The Blind Doggie Cronicles: Part 1, Blind Doggie goes on a trip

A few weeks ago I discovered that my dog was blind. I debated leaving her in a kennel for my anual Thanksgiving pilgrimage to Williamsburg and Glouster VA, however decided that she'd rather stay with me, blind or not, and that she'd prob do fine. I'd decided that I'd keep her on her leash while were at the family gathering at Ditchley so she wouldn't wander off and get lost or otherwise get in touble.

My great Jessie (my dad's aunt) has a house on the Ware River near Glouster, VA - it's an old plantation house and there's lots of land. Every year at Thanksgiving the entire extended family gathers there for a potluck Thanksgiving dinner. We have anywhere from 10-50 people - this year I think we had 30 or so. It's just a dinner event - we all show up, eat ourseleves silly, and leave. Dogs are an integral part of the event - sometimes out numbering the humans! One year my great uncle George commented that he knew more dogs than people!

So anyway, Daisy and I left Woodbridge around 8:15 am on Thursday and zipped right down to Williamsburg, arriving by 10:30 am. Daisy Mae did just fine on the trip down and when we arrived at my parents house, she explored and sniffed, and checked the floor for any dropped food, finding none, she curled up and went to sleep.

When it was time to head to Ditchley, she let me pick her up and put her in the car and she did great on the trip out. When we got there, I decided to tie her to the tv table so hopefully she'd be out of the way and not get into trouble. We'll she didn't like that much and insited on pulling the leash as far as she could and was in everyone's way. Since it was so lovely outside (it was 75+ degrees) we all ate outside so I took her outside and tied her to my chair. This worked, except that I couldn't get up!

Late in the afternoon I decided to take a walk out the pier - I hadn't been out on the pier since before Hurrican Isabel destroyed part of it 5 years ago! It was sunset and the sky was really pretty. Daisy and I were strolling down the pier, I was taking pictures of the sunset, when all the sudden I felt a tug on the leash, then felt the leash slide out of my hand. I looked behind me and Daisy was gone! I looked down and there she was in the water! If you know my dog you know that's NOT a swimmer. She won't even go out in the rain! The good news is that she did know how to swim. The bad news, she started swimming the wrong direction! She was swimming AWAY from the shore and out into deeper water! Oh no! My dad and I were thinking we were going to need to go in after her. I was about to, but I knew I didn't have any extra clothes so was thinking I'd have to skinny dip. Not exactly the thing to do at the family thanksgiving gathering. Luckily when I started calling out to Daisy she turned around and swam toward my voice and she was able to follow my voice all the way to the shore! Pretty amazing!


When I got her out of the water we walked back to the house, I dried her off and put her in the car - she was safer there!

The rest of the trip went well. Daisy did a great job of learning a new enviornment! Took a lot of trust on her part since she really had to rely on me to guide her and trust that I wasn't going to let her get hurt. The biggest challenge at my parents house are the steps going up stairs. They are hardwood with a runner up the middle. If her feet aren't on the runner she slides all over. She uses the wall to guide her down the stairs at home, however at mom and dad's she can't get to the wall because there is no carpeting there. Going up she does ok, going down is a big challenge.

We got home a few hours ago and she's been sleeping it all off! I can tell she's much happier being home where she knows where everything is!