Rolling Dog Farm Blog

This is blind Billy sleeping in his favorite place — the top of the stairs. If it's not this set of stairs leading up to our offices on the second floor of the people wing, it's the stairs going to the room above the dog wing. He started doing this almost from the day he first arrived. 

A lot of people will naturally fret and wring their hands over the idea of blind dogs navigating stairs, but the truth is, blind dogs can do fine with stairs. It all depends on their self-confidence and their zest to explore. I was working in my office one evening just a day or two after Billy arrived, and suddenly I heard him sniffing his way along the floor under my desk. I had left the gate at the top of the stairs open, and he had decided to see where the stairs led … and kept on going once he got to the top. He's been sleeping on the steps ever since.

Owen, the blind Beagle just adopted by Marcia S., was a big stair guy, too. He'd come and go from the room above the dog wing, up and down the carpeted stairs throughout the day, often to steal toys we stashed up there. In fact, as I told Marcia, Owen could come down those stairs faster than I could walk down them. No, really. He had an amazing ability to "glide" down them, front feet far out, feeling for each step below. He had his body balanced over two steps at any one time — rear feet on the step above and his front feet on the next step below, and he traversed them like this all in one fluid motion. It was really quite something. 

Most of our blind dogs won't try to navigate steps, so each has his or her own comfort level. 

For Owen, stairs were for climbing. For Billy, stairs are for sleeping. There's just something about being up high he really likes.

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