Sarah Ause / saussie.com »

Here’s an audio slideshow and article I did for the most recent issue of the magazine. Check it out!

Point of View

blind animals see a world of possibilities

“They don’t feel sorry for themselves. They don’t want you to feel sorry for them. They just want a chance to get on with life and enjoy themselves,” says Steve Smith, who along with his wife, Alayne Marker, started Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary in the mountains of western Montana. With disabilities ranging from cerebellar hypoplasia to spinal problems, paralysis and blindness, the animals living there have no shortage of obstacles to overcome.

But perhaps the biggest obstacle is people. “If there’s really any handicap any of them face, it’s more or less what people project onto that animal as to what they think it must mean to have that particular disability,” says Marker. “But they just want to love, be loved and get on with life, whether they’re a dog, a cat or a horse.”

And sure enough, Patti, a shepherd mix, doesn’t seem to care that she lost her vision to abuse. She adores people. And Cedar, a yellow Lab/husky mix blind from progressive retinal atrophy, doesn’t seem to mind that he’s now going deaf now too, from old age. He’ll just as readily come up to sniff your face and give you a little lick. In the cat house, an orange tabby named Herbie jumps from perch to perch, down to the water bowl and back outside through the kitty door. He’s missing both his eyes, one removed because of painful glaucoma, the other because it had shrunk and receded into his head. He makes his way to Cinder, a black cat who looks and acts as though she can see just fine. She rolls in the grass, and you’d never know her beautiful green eyes can’t see a thing.

The reasons for their blindness are as varied as their personalities, but they have all been fortunate to end up here. Around 40 blind animals now call this place home. Most lost their vision to diseases: glaucoma, diabetes, Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Others were born blind or became so at the hands of humans. Whatever the reason, the animals don’t dwell on it. While it takes them a little while to adjust to life without sight, Smith says most animals don’t have an ongoing problem with being blind. They adapt and learn to see with their other senses.

Smith cautions that blindness is not an end stage. “Once the eye is blind, people assume nothing more is going to happen. But blindness is often a point along a spectrum, and just because the eye is blind, that doesn’t mean the process has stopped,” he explains. Blindness is often a side effect of a medical condition that, left untreated, can be very painful to an animal, and could even become life-threatening. Often, animals need to have their eyes removed. “People have a hard time accepting it, but they’re so much better without them,” Smith says. “If they’re already blind and they hurt, take them out…. The only thing the animal is going to notice is that the pain is gone.”

Whenever possible, surgery is performed to restore eyesight, but so far, only two animals at the sanctuary have been candidates for the operation. Both had their vision successfully restored and were adopted into loving homes.

Nine years ago, when Smith and Marker left their high-powered corporate jobs in Seattle to move to the ranch, they envisioned a sanctuary where three-legged cats and wobbly dogs could live their lives in peace. Then, the first animal arrived: a blind horse.

Lena, a registered quarter horse, lost her vision from abuse at the hands of a trainer who, by tying the reins tightly behind her neck, was trying to teach her not to rear up. Repeated blows to the head, from falling over backward, severed Lena’s optic nerve. But today, Smith and Marker describe her as “remarkably calm and centered for an animal with no eyesight.” And everything they learned about blind horses, they say, they learned from her.

Since Lena, who still calls the ranch home, 25 blind horses have come through Rolling Dog’s gates. Most of them, though, became blind from disease. The most common are glaucoma and uveitis (swelling and irritation of the uvea, the middle layer of the eye), both of which are incredibly painful and account for about 70 percent of the blind horses that Rolling Dog has cared for over the years. Uveitis is especially prevalent in appaloosas.

Most blind horses are unfortunately euthanized or sold for slaughter because people, including many veterinarians, don’t think the afflicted horses can be of any use or have good quality of life. But Smith and Marker have debunked all the myths about blind horses in their years of working with them. They’ve proven that blind horses can go out to pasture and they can be trained to be ridden. A blind horse can’t live exactly like a sighted horse, of course, but with a few adjustments, almost anything is possible.

With around 60 animals now calling the sanctuary home, Smith and Marker don’t want the population to get much higher. “We want the animals here to feel like they’re in a home, not an institution,” says Marker. “We want to know every animal individually and treat them like pets, and we want them to feel that they’re in a family.”

As the warmth of the afternoon sun beats down on the yard, family members Austin and Charlie are playing tug with a stick, Spinner is sticking her nose in the air trying to decipher the smells around her, and Moose is drooling during an afternoon nap. It’s the life of a dog, and blindness doesn’t change that.