Just over 2 years ago we adopted our little blind warrior Carly Kobayashi into our lives. Carly has optic nerve hypoplasia and was born blind. This has never stopped her in life. She approaches every thing in life with an optimism and vigour that knows no bounds. I often talk about how lucky we are to have her and that in all likelihood, if she had been born as a “normal” pup we would never have met her.

Always the first to greet any human as soon as they come home, her happy disposition shines through. She is a beautiful dog inside and out. Empathetic, funny, a comedian but still competitive and gutsy with my other dogs. Her disability doesn’t hold her back. She has been on many adventures – she even came for a week long holiday on a houseboat on the Murray River with us.

If the garden gate is closed it is always the brave and intrepid Carly who manages to find her way through a gap in the fence and go exploring. We had bushfires get within 2km of our farm/house on boxing day this year. We couldn’t stand the thought of our dogs and cats being caught in the line of fire so we moved them all to my mother in law’s house in town, out of harms way. Interestingly, for the next 3 days Carly refused to go outside. She would get to the back door steps and would not walk outside. We later realised she could obviously smell the smoke and this made her anxious. When she finally came home 3 days later she was so excited! It was a joy to see the excitement of her and our other dogs.

Carly is friends with all our dogs and cats and gives the other dogs a run for their money when playing with the toys and having a wrestle. Her visual deficiencies don’t seem to impact her interactions with the other animals and we often say to our toy poodle Beau that it’s just as well she is blind or he would have been flattened by her vigorous play style on many occasions.

Carly has had a little health scare. She occasionally has epileptic fits but these seem manageable at this point in time. The other dogs seem to sense when a fit is coming on and are very mindful to give her space and quiet to recover.

We love our little Carly and don’t know where we would be without her. Thanks so much for allowing us to adopt her.