Hi. This is Charlie. He was born November 13, 2003, and is a long-haired German shepherd who happened to be born blind. My husband (Bob) and I adopted Charlie when he was about 11 months old. We live in North Central Idaho with Charlie and our two cats, Sam and Ellie. They are our children, and are treated as well as any human child could hope to be.

Charlie is 100% blind. He does not see shadows or shapes of any kind. The retinas and optic nerves on the backs of his eyes never fully developed, and so even though his eyes appear normal, no signal is getting to his brain. When watching Charlie, it’s very hard to tell that he can’t see. Due to his keen sense of hearing, he appears to be looking right at you when you’re talking to him. And he also rarely walks into anything, which would instantly give him away.

We take Charlie with us everywhere, including camping, hiking, swimming, and on road trips in the car. It took some time, but he did learn to follow several commands that enabled him to join us wherever we wanted to go. We did obedience training, but most of the commands he learned were words and/or phrases that we repeated just to get through our daily routine.

This website is dedicated to telling Charlie’s story, to offering some training tips, and to providing incentive to anyone else thinking of adopting a blind dog. With a little love and patience, I believe that you will also reap the rewards that come from adopting a special needs animal. I have been told how lucky Charlie is to have been adopted by us. However, it is I who feels so fortunate to been blessed with such a great friend and addition to our family. And I could never have asked for a better dog.

I truly hope you enjoy this web site. And I welcome all questions and/or comments. However I am just getting it up and running, so please bear with me as I begin with the blogging. I will be adding other items to the web site, too, as time allows.

Robin Tardif