Loving Home : That Blind Puppy? He’s Now a Lucky Dog
Virginia and Hal Taylor have been married only 13 years, but they just celebrated their Sterling wedding anniversary.
Sterling, the blind collie puppy abandoned nearly two months ago on a Hawthorne street, found a new home with the Woodland Hills couple, who were among the hundreds of Times readers who volunteered to adopt the blue merl puppy. The dog, now 7 months old, moved in with the Taylors on their anniversary this month.
“You can’t believe how lucky we feel to have gotten him,” said Virginia Taylor, a retired secretary who welcomed the dog from Cookie Routman. Routman had rescued the puppy from an animal shelter but could not keep him in her apartment.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a nicer, sweeter dog,” Virginia Taylor said. “When I took him for a walk last week, someone stopped and asked, ‘Is he the one in the paper? I’m so happy he found a good home. I haven’t gotten him off my mind since I read about him,’ ” she recalled. “People say we’re so nice to take him, but we say that we’re the lucky ones.”
The Taylors’ other dog, Mandy, a 3-year-old golden retriever who was a pillow-tearing terror as a puppy, has adapted well to her blind little “brother,” even nudging him back on the path when he appeared about to tumble down a set of steps in their double-fenced yard.
“We don’t treat him like he’s an invalid,” said Virginia Taylor, “and he certainly doesn’t act like one. We just treat him like we would any dog.”
Well, almost any dog. The Taylors have given up trying to get Sterling to eat dry food; he just noses it out of the bowl and waits for the good stuff. “He can’t be spoiled enough, as far as I’m concerned, after what he’s been through,” she laughs.
Both dogs sleep in the Taylors’ bedroom--Mandy on her own chair, and Sterling on a pillow between the dresser and the nightstand. “He sleeps on his back, with his feet straight up,” Virginia Taylor says. “It’s like he’s lived here since he was born.”
Saving Sterling was the single-minded project of Routman, who had gotten an anonymous call one evening from some people at a phone booth, saying they were leaving town and needed a home for their collie puppy. Shortly thereafter, Sterling turned up at an animal shelter, and when he was in danger of being “put down,” someone at the shelter called Routman, who undertook to find him a home.
A Times story about the dog’s plight drew hundreds of phone calls and letters, from as far away as New Jersey. Routman interviewed the volunteers and settled on the Taylors.
“Sterling led me to some really nice people through phone calls and letters,” she added. “Some people said they admired me for my courage--which is an adjective I never thought about me before.”
But the phone rang again recently: “Now there’s a 9-month-old collie who needs a home,” Routman sighed. “It doesn’t end.”
