Rolling Dog Farm Blog

This blind and deaf girl came to us on the same day that Kodiak did, and although we mentioned her briefly in a post that day, you haven’t seen her since.  Well, she’s doing just great.  We named her Spinner because she spins around rapidly in tight circles, head straight up in the air, her nose working furiously to gather ‘data’ from the air. 

We noticed her doing this on her very first evening.  At the time we thought maybe she was just getting used to her new environment.  It turns out that this is really her way of figuring out what is going on around her. 

And in the mornings, when we carry her (yes, she prefers to be carried … she slinks on the ground if we take her by a collar or put a leash on her) out of the cottage and set her on the ground, she spins in even faster circles, nose up, but also barking like crazy … as if to let the world know she’s come out.  She is so cute and so sweet.

The sclera — the tissue commonly referred to as "the white of the eye" — has covered the entire surface of the eye.  There is no iris, pupil, or anything else there.  Just this white tissue.  Yet we’ve discovered that it seems she can detect light.  Soon after she arrived, we were looking for her one night to put her up in the cottage and went out with a flashlight.  Once the flashlight beam hit her face, she suddenly whipped her head around, right in the direction of the light.  She’s deaf so we know she didn’t hear us coming.  We tested again with the flashlight with the same response.  We’ve taken photos of her with a flash and she seems to react to the flash, too. 

We’re taking her to the vets next week for some exploratory surgery.  It’s too soon to know what, if anything, we might be able to do for her eyes — what she has is an extremely rare condition — but the fact that we think she can see light, even under such thick tissue, makes the possibilities very intriguing.

(Click on photos for larger image.)