had masked total blindness. From birth, no trace of sight had been in those mismated eyes of hers. To death, there could be no hope for her to see.

There seemed but one thing left for me to do. And, sick at heart, I prepared to do it. I had grown fond of the gallant and gay golden youngster, and I

Fair Ellen continued . . .

There seemed but one thing left for me to do. And, sick at heart, I prepared to do it. I had grown fond of the gallant and gay golden youngster, and I hated to shoot her. Yet--

"I am going to put her out of her misery," I told the Mistress.

"She has no misery to be put out of," answered the Mistress. "She is having a beautiful time in life. She doesn't know anything better. She thinks everyone and everything is like herself. Why should you kill her while she is so happy? Wait till she finds out she is afflicted. Is there so much happiness in the world that you should kill something that has found it?"

Perhaps that was maudlin sentimentality. Perhaps was splendid wisdom. In any case, it was enough to make me take the shells out of my gun, with an odd sense of relief. The Mistress has a habit of being in the right. More and more, during the past thirty-odd years, I have discovered that.

So Fair Ellen lived on.

I make no apology to you or to myself for letting Fair Ellen live. The less so because she has led a gorgeously happy little life of her own, for these past ten years, and she gives every sign of keeping on in much the same way until the end.

I say "life of her own" because ever since puppyhood she has lived to herself and by herself two-thirds of the time. Sometimes, of course, she is with the other dogs or with us humans of Sunnybank. But for the most part, she is alone. Alone, not lonely, for she has a score of odd interests and pursuits and games which she shares with none of her fellows. I will tell you more about these in a few minutes, if I may. For, to me, they are keenly interesting and unusual.

Having doomed the blind puppy to live, I felt responsible for her future. I set to work trying to teach her to navigate the huge unseen world lying outside the wire meshes of the puppy-yard. I looked forward to a tediously long and hard task. It was absurdly easy.

I began by going on short walks with her, around the grounds, trying to familiarize her with the lay of the land. Just at first she bumped into countless obstacles before I could come between her and them. But I noticed--as earlier in the puppy-yard--that never did she collide with the same obstacle a second time. She had an uncanny memory for locations and for the spots where she had suffered collision. Also, she learned the topography of the grounds with startling swiftness.

Having traversed any route once, she remembered where were the trees and rocks and other things into which her furry head had banged on her first experience with them.

There are dogs—a few of them—that need to be told a thing only once, in order to remember it forever. Such a dog was our great old Sunnybank Lad. Such a dog was his dashing gold-red son, Wolf. Such a dog was my big auburn chum, Bobby. Such a dog, from another angle, is Sunnybank Fair Ellen. But it was experience, and not mere human precepts, which taught Ellen.

In a very few weeks, she had learned the layout of our forty acres of land--on what portions of it she might romp or gallop with no danger of collision, and where she must needs pick her way slowly and with infinite caution.

I remember the first day when she and I came to the foot of the lawn at the lake's edge. She sniffed the imperceptible (to me) odor of the water. Then, step by step she made her way down into it. The average collie does not care much for swimming. But Ellen did not hesitate as she moved farther and farther out along the gentle sloping bed of the lake.

Presently, she was swimming, and swimming calmly well; straight out. For perhaps two hundred feet swam; seeming to realize there was no obstruction anywhere in front of her. Then she hesitated, lifting her head high

Fair Ellen continued . . .

Presently, she was swimming, and swimming calmly well; straight out. For perhaps two hundred feet swam; seeming to realize there was no obstruction anywhere in front of her. Then she hesitated, lifting her head high and in evident confusion. I could guess why. In water, of course, there was no way of scenting her direction, nor of guessing whither she might be going. Thus by her overdeveloped sense of hearing she was trying learn her whereabouts.

I called her by name. At the sound, she wheeled about and swam back in an absolutely straight line toward me, unerringly conning her direction by that single quietly spoken word. As her exploring feet touched the gravel and she started to walk inshore, her toes came in contact with a somewhat sharp under-water rock. She swerved and walked around it.

Nor, from that day, has she touched this rock, in wading ashore or in launching herself for a swim. Again and again I have taken her down to the lake at that point. Always she moved to one side of the sharp rock.

