Father of a Blind Dog: Learning to Care for a Recently Blind Dog

Since I am now the father of a blind, 8-year old, Australian Cattle Dog/Dingo mix, I decided to do a little research on how to cope with having a blind dog. Actually, cope doesn't seem like the right word. It seems too... Pitiful. I'm not coping with Blue's blindness; I am merely learning a new way to train an already well-trained dog.

The first thing I've realized, which should actually be common sense, is that having a blind dog is just like living with a blind person. You can't keep moving the furniture around or it's going to be frustrating for her to move normally.

Teaching her commands such as STAIR or CURB has helped her to understand what is coming ahead of them, and avoid unnecessary falling or tripping, though she is still getting used to these commands I do still have to be cautious around stairs and outside, but this will make things a little easier around these obstacles. I'm noticing she got scared around stairs at first, so I found slowly coaxing Blue down with a treat and a gentle tone to my voice helped her.

Vocalizing or just general noise making is probably one of the most important things I've learned I have to do with Blue. She still loves to play fetch with her ball in the house, I just can't throw it as far and I make sure it hits hard floor so she can hear the thud it makes. If I want her to follow me, I call her name and pat my leg. When I feed her, I shake the bowl, so she understands where it is and what's going on. You get the general idea, I'm sure.

And whatever I do, I do not coddle or baby Blue. Everything I have seen or read has claimed that. With Blue, I obviously treated her like she has some terrible disease at first, making sure she didn't have to move if she didn't want to. I would've gone to the bathroom for her, if I could've. While I was doing all this, I noticed she was doing less and less on her own, and not even trying to do anything she could easily do. So now that I'm not babying her and trying to train her a little more, she's able to stand on her own paws and be independent. Which works, since that's all they wanna be anyways.