tucker

i am going to make some assumptions about tucker. i know a bit about his history and i can see the dog in front of me so i will try to put them together and fill in a few blanks to tell his story. there are parts i have to leave out for confidentiality issues but those parts really mean little to the whole of this dog...and the whole of this dog is shining and good.

i know tucker is 12 yrs old and i know he was living with a large breed 2 yr old dog too. i know he is fully blind and he had very long term, painful glaucoma and i know too that now he has no eyes because we had them removed.

i also know that he is an incedibly nice dog and i suspect he is a truly great dog...one of those guys with the kindest and gentlest of souls. and i suspect he has been fully blind for a very long time from watching how he navigates new surroundings....tucker has learned how to move in his world.

now i suspect that his world was small and unerringly predictable..his house and his yard and i think he learned them so very well that there he actually felt and lived like a seeing dog. i think he was very well loved...he knew great affection and kindness and he had an inside bed in his home and good food. and i think he had a very good friend in his human who just didn't know to do the medical/vet care thing. i think his human was just accepting that tucker became blind for some reason without really knowing why and cared for him in his home as a loved blind dog as best as he could.

i also think tucker was given a puppy for a companion a couple of years ago...maybe he had lost another life long companion and his human wanted him to have another friend. i think tucker raised that puppy to be his canine best friend. i think he felt safe and comfortable with this other dog too.

so i am wondering what is going on in tuckers head now. he lost his home under traumatic circumstances and found himself with his friend in an animal control facility. and there they sat for several weeks until tucker was transferred to me.

i picked him up and drove him directly to our vets and there he sat for almost another week. he undergoes massive and painful bilateral eye enucleations and finally comes home with me. i put him in a single pen area in the mp room cuz we do not want him to be banging those eyes until he is healed and his sutures are removed.
the staff take him for walks during the day and i have been going in and laying with him each evening and becoming his new friend.

he is lonely in there and i know this too. and i do think he misses his trusted friends...the dog and the human also.
but despite all the trauma and pain in his recent life...this dog is just so incredibly sweet. we lay together on the floor and he rubs his head against me. he climbs in my lap for a cuddle...he occasionally gives the softest and gentlest licks...very kind ones..not pushy or obnoxious or incredibly needy...just a gentle show of affection. tonight he slept as he laid with me with his foot tucked into my hand and his nose inside of my bathrobe.

and i am moved to my core at his gentle sweetness, at his trust and even at his forgiveness because the last week of his difficult life as we took him on and fixed him up, were at the hands of my rescue.

my first hope for tucker is to integrate him in with dusty, lucky and wilma so he can have a big nice room with good couches and constant company and that he can be truly happy here (i hope dusty cooperates with this plan.) my second hope is that we find him an incredible home of his own where he will live in the best of any dogs dream.

tucker is one of those dogs who humbles me...how can any dog who has lived thru so much be filled with such goodness and grace?
and all he is asking for is to please safely belong in a good and loving place.

hope floats tucker, these hard times will get better and one day your life will belong to you again....i am so sorry tho it has been so difficult of late....and i think you are a very, very good and special dog who deserves the very best of everything in your life.

maybe we can help you find it...your hope does float and we will not allow it to sink.