Confidence

Its important to build confidence with any pet. It can be difficult to build confidence in your impaired animal when you want to coddle and make sure no harm comes to them.  Often we forget to realize that their resilience and ability to adjust is usually much higher than our own.

      My cat, Spookie, is one and a half years old.  When he was 4 weeks old he was bitten in the head by a dog and suffered neurological problems. He was unable to turn to the right, unable to see out of both eyes, unable to walk, he had a huge infection on his head that required drainage daily and he had a broken jaw. His jaw and head have since healed. However, he only regained about 40% of his sight, he doesn't have as much strength as a normal cat, and he has slower mental development.
     Spookie has bad depth perception.  He does use the litter boxes with no problem, he eats, plays, and even holds his own against my other male cat in a good ol fashioned wrestle (see video). I think in part his ability to be "normal" is because once his medical problems were addressed, I left him to be taught completely by my other cats how to survive. Once he was able to function as a cat I clicker trained him. He can give paw, comes on command, he gives kisses on command, and the only time I ever have to help him is if he gets himself locked in my closet or in a cabinet whilst exploring.

         It can be difficult to give a blind dog confidence, especially if they are in a situation that they have always relied on you.  Perfect example is tonight with Carlos.  He just had a bath and I had to pick him up and put him in the tub because he doesn't like the bathroom. After his bath I usually pick him up and lift him back out onto the towels (he has such a heavy coat it takes 3 days to completely dry after towel-drying and blow-drying). I decided to work on building his confidence in the bathroom and made it his job to learn how to get out of the bathtub. Carlos knows several commands, including the command to come, and a couple of different commands to side step.  In the video you'll hear me giving him instruction and you'll see only some coaxing physically on my behalf. The rest was up to Carlos to figure out.  I hit the towels on the floor, and I told him where to go to avoid jumping into the toilet. You'll see me touch his hair on the side of his head to tell him what side I want him to move towards. He'll listen intently to my hand hitting the towels on the floor.