We had a little blind puppy arrive at the end of last week from the animal control shelter in Elko, Nevada. She was born with no eyes in her head. A young man found her by the side of the road and, thinking someone had injured her, took her to a vet clinic. After the vet found the puppy was blind from birth, not from abuse of some sort, the young man then took her to the shelter.
The shelter staff fell in love with this adorable little girl, but couldn’t find anyone willing to adopt her. A wonderful lady in California, Dara O., volunteers long-distance for this animal control shelter, trying to find options for animals who are at risk of euthanasia. Dara contacted us last Monday about the puppy. In her email she wrote:
I have contacted several other rescue organizations and unfortunately none of them were able to help her and her time is running out.
I called Dara to say we could take the little girl. Now, normally when we agree to take an animal from an out-of-state shelter, we have to arrange the travel. Not this time. Dara handled the entire enterprise, made the reservations, paid for the airfare, and got everything squared away. All I had to do was say "yes," and that was it. (I could get used to this!) On Thursday, the shelter staff took the puppy to the tiny airport in Elko to catch a puddle-jumper flight to Salt Lake City, and from there she caught the connecting flight to Missoula. Alayne picked her up at the airport at 4:30 that afternoon.
Back at the ranch late Thursday, we let this blind puppy out of her crate … and immediately all she wanted to do was romp and play with me. She kept jumping up on me, running little circles around my feet, then whirl around and roll over, get up, and do it all over again.
A few minutes later it dawned on me what we were going to name her: Nevada!
On Friday, Karen from the Elko shelter emailed us to say:
She left a big hole in our hearts – she is a special one. We are so grateful that you were able to accept her into your wonderful sanctuary. I know that Dara asked, but we will always love to hear about her if you can.
So, thanks to a young man who picked up the puppy and got her to safety, a shelter staff who cared about her, and a volunteer who made it all come together, baby Nevada got another chance to enjoy life.
She does have some discharge from her eyes, and she has a bit of
a runny nose, so we have her on antibiotics. We’ll be taking her to our vet clinic in Helena next
week for exploratory surgery on her eyes and a medical exam.
Alayne and I got some video of Nevada yesterday evening. In the first clip you’ll see a close-up of her … you can see she’s listening to the sounds, mostly birds, and then when she hears my voice, she zooms right towards me. In the second clip you’ll see her playing with me.
(Towards the end of that clip the phone on my belt starts ringing, and I answered it after Alayne turned off the video camera. We don’t have cell service out here, but we do have "industrial-strength" cordless phones that can cover up to 3,000 acres, so we can take a call wherever we are on the ranch.)
With that introduction, here’s Nevada:
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