Despite ending with Poodle’s epitaph in the last podcast. Grace, ease, lightness and middle earth – we continue with Poodle for a little longer.
Can you find your way?
Sometimes it’s an obstacle
Course I can do it
Middle earth, as we talked about in the last episode of this podcast, was Poodle’s domain. That is where we took him to pee. To feel the grass and leaves beneath is paws. Feel the sun and rain on his back. It is a long narrow area with grasses and azalea plants. Juniper tumbles down the retaining wall creating tunnels and hiding places for the chipmunks. Birds scatter leaf litter around looking for insect larvae and hidden caches of seeds.
It is in fact now a certified Wildlife Habitat. But it wasn’t in Poodle’s time because we had an indoor outdoor cat and outdoor cats are devastating for backyard birds and wildlife.
Fortunately our cat, whose name was Red – although he was grey – was not much of a hunter. But still, it is unwise to actively attract wildlife to your backyard if you have a cat that goes outside.
They are hunters by instinct. Red was a great cat. He died a year ago as cancer ravaged his beautiful face. We loved him and we miss him. Our backyard birds however – they do not miss him at all.
Poodle could navigate middle earth. Poodle learned to navigate our home too. Blind dogs become quite adept at doing that. When Gordon was growing up they had a labrador called Sue who went blind, but still took herself for a swim in the family swimming pool as she had done before she lost her sight. Quite coincidentally when I was growing up I also had a dog called Sue – she was not a lab, she was a small fluffy black and white terrier mix – but she also went blind. Funny how we both had blind dog experience when we were very young. Our boys can say the same thing now.
Poodle had the disadvantage of being blind on arrival in our home so had to learn and navigate the area completely in the dark.
We made a sanctuary for him. We put a large pen in our kitchen – probably a 6 foot by 6 foot area. We kept it covered in clean pee pads. We had his bed in there and water bowl.
This was his area when we were not at home and at night. It was also his preferred area to rest and eat.
Oh I have spoken in previous episodes of this podcast about how much work poodle was. The amount of pee and poop I have cleaned off the floor is considerable. He didn’t care. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t see it. So a lot of time he would walk in it. The amount of times I was bathing Poodle in the sink, washing his bedding at 1 am then sometimes again at 3 am before I went to work at 4 am – I can’t even begin to count.
Poodle was indeed a lot of work.
With a blind dog the objective is: Fewer obstacles, more flow.
Literally and metaphorically I might add.
An old, blind and deaf dog can create huge obstacles to a family dynamic, to its ease and enjoyment of day to day living. At least at the outset.
But, an old, blind and deaf dog itself has to navigate massive obstacles in its own life.
And after a while – It’s pretty amazing when you see how the mind’s obstacles seem to fall away with a commitment to helping an old, blind and deaf dog navigate the obstacle course – that is its own existence.
We learned quite a lot about having an old blind dog in our home. And we are vastly better people for it.
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