Shelter Star of the month Brandy

History: Brandy hasn’t had the best start in life, born in a puppy farm and ran over by a car resulting in the loss of sight in both eyes.

Assessment: Brandy is now in adolescence around 9 months of age a stunning Belgian Malinois with striking features and extremely intelligent. We have been working on lowering her arousal, this has been achieved through enrichment activities like #ACEFreework, slow massage, and sniff walks. We did some parallel walking off site with another of our residents Scooby and that went well. As Brandy is blind, meeting other dogs needs to be undertaken with care as Brandy can’t judge how close the other dog is and the dog with sight, needs to adapt to Brandy having unusual eyes. Touch is extremely important to Brandy she is no fan of nettles on her paw pads and human touch reassures her that you are there.

Brandy spent time with a fosterer who took her on walks, so Brandy is used to wearing a harness and walking on a lead and did some initial work on recall. The fosterer also supported Brandy in making life predictable, using commands such as “step” so she knew a step was coming, “left” and “right” to identify direction changes.

Potential adopter: Brandy would be best as an only dog suited to patient adopters without children. Brandy is selective about people so initially needs to be taken to quiet places and using force free positive reinforcement to gradually build her confidence. Parallel lead walking is the best way we have found to introduce her to other dogs currently.  

Dedicated blind dog community: There is an excellent private supportive community dedicated to owners with blind dogs which would be a great resource https://uniquely-paws-able.teachable.com/p/exclusive-up-membership-package

If you are interested in meeting this beautiful girl, please contact #friendsindeeddogrescue on 07527129642 or me directly