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Two German shepherds who grew up together, became impaired about the same time and ended up being surrendered by their owner, are looking for a new home — but it must be one they can share, their foster mom says.

Smokey lost his sight two years ago; River lost his hearing about the same time.

Now they depend on each other to get around.

“Smokey will follow the sound of River’s breathing, and River will come back and check on Smokey to make sure he gets out,” Tara Boals, a foster with Ruff Start Rescue, told KARE11. “He doesn’t even like to go out to the bathroom without his brother.”

Boals, who lives in Bloomington, Minn., said their previous owner was forced to sell his house and give up “his boys.” Taking over their temporary care, she promised the owner she’d make sure they stayed together.

“They will not leave here without each other,” she said. “If they have to stay here forever, until they are no longer with us, then that’s what’s going to happen.”

Because of Smokey’s blindness, the dogs need a quieter home with no stairs. Smokey is about 11; River’s slightly older.

You can learn more about Smokey and River, and donate to their care, at the Ruff Start Rescue website.

They say love is blind. I’m not sure, with humans, that’s always the case. But it does seem to be with dogs.

That could help explain the apparent affection these dachshund pups are showing to a creature that, at least in the eyes of this beholder,  is not one of God’s, or evolution’s, most eye-pleasing creations.

Then again, in the eyes of Cheesecake, a capybara who lives at Rocky Ridge Refuge, maybe these dachshunds aren’t the cutest things on the planet, either.

That hasn’t stopped the giant rodent from serving as mom, babysitter and guardian for the pups, who were among a litter of eight, left in a Tupperware container outside a church erlier this month.

The photos were posted to Facebook by the Arkansas-based animal rescue group that took in all eight puppies, four of which were quickly adopted.

The remaining four stayed at the refuge under the care of founder Janice Wolf, who turned to Cheescake for some assistance.

“Saturday was warm and sunny here, so I put Cheesecake in charge of the Doxie pups for the day,” she wrote on the rescue’s Facebook page.

Ever since then the pups have been snuggling with the capybara, either unaware she is a rodent (the largest type of rodent in the world), or thinking that doesn’t much matter.

(Photos: Rocky Ridge Refuge)

When Terfel started losing his eyesight because of cataracts, he crawled into his bed and pretty much stayed there.

Then a cat came into his home in the UK, and was soon helping him find his way around.

Pwditat showed up as a stray and was taken in by the eight-year-old dog’s owner, a North Wales resident named Judy Godfrey-Brown.

Pwditat not only coaxed him out of his basket but helped him find his way around the house and garden, using her paws to guide him in the right direction, Godfrey-Brown told the Sun.

Godfrey-Brown, a retired civil servant, became unable to care for the pair, and they were taken in by Anne Cragg, who appears in this video.

When Abby wandered off from her home in Fairbanks, Alaska, during a snowstorm, her family held out only a little hope.

Abby was 8-years-old. Temperatures were dipping to 40 degrees below zero. And Abby was blind.

But a little hope turned out to be enough.

Seven days later, after walking 10 miles to the edge of a local musher’s dog yard, Abby, a brown-and-white mixed breed rescued from a shelter as a pup, was found and returned to her owners, The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.

“It’s a miracle, there’s no other words to describe it,” said McKenzie Grapengeter, who has three sons under the age of 10.  “We never expected to have her to be returned safe and alive.”

Musher and veterinarian Mark May said he came across the dog while running his team on Dec. 19, but didn’t stop to pick her up. The next day, the dog showed up at May’s house.

May said the dog had no signs of frostbite. “No frozen ears, no frozen toes, she’ll probably go back home and it’ll (be) business as usual. She’s no worse for wear but quite an adventure,” he said.

“We’re so, so grateful…” Grapengeter said, calling Abby’s return “the most amazing Christmas gift we could ever ask for.”

Evy and Ted Inoue had a most gracious idea for a website — one that would allow people to share their thanks with good Samaritans and others who deserved a pat on the back.

To promote their new business, the New Hope, Pa., couple had their van made over to resemble their dog, Kudos, a basset hound-cocker spaniel mix whose bubbly personality had been the inspiration for it. It was named after him, too — OurKudos.com.

“That was supposed to be our promotional vehicle,” Evy told Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Daniel Rubin in an interview, as the vehicle named Waggin Wheels sat in the driveway. It is brown and white, with big soft eyes, furry black ears that droop over the rear doors, and a red tongue that sticks out of the grill.

“By giving it the look and personality of our dog, we hoped it would spread happiness wherever it went,” said Evy, a children’s book author who writes under the pen name Kimiko Kajikawa. “We’d go to events and honor all sorts of heroes. We’d be giving out kudos.”

