Idiot - Laura Clery Page 0,82
named him Oliver.
We headed to his foster mom’s house to go pick him up, and Oliver was itching his goo-skin like crazy. His foster mom was so friendly and clearly drunk, so when I asked her why he was itching so much, she said, “Oh, he’s just crazy.”
I looked down at Oliver, who was facing a wall again. “Can he see?”
She took another sip from her “coffee” mug. “Completely. That one eye really does the job. He’s just crazy!”
We brought him home and put him in the living room, but he kept bumping into stuff. I looked at Stephen, worried. “I feel . . . like that eye doesn’t work.”
We took him to the vet to get his eyes checked out and learned that he was 100% blind. Also he’s allergic to everything. Okay, that makes sense! We found out that in his last home, the owners kept him in a dark garage and neglected him. With so much time in the dark, he slowly lost his vision. After he became completely blind, he bumped into a sharp object that pierced his eye. The owners checked on him days later, after it had gotten infected and it was too late to save the eye.
Living with Oliver had really changed my perception of dogs. Now when I see a fully working, two-eyed dog that can do things like find his water bowl and not hit his head on everything, I’m just so impressed. What else can you do, work the front desk at a gym? All of the people who had come in contact with Oliver told us he would never do things like a normal dog. He would never be able to go on walks, or play fetch, or poop in the right spots.
I didn’t want anyone to limit Oliver! This dog was going to learn to play fetch. I threw his favorite toy and he would sniff around the living room trying to find it. A minute passed . . . then five . . . then ten. By then I had forgotten we were playing and turned on the TV. And then . . . squeak squeak! He had found it! When Oliver successfully fetches his toy . . . it’s like he’s won the Olympics. It’s like WE won the Olympics.
One day I was working upstairs and heard Oliver crying from the floor below. I came out to see him trapped on the first step of our staircase. He was too scared to go up, and too scared to jump down. I picked him up and brought him upstairs with me.
The next day I came out to the stairs to see Oliver on the third step, crying.
The next day he was on the FIFTH step before he started crying. Would our fantastic blind dog beat the odds and be able to climb a whole staircase?
The answer is yes. He did it once. And then he might have gotten overwhelmed when I screamed for ten minutes, “WHO’S A GOOD BOY?” After that, he never tried again, but who needs mobility when you can just get airlifted up the stairs by humans?
Oliver is a real rags-to-riches story. He was a rescue, and now he has forty-thousand followers on Instagram telling him what a good boy he is every minute of every day.
I don’t know if he can hear me anymore. We used to clap and then he could find us, but now he doesn’t really respond to sounds.
That’s okay. He still has normal dog experiences like going for walks (we carry him around in a bag because he is too scared to walk) and visiting dog parks (he sits in the center of the field feeling overwhelmed and foaming at the mouth) and playing with Allen and Maggie (Maggie hides from him and Allen boxes him in the face and Oliver gets scared because he can’t see where the blows are coming from).
If I was still drinking and using, I would never have thought to rescue an animal. I never wanted to take care of any being other than myself. It was always me first—I needed to be able to do what I wanted when I wanted to. The biggest part of my sobriety was changing from self-seeking to being of service to others. “Others” includes carrying my very special Oliver to his water bowl as often as he needs. I’ve gotten to experience so much joy living with these animals. They’re my goofy-looking family of misfits, and I