New to AIHA, dog in trouble – Page 15 – Second Chance AIHA Dogs

Rick

Guest

“padding”
When Brandy went blind at age 5 it was devastating. She was already a handful but now she would require even more special attention, especially around obstacles and stairs.
Jennifer sprang to action and spent considerable effort to make our house “blind-friendly”. This involved installing baby gates on all the stairwells, adding padding to every corner of every wall, removing all sharp edged furniture (coffee and end tables) and replacing them with soft leather versions. I think we kept the manufacturers of closed cell foam in business with all our “upgrades”.
She even took our morning walks into consideration. We normally took the dogs to a soccer field at a primary school near our house in the mornings. This gave Brandy room to run and us enough space to catch her if she decided to make a run for it. Other dogs would occasionally show up as well and Ripley loved them. After Brandy went blind the field was an ideal place with no large holes, stumps or other obstacles for Brandy to run into.
She no longer would chase the ball, but we were able to mentally and physically exercise her by scattering bits of dog treats all over the field. Brandy would hunt the treats tenaciously, and she was usually a slobbery mess by the end of our walk.
We also found another change in behavior. When the dogs were younger we tried doing some tracking – hiding an item and coaching the dogs to find them (individually). Ripley was fantastic at it and would always find the item. Brandy would lose interest and almost never found the item.
The behavioral change was that Brandy’s snoot became supercharged, likely because her brain was no longer distracted with visual stimulation. She would find all the treats and Ripley would get none. Of course Ripley was not happy about this, and he came up with a new scheme. Brandy would be sniffing along the ground for treats. Ripley would follow behind her. When Brandy got close to a treat she would triangulate on the scent – purposely moving to the left and right to find out where the scent was strongest. As soon as Ripley saw her do this he would jump in front of her, find the treat using sight and scoop it up before Brandy could reach it. On paper it sounds like dreadfully unfair behavior, but in reality Brandy still managed to get at least 3/4 of the treats we would plant. This was just an opportunity for Ripley to get a few. It was funny to watch, though.

The soccer goal posts proved to still present a problem. Brandy had a particular knack for veering whenever you took your eye off her. She could cover the ground from the middle of the field to running into the goal posts in the blink of an eye. Having a high energy blind dog meant that we had a lot of work to assist. One morning Jennifer decided to bring the closed cell foam and some duct tape to the field and we proceeded to tape up the first 3 feet of the goalposts, just to soften the blow a little bit. We did this in 2007 and I noticed that the remnants of the foam are still on those goal posts. It makes me smile.

Our family vacation has always included the dogs. Typically we rent a cabin on a lake in the woods, spend a week in May/June and a week in September going fishing, hiking, photographing, etc. The cabin has no phone, TV, internet, and no cell phone coverage so it makes for a very relaxing week.
We of course had to bring our baby gates, closed cell foam and duct tape to the cabin. The cabin has a loft with a very steep staircase (almost a ladder) so we brought the baby gates to prevent Brandy from having an accident. We piled all the furniture on the main floor into the spare bedroom and added foam to all sharp edges. These included a rock fireplace with elevated mantle, wall corners, and edges of kitchen cupboards. It took a lot of effort to Brandy-proof the cabin, but it all seemed to work okay.
One day we went out fishing and left the dogs in the cabin. We returned and opened the door to find Ripley on the couch and Brandy nowhere to be found. Suddenly Brandy comes bounding down the staircase. We had forgotten to put up the baby gate when we left.

It turned out that Brandy never needed any of the padding or protection. She mastered stairs that day so we removed the baby gates from the house. She never stumbled.
She would still occasionally run into walls but never had a problem with edges, and she had a great memory for where obstacles were located. Every time we went to the cabin she would adapt to a new layout in a few minutes.

Turns out the padding was for us, not her.

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