White Cane Week & Blind Dogs

The Week of February 6-11, 2006 is "White Cane Week" - a week set aside to increase awareness about the fact that vision impaired people aren't any different than sighted people - they just have different adjustments that they have to make in their daily lives.

Not too many people know that I'm the web master for the web site http://www.blinddogs.com - the national web site for blind dog rescue - a web site where any vision impaired dog can be posted to increase his visibility so he might be adopted more quickly. It's affiliated with a couple Yahoo groups - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blinddogs-rescue/ - which provides a forum for all those involved in the rescue or transport of blind or visually-impaired dogs, and also the Yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blinddogs/ - which you join after you get your blind companion animal. That group has over 2,000 members, so I think that it's a pretty popular group!

What I'm saying is that just as there's nothing wrong with humans having vision problems - there's nothing wrong with our companion animals having vision problems - it just means having to make some simple adjustments to their lives, and to our lives.

The only difference it makes in the dogs' lives it that it kills most of the blind dogs who come into rescue because it pretty much makes them unadoptable - that's why having a really good support system like blinddogs.com is so important for dogs like these - otherwise pretty much 100% of them would be dead. And it would be so unnecessary.



This dog Bubba has been at the shelter in Marietta Ohio (removed link to his Petfinder ad April 4, 2006 - see below for why) since last July. He'd be such a great dog, but since he's blind, there he sits. Who knows how much longer the shelter staff are going to be able to bear watching him everyday in his cage.

When you're thinking about adding your next canine life companion to your crew - think about adding one of these super hard to place - and extremely easy to please soul mates to your house. I'm quite sure you won't be disappointed.

Update April 4, 2006 - March 28, 2006 Bubba's time was up and he still wasn't adopted - a last plea email went out to all the rescue lists for him to be cross-posted, but no one could help him. He'd been in the shelter since last July 2005 and even though the shelter manager was in love with him - no one would adopt him - and he was killed on March 28, 2006.

Category: [Rescue]