That Day In Pictures - Scotty

Scotty when we brought him home at 10 weeks old

In March of 2008, I had two kids in college and one left at home, a 14 year old son.  His siblings were 18 months apart in age and he followed them by almost 5 years.  He was the baby, the one who had no one to play with at home growing up.  At that time, I was a divorced parent working a lot of hours to support all of us and my son missed his siblings and the yellow house felt big and empty with just the two of us.  My son one day asked me earnestly if we could get a dog so he would "have someone".  At first I was adamant that a quiet house was the worst reason to take on a dog.  We had never had a dog and personally, I had never wanted one nor felt any particular fondness for dogs.  So I said no.  He persisted, and one day I was reading the local paper looking in the classifieds for what, I can't remember and my eyes went to animals for sale.  I noticed miniature schnauzers for sale at a pretty reasonable price so I googled the breed and read that they don't shed, are extremely sociable and intelligent and easy to train. And they are small (which to me meant small droppings - I can't stomach dog droppings in yards and I am always in the yard and don't want to think about where I step).  So I told Dane about it and made an appointment to "just go look" at the puppies at the breeder's in a nearby town.  But I was thinking that perhaps I needed to "have someone" too since I had refrained from dating while raising my kids.  Perhaps this little being around the house wouldn't be a bad idea.  Well, we saw and held the puppies, one stood out, and we were smitten, sold.

Dane and Scotty

His Amy Winehouse eyelashes

Now I don't want to go on and on about our dog but I will and you dog lovers will understand - dogs are the greatest creature on the planet!  If I could only love as purely and unconditionally and forgive as readily and be as humble as a dog!  

So my college age children came home for the summer two months after we got Scotty (who by the way is named after a Love Bird we lost who was named after one of their childhood friends back in Nevada whose blood was spilled at our house when he fell off of a third story bunk bed onto some legos and survived - we felt we owed him this).  My other son Heath, the middle child, told me he would tolerate the dog but apologetically stated he could never really love him.  Guess who would take a bullet for Scotty now?  My daughter loved him immediately.  He became our collective child, our toy; we videoed him, took pictures of him, and doted on him.

When Scotty was 2 1/2 years old, I took him in for his yearly tune up.  As the vet was checking his eyes, he stopped and exclaimed "this dog is stone blind!"  I said "no way", he had jumped in the truck for the ride to this appointment.  He checked again for my sake and verified that Scotty had cataracts, something that schnauzers are prone to inherit congenitally (something I had read after we got him and dismissed it as something that wasn't likely to happen to our dog).  Well, I felt like he had told me one of my own children was blind.  I sobbed, ugly crying right there in the doctors office.  I cried all the way home.  I cried for at least two weeks for a big part of every day.  And five years later, I can still get really choked up when I look at him and think of how stalwartly he lives with his handicap (and I'm tearing up right now just reliving it).  The thing was, when the doctor told me he was blind, I thought he was also giving me his death sentence, that I would have to put him down.  I took him to an canine ophthalmologist a couple days later for a second opinion.  She said I had two options; cataracts surgery for $5000 (yes, for 5 seconds I thought about charging that to a credit card or wiping out my savings) or letting him live blindly as he probably had been for the last 6 months and she promised he would be happy and deal with his blindness better than I could imagine and amaze us with his abilities.  Dogs have the ability to cognitively map out their surroundings she told me; that's why we didn't even know he had lost his sight.  Most people who watch him would never know he was blind.  

The interesting thing that has come out of living with a blind dog for these past years is that I now think all dogs are blind and I have to remind myself that they can see and they are the different ones.  I can't quite explain what I mean there but my children understand.  Scotty is our blind toddler forever and the constant source of our conversation and adoration and photo exchanges. My husband very kindly tolerates this.  It's not too hard for him to do because Scotty doesn't live with me anymore.  When I married 2 1/2 years ago, we moved to California briefly and would be traveling constantly.  Fortunately, my daughter was able to take him with her to South Carolina where she had just moved after graduating from college.  I sobbed the day he left me.  When my second son relocated back to New Hampshire along with his wife for law school last year, she was able to send Scotty to them to live as she would be moving to Texas soon after.  I imagine that someday he might have a season living with my youngest, the lonely boy who "needed someone".  Nowadays I go to the barn apartment at the Yellow House weekly to visit Scotty and when my son and his wife have to go out of town, he gets to come and stay with us like a grandchild coming to visit.  

I probably lost most of you after the first paragraph but I hope, really hope, that dogs go to heaven too because I want this pup to be a part of our eternal family - that's how much we love him.  

My middle son sent me this picture one day and said "oh, we're just putting some things in boxes to take to the Salvation Army".  Doesn't he look at you like he sees you?  Okay, I'm done now.