Next, I took her--first alone and then with the rest of the dogs--on increasingly long tramps through the forests back of Sunnybank, and among the mountains. This was strange territory to Ellen, and I made it as easy as I could for her by picking trails instead of direct cross-country walks.

I slowed my pace, to enable her to keep up with me in the funny exploratory gait she had taught herself--a choppy wolf trot, the head a little to one side and with the forelegs thrown far forward so as to give warning of any obstacle. (At even the light touch of some weed, in her line of advance, she halts at once, to avert collision.) Soon she mastered and vastly enjoyed the art of making her way through woodland and up and down hill, at my heels, guided by scent and sound of my step.

When the other dogs went along, their scent and their multiple padding tread made it infinitely easier for her to keep the trail or to go through light undergrowth.

On one of these tramps I entered Sunnybank by way of a patch of oak woods whose ingress was a high gate. I unlocked and opened this gate, calling the twelve or fourteen collies through with me. They trooped into the woods land, and I shut and locked the gate behind us.

Two or three hours later, one of the men came to me at feeding-time, to tell me Fair Ellen was nowhere to be found. On a hunch, I went to the patch of woods and on to the gate of the fence which forms the northernmost boundary of Sunnybank--the gate I had locked behind the dogs and myself.

There, close against the gate, on its far side, stood Fair Ellen; head and tail adroop, the picture of patient misery.
Evidently she had stopped to investigate some sound or scent while we were tramping, and thus had fallen behind the pack. I had not noticed her absence from the bunch of collies which romped through the gateway with me: She had followed, easily enough, until she had reached the locked gate.

There, deserted and unable to proceed farther, she had come to a standstill. Instead of retracing her steps and thus crossing the furlong-distant highroad (and possibly coming to grief under a motor's careless or pitiless wheels) or otherwise trying to find her way out of the quandary, she had stood still for nearly three hours, unhappy, lonesome, but with sense enough to know it was the only safe or sane thing for her to do.

I opened the gate for her and she frisked up to me in half-delirious delight. At distant sound of my steps, the drooping misery had departed and she had stood vibrantly alert. To me there was something rather touching in the helpless little blind dog's long vigil there in the woods. I have taken care that such a thing should never happen again.

Of all the Sunnybank dogs, Fair Ellen is the only one not taught from

Fair Ellen continued . . .

Of all the Sunnybank dogs, Fair Ellen is the only one not taught from puppyhood to obey implicitly and on the jump. One cannot discipline a blind dog. At least, I can't. No, she has never been taught to obey nor to do anything else. It is enough for us, here, that she is happy. Thus, she has gone wholly uneducated by us.

In spite of that, she has educated herself, along her own queer lines and to a very marked degree. For one thing, she obeys by instinct, uninforced by human scoldings or punishment or insistence. These penalties she has not known and never shall know. She comes, immediately, at call. That is all I have asked of her, and I have not insisted on that.

But, by reason of her wonderful memory, she comes to me in a roundabout fashion and with seemingly unnecessary detours. There is reason for these detours. I have told you her avoidance of any object with which she has collided. A workman, perhaps, has left a wheelbarrow standing somewhere in the space between the house and the stables. Ellen has run up against it, to her pain and chagrin. (She is morbidly and increasingly sensitive about such collisions, and she moves her blind head from side to side, as though to find out if anyone is laughing at her mishap; which nobody has the remotest impulse to do.)

The next time she is trotting along that particular spot where the wheelbarrow was left, she detours widely, to miss it. Of course the wheelbarrow no longer is there. But she does not know it has been removed and she is taking no chances.

Suppose she is near the upper kennel yards and I call her to her own kennel down by the stables. She will set out in a curving approach, detouring where once she ran into a box of groceries left near the kitchen door, detouring again to avoid the aforesaid non-present wheelbarrow, and yet again, perhaps, as she passes alongside the wood pile where once a displaced fallen log cost her a bad bump.

A stranger, seeing her, would be at a loss to guess the cause of her erratic course. But--laugh at this, if you like--there are far fewer farm utensils, and the like, left carelessly out of place here by my men and myself than there used to be.

This because everyone at Sunnybank hates to see the blind dog smash against something in her path, and to note the ensuing cringe and that piteous sightless look to every side to learn if the accident has been seen and laughed at. Thus, there seldom is any out-of-place article left lying where she can collide with it.

