I had a call several weeks ago from an elderly lady in California who had heard we had blind-and-deaf dogs. She wanted to let me know, in no uncertain terms, that she thought it was cruel and inhumane to keep them alive. That’s how the call began. Now, this wasn’t an animal-phobic person … she had an old dog she treasured, and she donated lots of money to spay and neuter programs … and she could even understand how a blind dog could "get around" okay. But a blind AND deaf dog? She couldn’t fathom how that animal wouldn’t be a fearful, cringing wreck.
As you can imagine, my first impulse was to hang up on the cranky old lady. But when I asked her if she’d seen our Web site, she said she didn’t use a computer and had no access to the Internet. Then I realized she was living in a vacuum and simply didn’t know what she was talking about. So I told her about Spinner and the sheer joy Spinner takes in life … how she bounces out of the cottage every morning, nose straight up, spinning around, taking in the smells of the day. Baron, the little blind-and-deaf guy from Oregon, had just arrived, so I told her about him, too. By the end of the 45-minute conversation, she apologized for her initial brusque behavior on the phone and the views she expressed. She said, "I just didn’t see how it would be possible for them to be anything but scared about the world, and I was mad at you for forcing them to live like that. I’m sorry."
I followed up by sending her our newsletter and a note, which brings me to the video below. I shot this the other day in my office. Blind Widget and blind-and-deaf Baron suddenly started roughhousing together on the dog bed behind my chair, so I grabbed the video camera sitting on my desk, whirled around, and started taping. It’s 2 minutes, and the last half of that is Widget shifting tactics to a more vocal approach before she concludes with a victory serenade.
You can be sure I’ll be making a DVD of this video to send to our new friend in California.
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 
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