Belle and Her Furever Home

I'm Tom Farin and the proud new papa of a wonderful Labradoodle named Belle who is already a bit of a celebrity at this site. Yes, were talking about the doodle formerly called IL-Belle at the DRC web site.

She's a celebrity because a lot of people were rooting for this blind doodle cutie to be adopted. She is everything she was described in the listing and more. She loves people. In fact when we meet an owner/dog pair at the dog park or on our walks, she greets the owner before she greets the dog. Almost everyone that meets her walks away without a clue that they just encountered a dog who cannot see. She has adapted that well.

I don't considerate her to be a handicapped dog and I don't feel sorry for her. That is just fine with her. She has one or two shortcomings relative to other dogs. But she makes it up with heart. Other than sight and because she can't see, her walk is a bit tentative. As a result, the muscles in her front legs are a bit underdeveloped. So for the last six days she has gone on a 1 1/2 hour aerobic walk. She was tuckered out after the first two or three walks, but now she still has energy when we get done.

She's smart. She's already mastered two new commands, "step up" and "step down." To be perfectly honest, I was expecting adopting a blind dog to be challenging, even though our recently departed 13 year old chocolate lab, Coco was nearly blind at the end. But Belle is making it easy. She's already mind mapped the downstairs of the house. As I indicated she is going up and down steps and climbing in and out of the car easily. I figured it would take her longer than normal to adapt to her new home due to the fact she would have all the typical issues faced by a re-homed dog, plus the fact she couldn't see her new environment. Maybe because this is the fifth new environment this doodle has had to adapt to in about 8 months, she has gotten to be pretty flexible. But she's doing beautifully in less than a week.

We feel very lucky to have found her and grateful we were selected to adopt her.

Tom

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