When things are in their rightful place, she knows by experience how to steer clear of them. It is up to us humans to see none of these are left in her way. The result is an added neatness, or, rather, orderliness, out of consideration for Ellen. As I said, you may laugh at this sloppiness of ours, if you like. I admit it savors somewhat of sentimentality. But the grounds look the better for it. . . .

Guests at Sunnybank have noted an amusing trait among our collies, in their behavior to Ellen. They are given to rough romping with one another, but when Ellen romps with them there is a sharply noticeable change in their roughness. One and all, they show a marked gentleness toward her, not only in their play but at other times.

I can’t explain this. But it is true. I cannot vouch that they understand she is different from themselves and that she is not able to play as boisterously. But I can give no other reason for their instant change of attitude whenever she comes into any of their games. . . .

I have spoken of Ellen’s unerring sureness in following the direction of my voice when she swims. Never have I seen or known of any other animal with so marvelous a sense of direction.

For example, several of our pigeons will fly homeward to their cote, and their course will bri

Fair Ellen continued . . .

For example, several of our pigeons will fly homeward to their cote, and their course will bring them into earshot of Fair Ellen. Immediately, barking in excitement at the game, she gives chase. Sometimes for a hundred yards or more she can follow directly beneath them, changing her own course instantly when they wheel or their flight shifts. Always she remains precisely below them. The soft winnowing of their wings, often too faint for human ears to catch it, is her guide. . . .

Here she shall stay, at Sunnybank, until life no longer continues to amuse and interest her as keenly as it always has. . . .

She has been beautifully happy. And, in a way, she has been an example both to the humans and to the dogs at Sunnybank,; ridiculous as that may sound to you.

From "Fair Ellen of Sunnybank," The Book of Sunnybank, Harper and Brothers, 1934, Pp. 260 - 273

Sunnybank Fair Ellen is dead.

For twelve years she lived under a suspended death sentence; a sentence never put into effect.

She was a strange little golden collie; a dog that never saw a glimmer of light. She was born blind—as are all dogs—and she remained blind throughout more than a decade of such gay happiness falls the lot of few collies or humans.

I don’t know how many people came to Sunnybank, first and last to see our queer little blind dog—daughter of Treve—and to marvel at her jollity and at her uncanny cleverness. But the number ran high into the thousands. Many persons—myself among them—have written about her. (In my book, The Way of a Dog, I tell the tale of the first part of her life far more fully than I can tell it here.)

In her way she became something of a celebrity; though she did not know it. Any more than she knew she was blind. Yet she knew that she was happy and that everybody made much of her; and that the other collies were gentle with her, even in their roughest romps.

As when great old Sunnybank Gray Dawn died, five years ago, I forbade anyone at Sunnybank to speak of Ellen’s death; during such time as it still could come under the head of news. I didn’t want reporters sent out here to ask well-meant questions about our sightless chum.

Most of Ellen’s horde of friends will read now, for the first time, of her passing.

As the years crawled on, Ellen's jollity and utter joy in life did not abate. Gradually her muzzle began to whiten. Gradually the sharp teeth dulled from long contact with gnawed bones. Her daily gallops grew shorter. But ever the spirit of puppy fun flared forth as when she was young.

She would romp with me, wildly, as always she had done. The seemingly noiseless slipping of my fingers into the side pocket of my leather coat, where always lie a handful of animal crackers, would bring her rushing up to me from many feet away; in gay expectation of the treat.

One after the other, two of her brothers, Sunnybank Sigurdson and Sunnybank Explorer, won their championships in the show ring; and gained national fame among dog-fanciers.

Another brother of hers, Sunnybank Cavalier, won a series of sensational show victories. All this time Sunnybank Fair Ellen, most beautiful of the litter, stayed quietly at home.

One by one these renowned brothers of hers waxed old and died. But Ellen lived on.

On the afternoon of July First, 1933, Ellen and I went for one of our daily rambles—walks whose length was cut down nowadays by reason of her increasing age.

She was in dashing high spirits, and she danced all around me. We had a jolly hour, loafing about the lawns together. Then, comfortably tired, she trotted into her yard and lay down for her usual late afternoon nap.

Whe