Now the Dog is Home Educated Too! · Saturday February 23, 2008 by Abbie
Our dog Arrow is now 14 and a half, and has lost an eye to glaucoma, the other one has a cataract, and she is very deaf. She finds it difficult to know where we are, and if she falls asleep with us close by, but then wakes up and we are not there, she sort of panics and barks for us.
I think she has the same sensory problems as Ram, only his are too sensitive and hers have lost their sensitivity!
We decided that when we went out we would wake her up and let her see us leaving so that she would know we had gone and she could go upstairs and curl up on our bed. So as we prepared to leave for the home ed meeting, I woke her up, said goodbye, and walked to the door.
Unfortunately she had the same idea! She raced us to the door and wouldn’t stay back. We couldn’t pull her inside because her neck is arthritic and we didn’t want to hurt her, so in the end we decided to take her!
I don’t know what she thought when we got to an empty car park. We were first to arrive so we let her wander around and sniff the ‘doggy newspaper.’ When the next family arrived we got out the hockey set (thanks to Tesco school vouchers!) and she settled down to watch. The next family that arrived hadn’t met her before and were intrigued by her lack of eye, failing sight and deafness. It was fascinating to watch the children explore this, and have them run up to me and report how much she responded to them. She is very patient and didn’t seem to mind the kids interacting, or trying to interact with her. It was a great learning experience for them.
As it wasn’t the best of days weather wise, we went inside. The boys were a bit noisy and running around, so Arrow was a bit nervous and decided to lay down behind the legs of the parents! It made me think of Ram when he first came to the home ed meetings and how he used to just want to me near me.
We are working on an animation of an episode of Red Dwarf, using Lego models, so the kids settled down to watch the episode again, while the adults edited the script and made a list of props needed. I was also able to show one of the girls how to do ‘fill the gap’ disk weaving. I had no idea that she was into Japanese things and most modern disk weaving is done in Japan (called Kumihimo) so it was really exciting to be able to show a willing learner how to do it!
All this time Arrow was quietly sleeping by the kitchen door. What it is with dogs and food!
She did finally get restless and wanted to go home about at the same time that Ram had had enough. Will we take her again? I don’t know, but having a sensory impaired dog with me reminded me of how difficult it was for Ram when we first came, and also how difficult it would be for other sensory impaired people to come to a meeting with lots of noisy boys!
