Observations of a Blind Dog
Siris is blind and, according to the shelter where we adopted him, has been since birth. When my son O. and I first went to the shelter to look at possible dogs to adopt, he immediately had our attention. He was in a cage with the rest of his litter mates and while they were all in a pile chewing on one another, he was standing up on his back legs, his front legs resting on the top of the door cage, and he greeted us with a tail wag and a big open grin when we approached. We asked the shelter staff if they would take him out and bring him to the visiting room so we could have a chance to see him away from his litter mates and interact with him.
He behaved oddly in the room. O. and I sat on a bench and watched him. We called to him and put our hands out but he ignored us. Instead, he systematically explored the boundaries of the room and the edges of the furniture in it. Only then did he approach us and begin to interact. A similar thing happened when we took him to the outside pen on a leash. He didn't want to play with the objects we gestured at and that we tried to interest him in; he wanted to pull on the leash, smell the ground, and bump his nose against the trees and the fence. Every time we spoke to him or touched him, though, he turned his face to us and wagged his rear end.
He never really made eye contact, though he did look toward us and didn't seem to be avoiding it the way some dogs do if they're afraid or uncomfortable. I thought he seemed a little strange, though I had already decided I liked his personality, his friendliness, and especially his inquisitiveness about the world. He navigated fine, he didn't walk into things, and his eyes looked completely normal, but I had suspicion that something was a little off, and I wondered if he had some visual issues. The attendant said no, and even looked at the results of the puppy's medical exam to confirm that everything was fine.
O. and I decided we were pretty sure we wanted to adopt him, but wanted to think it over. We did and came back the next day to visit again; they left him with us in the visiting room for a few minutes and we decided that we did want to have him become part of our family. Then two attendants came into the room and said, "We have to tell you, it turns out that he's blind, along with another of his litter mates." That confirmed my earlier suspicions but didn't do anything to change our evaluation of the puppy. The fact of his blindness had no implications beyond providing an explanation of what we already knew about how he behaved and interacted with us and the world.
We brought my then-husband back the next day so he could meet the puppy (then supposedly eight weeks old, though I suspect several weeks younger); things went well, and we took our new dog home. At first we considered the name Old Keller, a pun on Old Yeller and Helen Keller, but we ultimately named him Siris, after a song (The Origins of Love) from one of my favorite movies, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
All of this is really just background to say that observing Siris as he navigates the world has been fascinating. Today's blog post was inspired during my morning walk with Siris and M., when Siris tried to navigate the narrow space between a cholla cactus and a juniper bush on the side of the road so that he could lift his leg to urinate on the bush. The bush is located right at the boundary of our closest neighbor's yard, and this neighbor has two dogs (both female) of his own, and there's a third dog (male) who spends a lot of time with them. That particular bush is an important place that marks the edge of territory, and Siris always stops to sniff the scent left by the male dog and to add his own.
The interesting thing to me is that it's only recently that Siris has begun regularly to lift his hind leg to urinate and mark territory. Up until now, he has always just urinated by spreading his back legs. And he continues to urinate in the old way when he's in our yard; he only lifts his leg when he's laying scent on bushes that have already been marked by another male dog or which otherwise have some significance. This new behavior didn't begin with adolescence; he's going to be four this summer. And he's spent quite a lot of time around other male dogs and scent-marked bushes before, but only very rarely would he lift his leg to urinate.
I think this is a learned behavior. I think he figured out (for lack of a better term) that in order to get his scent in the same area as the other male dogs', he needs to urinate in a way other than what he had been doing. And he didn't learn this behavior by seeing how other male dogs urinate, and then copying it, since he's blind. I don't mean to imply that there was some kind of rationality behind his changed behavior (I don't know how I'd know this in any case). Maybe it's something as simple as smelling the urine at a level higher up than his own urine would usually be, wanting to lay urine on top of another dog's urine, and then having an impulse to lift his leg to urinate. It's kind of adorable, though, watching him learn how to lift his leg and direct his urine stream at the intended marker without falling over. He's not always successful.
A side note that involves reflection about my own patterns of thinking: When first thinking about this change in Siris' behavior, I thought to myself, "Siris has learned how to pee like a boy." But Siris has been a boy all along, and he was just as much a boy when he peed by spreading his hind legs, rather than lifting one. And when he urinates now by spreading his hind legs, he's still a male dog. And he's no more a 'manly' dog now than he's ever been. Just as within humans, there's a diversity of practices within each* of the sexes, and adopting or not adopting one rather than another practice within that range of practices doesn't make you a man or make you a woman. To think of Siris as being more manly now than before is to adopt a kind of essentialism about sex-linked behavior and identity that I don't think is warranted.