While the van got 26 miles per gallon, highway, the Inoue’s business was guzzling their time, and not exactly taking off in the manner they hoped. Building a site allowing the grateful to buy gifts for the objects of their gratitude – candy and flowers and such — proved time consuming, and it was hard to be heard over the din that is the Internet. The yet to fully rebound economy didn’t help, either.

But what really caused the Inoues to lose faith in their plan — and sent Waggin Wheels into retirement — was Kudos, himself. He was diagnosed with Lyme disease in March 2011 and died a year ago Monday at age 3.

After that, the idea of using the van was just too painful. So was the idea of selling it.

For months, Rubin reports, it sat in the garage. Then Evy started looking for a charity that might be able to use the pupped-out vehicle.

Out of the blue, she ended up calling Joyce Darrell and Mike Dickerson, founders of Pets With Disabilities, based in Prince Frederick, Md.

“I thought she was pulling my chain,” Joyce said of the call from Evy a month ago.

Pets With Disabilities rescues and fosters disabled dogs, and has been doing so for 10 years, squeezing their dogs into a 1996 Saturn station wagon when the time comes — as it does pretty often – for trips to the vets.

Right now, they have 25 blind, deaf and three-legged dogs, many of whom have spinal injuries that require special wheelchairs for them to get around.

At the Inoue’s invitation, Mike Dickerson drove up to see the Ford van, bringing along Megan, one of the blind dogs.

Long story short, Waggin Wheels will soon have a new home, Pets With Disabilities couldn’t be more grateful, and the Inoue’s managed to dispense some of the good karma their former business was all about.

“We’re being touched by angels,” Joyce said. “They could have sold that van and got their money back. They deserve kudos, too.”

(Photo: Dan Rubin / Philadelphia Inquirer)

When a guide dog was struck by a hit-and-run driver in St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay area residents responded with donations to cover the costs of her medical care.

Abbey, a two-year-old mixed breed, was off leash and playing in the yard of her legally blind owner when she apparently ran into the street and was struck by a car that sped away.

Her owner, Terry Ellrick, 59, was devastated.

“I just want them to have a merry Christmas and a happy Thanksgiving. That’s what I want because I can’t, and she can’t have her turkey either. So I hope it goes down good for them,” he told 10 News.

Ellrick could not give a description of the vehicle, and police said there were no witnesses.

Officers helped Abbey to the car of a friend of Ellrick’s, who drove her to BluePearl Veterinary Partners in North Tampa.

“Abbey is not out of the woods yet, but she is doing well and recovering from her surgery,” James Judge, a spokesman for the animal hospital told Tampa Bay Online.

Judge said to dog enough contributions had arrive by Thursday morning to cover the Wednesday surgery.

Those who still wish to donate can do so through Frankies Friends, which will use the money to help other families who can’t afford veterinary care.

Anyone with information about the hit-and-run is encouraged to call police at (727) 893-7780.

(Photo by Jim Hockett / Tampa Bay Online)

Police suspected a black mixed breed dog they were calling Lady — found last week with her eyes dangling out of her sockets in a parking lot in Bucks County, Pa. — had been struck with a baseball bat.

Since then – thanks to encountering some kinder humans — Lady has received veterinary care, a temporary home from a police dispatcher who overheard the call, and, this week, a reunion with the family whose home she escaped from.

Now, the 7-year-old dog who likely will never see again is being called by her real name again — Dusk.

“We’re happy to have her back,” Marie Waligorski told Phillyburbs.com. “We never expected to get her back this way.”

Dusk escaped from the family’s fence yard four days before she was found in a parking lot, just a few hundred feet from the family’s home in Bristol Township.

The citizen who found her called police Friday morning, and Jessica Finnell, a Bucks County emergency dispatcher listened in.

The caller said he found a dog with both eyes hanging out of the sockets. When he went on to say the dog was alive, Finnell contacted the animal control officer retrieving the dog and urged him not to let her be put down. And she offered to take the dog into her home in Warminster.

At CARES, an animal clinic in Middletown, a veterinarian put Lady’s eyes back into their sockets, but her left eyelid had to be heavily stitched to keep the damaged eye from falling out again. The vet found multiple skull fractures, but no injuries that would suggest she’d been hit by a car. Finnell was told  it’s likely someone hit Lady in the head with a bat.

After Lady received medical treatment, Finnell took her home for the weekend.

“She is phenomenal,” she said Monday night. “She is amazing. She is unbelievable. I totally fell in love with her.”

Finnell also started a ChipIn fund to cover Lady’s ongoing medical care, which has raised close to $3,000.

