Puppy sees way home, despite blindness
In a fortunate twist of fate a blind dog is returned home by the very people his owners feared he might end up with.
That residents of a nearby informal settlement would take in and care for a lost and blind dog was the last thing on his search party’s minds.
The fear of Friday the 13th really hit home for the distressed Van Niekerk’s who realised that their beloved Puppy has left the property.
Puppy, a blind Jack Russell crossbreed has been the absolute heart of the household for the past 15 years and seemingly escaped via the gate to the property on Friday 13 March.
“He has a naughty streak and this has not been affected by his lack of vision, believe me,” said owner Barbara Ann van Niekerk, (57).
Puppy has always been the sort of dog to find loopholes, she told the Record in an interview, the day after he was returned. He usually just gets out, walks on the pavement and goes back into the yard. To this end the Van Niekerk’s wedged a piece of wood into the gate to avoid his next escape. Puppy is on her husband Christo’s lap, happy as a clam and tongue sticking out. He seems to find the sound of the flashing camera entertaining, but on nearly every photo his eyes are closed.
“His eyes are very sensitive,” Barbara Ann cautioned, “more so than when he was going blind.”
He has been blind in the one eye for well over a year now and rather suddenly went blind in the other eye. He recently started walking into walls and furniture and so they knew.
“My husband has been devising possible ways of training him to follow sounds,” she said and demonstrated.
“I didn’t even believe that we were going to get him back by the time my husband received the coveted phone call,” she said.
The first thing she did when she realised that her dog is gone was to post it on all the community pages she could find on facebook along with photographs.
“Someone had to have seen him and we had to try,” Barbara Ann explained.
“Everybody was sharing, the posts were shared more than a hundred times; we put up more than 100 poster all over Witpoortjie, Mindalore and Krugersdorp.”
She also alerted Friends of Rescued Animals (Fora) the Roodepoort SPCA and local vets. The Van Niekerk’s set daughter Chrystal’s GPS to make sure that they drive down every possible street he could have wandered to over the past weekend. She received a phone call from the SPCA to say that they found the dog, “but we rushed through and it was unfortunately not mine.”
Barbara Ann left her workplace at noon on Monday and planned on visiting the SPCA, Fora and the vets to see if their searches yielded any results.
“My husband said that he received an incoherent phone call from a man and we decided to hear what it was about.”
The man told them that his neighbour in the Mhlangeni informal settlement just off Progress Avenue, Lindhaven had been taking care of the dog. He agreed to meet them “in six minutes” at the nearby filling station and brought his samaritian neighbour along to let Puppy once again enjoy his owners’ attention.
The man had seen one of the posters and took it home to alert his neighbour, after which he placed the phone call. Puppy returned to his owner’s arms clean, well-fed and without thirst.
“This man took such good care of my Puppy – my worst fear was that he would wander into an informal settlement and become emaciated or be hit by a vehicle but the opposite had happened.
“I was so grateful; I didn’t have much with me but gave the two of them R300 as a token of my appreciation.
“I plan to create each of them a hamper of food and other goodies by the end of the month as a further thank you,” Barbara Ann said.
As it happens, the Van Niekerk’s picked up a stray of their own later that afternoon. A golden-brown Pekingese puppy is waiting at their home for his or her owners to reclaim. Owners should state the puppy’s gender. Barbara Ann can be reached on 071 493 1132.
