Ebony the One-Eyed Dog

*Originally Published January 25th 2015*

Ebony, one of our dogs, only has one eye. She lost her other eye as a puppy, some years ago.

I remember that day pretty well. Dad had just got home from working a mid shift and Mom was taking us kids into town to visit the park. The boys were in the car, Mom and I were saying good-bye to Dad...

That's when it happened. I heard the most awful scream I had ever heard. We all froze in our tracks. What was that? Mom, Dad and I made our way outside and I looked out front of the house. Mom was hollering for us to check on the puppies.

At this time, we had four or five adult dogs tied out in the yard and two puppies who would run around between the older dogs. The puppies, 'Black Cloud' and 'Griz,' were out in front of the house when I got there. "The puppies are here!" I called.

Then I noticed Black Cloud's face. Her eye was busted right out of its socket. My memory is a little fuzzy here, for the obvious reasons. I remember yelling that Black Cloud was hurt.

We all got in the car and I held Black Cloud. We drove into Cadiz and waited impatiently for the vet's office to open, unfortunately they were unable to help us when they did open, as they only took appointments.

My memory is a little clouded at this point as well, but we managed to ask around and were told that there was a veterinarian office down in St. Clairsville, that should be able to take us. When we got there, they rushed the poor little puppy into surgery and finished removing her eye.

Not much work left to be done, according to the vet.

I don't have many good pictures of Ebony though! She rarely sits still when I'm around!

During all this, Dad had to fill out paperwork. When asked for the dog's name, Dad looked at us and said: "Considering the circumstances, 'Black Cloud' would probably sound bad. Let's call her Ebony."

The name caught on so well that I'd almost completely forgotten about her old name until I sat down to write this story. We had to take special care of her after that and she spent quite some time indoors.

She grew up to be one of the gentlest dogs I have ever met, so gentle, in fact, that despite being a German Shepherd/Wolf she is extremely friendly with our chickens and other poultry.

We don't know what happened to Ebony's eye exactly, but I suspect that one of the older dogs accidentally knocked her into a large boulder that was lying in the middle of the yard. That's my best theory anyway.