now he’s realised that we don’t have any in our house he’s calmed down a lot.
Considering his background, Billy is remarkably well-behaved. The only time he really goes crazy is when my husband leaves the house, as they’ve formed a really strong bond. He was extremely well-trained from his time in service, but I also think that being an older dog he is just that bit calmer, and happy to have a family. He is very food-focused (his particular favourite is naan bread) and he doesn’t have much in the way of table manners, but in fairness to Billy he hasn’t really needed them.
For an old dog he’s incredibly energetic and gives the younger dogs at the park a run for their money. Explosion sniffer dogs are often rewarded with tennis balls, and Billy goes absolutely mad for them. It’s all about the ball. But he’s also incredibly loving and often just wants to snuggle up beside me on the settee.
You’d think an older dog would have outgrown their puppy silliness, but Billy makes us laugh on a daily basis. Only last week we took him on his first ever holiday to the Norfolk coast. We decided to let him roam the property we had rented at night so he could sleep wherever he wanted, and everything seemed fine. But when we were lying in bed on the first night we heard a loud noise and wondered what he was up to. When I went to see where he was and what he had done, I discovered that he’d jumped into the bath and was standing there with his nose pressed against the shower screen, wondering how on earth he was going to escape this situation!
Having Billy has taught us that a rescue dog really can make the perfect companion, and that there are so many wonderful dogs that deserve a loving home. And it’s not just about the dog – it’s great for people too. We’ve always said that ‘a house is not a home without a dog’, and with Billy here, we have a home again. All Billy wants now is to be loved from the moment he gets up in the morning until last thing at night. And he is.’
DOGS’ NAMES: Ted and Zigge Stardust (aka the B Boys)
AGES: Ted is 6 and Zigge is 2
OWNER: Caisa
FROM: Ireland. Ted is from a rescue centre called Dog Rescue Coolronan, and Zigge is from Maureen Scanlon in Sligo. They were adopted through FriendsForever, a Swedish charity.
LIVES: near Stockholm, Sweden
‘To look at my two boys, Ted and Zigge, now, you’d never guess what a rough background they’re from. I’ve always had dogs, as both a child and an adult, and my dog before the B Boys was a rescue too – I’ve never wanted to buy a dog when there are so many unwanted dogs in the world. I live in a small town in Sweden in a flat with my son, which might not seem the ideal place for two dogs, but I live near lots of great places for dogs to run about, so I started looking into fostering.
I know it seems strange, but there are a lot of dogs from Ireland that need fostering, and there is a Swedish charity, FriendsForever, that coordinates this. The first dog I got a call about was Ted – Dog Rescue Coolronan in Ireland had got a message about a Border Collie chained up 24/7 on a farm and went there to get the owner to surrender the dog to them. When they rescued Ted, they realised that he was blind and were worried they wouldn’t be able to find a home for him, so they asked me if I wanted to foster him. I’d never had – or even met – a blind dog before and I started to look for information online, but didn’t find much. But I decided to go for it anyway.
Ted arrived in 2013, weak, confused and thin. He’d been kept outside his whole life and was baffled by being in a house. He’d never even walked up stairs. As a blind dog, Ted had to ‘map’ our home when he first arrived, walking around and memorising the layout (the first day he arrived he peed in the living room while still figuring out where everything was, but he very soon learned). Due to his upbringing he wasn’t really used to human interaction, especially cuddling and touching, but we just let him adjust in his own time. Since he couldn’t see us, every time he woke up I’d say, ‘I’m here, Ted’, because I was worried he wouldn’t remember where he was. But somehow it was never a problem – Ted just handled everything I put in front of him. He’s that kind of dog; incredibly cool and calm. And two days in I realised I didn’t want to foster him. I wanted to adopt him.
Two years later I got a message about a similar dog living in awful conditions, rescued by Maureen Scanlon: another blind Border Collie, tied up outside a farm. He was apparently terrified and hadn’t even been given proper food. I immediately said yes, and pretty soon he arrived in Sweden. We called him Zigge Stardust: Zigge because he couldn’t walk straight and Stardust because he has a cataract in his right eye. Zigge was a very different dog to Ted. He was so scared, hiding in the back of the crate, and was just very overwhelmed by the whole thing. It took a long time to gain his trust. He couldn’t seem to get the hang of the stairs at all, so I carried him for the first weeks, and he was so used to being outside that he couldn’t calm down indoors in the beginning and just walked round and round, stressed out. To begin with I had to have him on a leash indoors to get him to calm down. But he really enjoyed belly rubs and being close to me, and gradually we started to get somewhere.
I have had to put a lot of time into training Zigge to teach him to do things like climb the stairs and deal with sounds outside and into lowering his stress levels. Obviously with a rescue dog there is more chance of them having behavioural issues if they come from a difficult background, but I do think these can be fixed with time and patience. Zigge was scared of many sounds (and I don’t think it’s because he is blind, just because he had no social experience when young), and I have spent days sitting beside him at scary places for him, with lots of people and cars going past. My philosophy is: Yes, I see that this scares you, but we are going to do it anyway! Until your body and mind stop thinking ‘‘flee!’’ and you can calm down. Zigge has come so far, but it is work in progress. It turns out that he is a very stubborn dog underneath all that stress and low self-esteem, so training takes longer!
One unexpected side effect of adopting Ted and Zigge is that they’ve kind of become ambassadors for blind dogs. Before I adopted them I tried to find out as much as I could about blind dogs, but there really wasn’t much information out there – basically everything just said, ‘‘It can work, as long as you always keep them on a leash and walk the same paths.’’ But that’s not been my experience with Ted and Zigge – they can do so much more than that. I started posting videos on Facebook for my friends and family to see, of them playing and just living their lives, and people said I should create a proper page for them, so I did. I didn’t expect such an overwhelming positive response! People would come to the page because they’d been told that their beloved dog was going blind, and wanted to see what their quality of life could be like. Eye problems in dogs are increasing in Sweden, but there aren’t many people (or dogs!) showing that, actually, a dog can live a very good life without vision. Some people said that when they’d discovered their dog was going blind, lots of people – experienced dog people – had said they should be put to sleep. But Ted and Zigge show that that doesn’t need to happen. The Blind Boys’ Facebook page is a great community of dog lovers, and we’ve even met up with some of them so Ted and Zigge have new friends from all over.
Seeing my dogs now, living in a flat in Sweden, climbing stairs, walking on the leash, going in the car and being trained to use their noses, has taught me that nothing is impossible; it just sometimes takes a little longer. It’s been such a joy to see their personalities develop over the years. Ted is still the cool, calm teddy bear, always following me around with a squeaky toy, which he loves (the rest of the family enjoy the constant squeaking less). When he meets other dogs he immediately knows what they’re like, but even if they’re scared, or tough aggressive males, Ted isn’t bothered – he just walks away. Zigge’s personality has revealed itself more slowly. He’s still scared of loud noises, but he’s pretty independent and happy these days, and loves exploring the world on his own. When he’d been here about a year, he suddenly started