Don't Lose Your Blind Dog

Every Christmas season, my parents share 5 pictures and stories. Recently we've been crowdsourcing these. The topic this year is stories of your pets.

When I met Ginnie; she was the proud owner of an incredibly soft bundle of canine determination. Brandie was a cocker spaniel, a proud and potentially inbred breed, prone to blindness. Brandie was a ragamuffin of black curls, who loved Ginnie, but firstly and most importantly, she loved to eat.

From a young age, Brandie had lost her sight. This didn't slow her much. Her keen nose could find food, and on a walk, we more than once had to liberate some dead and rotting bird from her jaws. She'd vacuum them up then get suspiciously concerned with getting home as quickly as possible.

Just a few weeks after meeting, we headed up to Iowa to meet Ginnie's parents. On the way, we stopped by Kirksville, to visit Ginnie's alma mater and hang out with some of her best friends. We grabbed a lunch, leaving Brandie in their gated backyard. We returned from lunch to find an empty backyard and an open gate. In this pre-internet age, the local radio station was the "lost and found" for pets, and as is the way in a small town, Brandie was back in our arms with an hour, our trip to Iowa back on track.

After we bought our first home in Lafayette, Indiana, she escaped from our own fenced in backyard. I got a phone call from someone asking if we had lost our dog. I assured them we hadn't because I had checked on her in the backyard recently.

"I think you did lose her. She's blind, right?"

Out the front door I ran to find our neighbor leading her back to us.

The worst time was when we took her camping with us. We left her enclosed in the tent while we went for a hike. Again, not sure how, but she magicked herself out the door and took off into the woods. Her guardian angels, in the form of the family camping next to us, noticed her snuffling around and returned her to the tent. The thought of that one still makes our heart clench.