Living With Blind Dogs: A Resource Book and Training Guide for the Owners of Blind and Low-Vision Dogs

"Living With Blind Dogs," now in its second edition, is the original and definitive resource book on this topic. It embodies helpful hints from hundreds of blind-dog owners, as well as years of ophthalmic nursing, veterinary, and dog training experiences. Both the veterinary community and dog owners alike continue to praise this text, in which Levin successfully answers the common question: "What do I do now?"

This revised edition contains all the topics covered in the first edition, such as: Dealing with feelings of loss and grief, how dogs react to blindness, conditions that cause blindness and how they progress, genetics, pack issues, training concepts, new skills, helpful hints to negotiate the house, yard, and community, toys, games, and suppliers/resources.

This revised edition also includes numerous new sections and chapters: Dogs both blind and deaf, dogs blind from birth, white canes and other devices, circling behaviors, changes in barking patterns, dealing with cats, giving eye drops, traveling and camping with a blind dog, adding another dog to the pack, dry eye syndrome, VKH, and new findings on PRA and SARD.

With a unique combination of personal and professional experiences, Caroline Levin has created several important resource books for dog owners.

Levin’s experience in healthcare began as a registered nurse. She specialized in such fields as ophthalmology, family practice nursing, and endocrinology. After a decade of nursing, Levin left this field to manage an ophthalmic veterinary clinic. It was here that she realized the desperate need blind-dog owners had for educational material. Since then, she has written the first two works on this topic: Living With Blind Dogs and Blind Dog Stories.

Periodically, Levin’s readers contacted her with questions about canine diabetes and its related problems. She realized that there was a need for educational material on these topics, too. Levin scrutinized the current literature, drew on her own nursing background, and consulted with dozens of experts. What began as a small diabetes text, evolved into a dissertation on immune disorders, metabolic disease, endocrine problems, and canine nutrition. The result was her third book, Dogs, Diet and Disease, winner of the prestigious Maxwell Award for "Best Healthcare Book 2001."

At the conclusion of that project, Levin was approached by yet another reader who explained the need epileptic-dog owners had for educational material. Levin’s latest work, Canine Epilepsy, takes a comprehensive look at one of the most common neurological problems diagnosed in dogs today.

Caroline Levin is also an award-winning dog trainer. She has an in-depth understanding of canine behavior and the methods used to successfully train dogs. She shows her dogs in AKC obedience trials and the new sport of musical canine freestyle. Levin is frequently requested as a guest speaker and has written for a variety of publications.