*Really, I don't want to commit to there being only two sexes but don't want to lose focus from the main point here so I don't want to use language that might distract and confuse. Much depends on how you define "sex."
He behaved oddly in the room. O. and I sat on a bench and watched him. We called to him and put our hands out but he ignored us. Instead, he systematically explored the boundaries of the room and the edges of the furniture in it. Only then did he approach us and begin to interact. A similar thing happened when we took him to the outside pen on a leash. He didn't want to play with the objects we gestured at and that we tried to interest him in; he wanted to pull on the leash, smell the ground, and bump his nose against the trees and the fence. Every time we spoke to him or touched him, though, he turned his face to us and wagged his rear end.
He never really made eye contact, though he did look toward us and didn't seem to be avoiding it the way some dogs do if they're afraid or uncomfortable. I thought he seemed a little strange, though I had already decided I liked his personality, his friendliness, and especially his inquisitiveness about the world. He navigated fine, he didn't walk into things, and his eyes looked completely normal, but I had suspicion that something was a little off, and I wondered if he had some visual issues. The attendant said no, and even looked at the results of the puppy's medical exam to confirm that everything was fine.
O. and I decided we were pretty sure we wanted to adopt him, but wanted to think it over. We did and came back the next day to visit again; they left him with us in the visiting room for a few minutes and we decided that we did want to have him become part of our family. Then two attendants came into the room and said, "We have to tell you, it turns out that he's blind, along with another of his litter mates." That confirmed my earlier suspicions but didn't do anything to change our evaluation of the puppy. The fact of his blindness had no implications beyond providing an explanation of what we already knew about how he behaved and interacted with us and the world.
We brought my then-husband back the next day so he could meet the puppy (then supposedly eight weeks old, though I suspect several weeks younger); things went well, and we took our new dog home. At first we considered the name Old Keller, a pun on Old Yeller and Helen Keller, but we ultimately named him Siris, after a song (The Origins of Love) from one of my favorite movies, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
All of this is really just background to say that observing Siris as he navigates the world has been fascinating. Today's blog post was inspired during my morning walk with Siris and M., when Siris tried to navigate the narrow space between a cholla cactus and a juniper bush on the side of the road so that he could lift his leg to urinate on the bush. The bush is located right at the boundary of our closest neighbor's yard, and this neighbor has two dogs (both female) of his own, and there's a third dog (male) who spends a lot of time with them. That particular bush is an important place that marks the edge of territory, and Siris always stops to sniff the scent left by the male dog and to add his own.
The interesting thing to me is that it's only recently that Siris has begun regularly to lift his hind leg to urinate and mark territory. Up until now, he has always just urinated by spreading his back legs. And he continues to urinate in the old way when he's in our yard; he only lifts his leg when he's laying scent on bushes that have already been marked by another male dog or which otherwise have some significance. This new behavior didn't begin with adolescence; he's going to be four this summer. And he's spent quite a lot of time around other male dogs and scent-marked bushes before, but only very rarely would he lift his leg to urinate.
I think this is a learned behavior. I think he figured out (for lack of a better term) that in order to get his scent in the same area as the other male dogs', he needs to urinate in a way other than what he had been doing. And he didn't learn this behavior by seeing how other male dogs urinate, and then copying it, since he's blind. I don't mean to imply that there was some kind of rationality behind his changed behavior (I don't know how I'd know this in any case). Maybe it's something as simple as smelling the urine at a level higher up than his own urine would usually be, wanting to lay urine on top of another dog's urine, and then having an impulse to lift his leg to urinate. It's kind of adorable, though, watching him learn how to lift his leg and direct his urine stream at the intended marker without falling over. He's not always successful.
A side note that involves reflection about my own patterns of thinking: When first thinking about this change in Siris' behavior, I thought to myself, "Siris has learned how to pee like a boy." But Siris has been a boy all along, and he was just as much a boy when he peed by spreading his hind legs, rather than lifting one. And when he urinates now by spreading his hind legs, he's still a male dog. And he's no more a 'manly' dog now than he's ever been. Just as within humans, there's a diversity of practices within each* of the sexes, and adopting or not adopting one rather than another practice within that range of practices doesn't make you a man or make you a woman. To think of Siris as being more manly now than before is to adopt a kind of essentialism about sex-linked behavior and identity that I don't think is warranted.
*Really, I don't want to commit to there being only two sexes but don't want to lose focus from the main point here so I don't want to use language that might distract and confuse. Much depends on how you define "sex."
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