Dogs will do anything to please their masters. Check out this story:
MOVILLE, Iowa -- Deep in the tall, wild grasses, Deuce bounds along, hot on the scent of an unseen pheasant.
The sea of grass parts in the late afternoon sunshine as the yellow Labrador, nose to the ground, searches for game.
"Is there a bird in here, Deuce?" his owner, Pat Phipps, calls out.
Excited by the encouragement, Deuce quickens his pace. The rustling through the brush gets louder. The trail of Deuce's hunt winds through the grass and abruptly stops as he crashes headfirst into a small tree he never saw. He changes directions and follows Phipps' voice into a clearing.
"Good work, Deuce boy. You're working hard today," Phipps says, bending over, patting his dog's heaving side.
Panting happily, his big pink tongue swinging from his open mouth, Deuce stares off into the distance. A pale green reflection dims his eyes, revealing the reason for the mishap with the tree.
Deuce is blind.
But once he's seeking scents along the rolling hills of Phipps' hunting spot, Deuce's nose takes over for his eyes. He's doing what he was born to do.
"I think he probably does take more abrasions on his face because he can't see stuff," Phipps said. "But you can't not take him (hunting)."
Phipps probably couldn't get away with it if he tried.
Walking toward the kennel in the back yard of his Moville home, Phipps yells to Deuce and Axle, his other yellow Lab, "How we doin'? You ready to go out and get some birds?"
Deuce and Axle spring to their feet, ears at attention, bodies wiggling eagerly, tails flapping furiously from side to side. With a couple yelps, they dash out the kennel door and race around the yard. Nearly tripping Phipps several times, they accompany him to his Suburban in the driveway. Deuce bumps into the rear fender, then follows Axle to the open back door and jumps inside.
Phipps isn't sure why his 9-year-old dog lost his sight. He suspects it had something to do with the mouse poison Deuce got into as a puppy. After a close call with death, Deuce fully recovered and became an accomplished hunting dog.
But about two years ago, Phipps noticed Deuce was bumping into things in the yard with increasing frequency. It was obvious the dog was losing his sight. Phipps thinks Deuce might be able to see a little, but guesses he's almost 100 percent blind.
But Deuce hasn't lost any of the instincts he perfected when he had his eyesight.
"He's probably a better hunter now than when he could see. He uses his nose now," said Jay Phipps, Pat's son.
It's a nose that works extremely well. On a recent hunt, Pat Phipps and six other hunters hadn't fired a single shot before Deuce came back from the tall grass, a rooster pheasant in his mouth.
"My nephew was with us and he began laughing. He said there were seven guys who could see out here and the first pheasant is caught by the blind dog," Phipps said, laughing.
Because of Deuce's condition, Phipps has adjusted his hunting patterns. He keeps Deuce in the middle of the field, away from ditches and ravines that he could fall into. They avoid fences and groves of trees. Other than that, stay out of the way. Nothing gets between Deuce and a scent.
"He'll take you out, he gets going," Phipps said.
On this day, Deuce's nose leads him to several hen pheasants, but no roosters. Phipps and his son walk back to the Suburban with only one rooster that Axle flushed out. A tired Deuce trots next to Phipps and leaps into the back of the vehicle for the ride home.
He'll be asleep before they get back to town, Jay Phipps says.
No doubt seeing pheasants in his dreams.
Nick Hytrek can be reached at 712-293-4226 or nickhytrek@siouxcityjournal.com.
I love that story! God loves all dogs. And as we all know, "God" spelled backwards, is "dog". ;)
When our elderly black lab was losing her sight, and then lost her hearing, she still came to us when we used hand signals and eventually she just "sensed" our presence and came to us, tail wagging as if she had spotted us a mile away and I swear she could even sense the smiles on our faces, and the "good girl" words we spoke. God bless Niki's soul.
Nice story. My old dog, Ruff, who died last year, was getting very deaf (he could just barely hear you if you shouted as loud as you could in a small room) and slowly going blind, as well. I don't know what I would have done with him if he'd gone completely blind. I've heard of people raising deaf-blind dogs from when they're young, but I imagine it would be very hard on an old dog to get used to. As it was you could startle him really badly by sneaking up on him - apparently dogs' alertness when sleeping is triggered by sound, which he could no longer hear.