Finnell brought the dog back to the veterinary clinic yesterday, where she was reunited with her family. Dusk belongs to Waligorski’s son, William Schilling, who adopted her as a puppy when living in Tennessee.

“She was excited, tail-wagging. She seems happy that they were there,” said Finnell, a single mother of two. “I’m happy for her. I miss her like crazy, but I’m happy she is back in her home and can have some of her normal life back.”

(Photo: Lady/Dusk and Finnell; by Rick Kintzel / Phillyburbs.com)

We usually don’t memorialize a dog twice — but Andre was extra special.

We wrote about Andre when he was found inside a knotted plastic trash bag on the side of the road, his eyes mutilated. We wrote about him again when it was learned he died last week.

But the best person to write about him is the person who took him in, gave him a loving home for eight months and has been updating fans on his Facebook page ever since.

Above is the video she put together.

Here are her words:

“This is the story of a courageous miniature pincher who suffered both horrific abuse and unbounding love. Andre the Rescue Dog was found on January 3, 2012, by our hero, Cedric Conwright, who witnessed a black garbage bag being thrown out of a moving car into an empty lot as if discarded trash. When the bag moved, Cedric opened it to find little Andre, eyes gouged and hanging from their sockets, starved to 7 1/2 pounds, shot with BBs. Thanks to God’s divine intervention in guiding Cedric to that lot, on that day, at that moment Andre’s (or as Cedric named him “LG” for Little Guy) story did not end there but began to unfold on a journey that has touched human hearts all over the world. Rescuers later named this sweet dog Andre and I came to call him Andrea Bocelli after witnessing the first sound he made almost two months after he was rescued. His sweet little bark that lifted his front feet off the ground sounded like music to my maternal ears. And so he became Andrea Bocelli Powers!

“Andre came with a ready-made FaceBook page when I adopted him. It was originally created to help raise funds for his early medical needs and later for two surgeries, one of which was a double-adrenalectomy. It didn’t take long for me to understand that although Andre could no longer see the world, the world was seeing Andre for the first time,

“Mr. Bocelli’s birthday because his rescue day, January 3, and his greatest gift was a new life free from abuse. His last day, October 6, 2012, came far too soon when he died at home of diabetic complications. I shall always yearn to hold my Bocelli again; Bocelli, Bocelli, Bocelli.

“I am confident that If Andrea could, I know he would, say thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone one who helped both him and me in any way. No matter how big or small the gesture, I have been forever touched by your generosity of prayer, words of support, money, newspaper and TV articles, hugs, tears, etc., etc.

“Deeply grieving the loss of my companion, I am.

Sandy Powers
Andrea’s Seeing-Eye-Human
October 11, 2012″

A brave little dog died last week — nine months after he was left for dead on the side of the road in a plastic trash bag.

His name was Andre, and he was a miniature Pinscher, found in a knotted black trash bag on the side of a street in Tolleson, Arizona.

A man taking a walk noticed the trash bag was moving, and went to open it up.

Doing so would expose a particularly heinous case of what some humans do to animals, but it would also come to show how very many more humans step forward to help them.

Andre would go on to brighten the lives and bring out the best of all those he came in contact with, though, for him, the darkness continued — even once he was out of the bag. In addition to the other abuse he’d been subjected to, his eyes had apparently been gouged out.

Despite that — despite the cruelty with which one or more humans treated him — he’d continue to show love for the rest of the species, and keep capturing hearts for nearly 10 more months.

It all started with Jan. 3, when Cedric Conwright saw a car pull to the side of the road, and watched as a bag was tossed out the window before it drove away. Conwright approached the knotted trash bag and saw that it was moving. He nudged it with his foot and heard a whimper.

When he opened it, he found a small dog in bad shape. He picked him up and took him home. Two days later he took the dog to Maricopa County Animal Care and Control in hopes of getting it medical help.

Euthanasia was discussed, but instead vets opted to perform surgery, removing what was left of his eyes. From there he was taken in by Susy Hopkins, a member of the Feathers Foundation, a Paradise Valley non-profit group associated with the Circle L Animal Sanctuary. The foundation raises money for injured and neglected animals.

Her first stop was another animal hospital, where the first thing vets recommended was euthanasia. Hopkins said no, and asked the vet’s office to do what they could.

In addition to infections where his eyes used to be, Andre was anemic and had diabetes, and under his skin were what appeared to be BB’s from a pellet gun.

Over the next few days, Andre started appearing more lively, and his rescuers went to work trying to raise money for the medical care he had gotten and would need. Within days, $13,000 had poured in. A fundraiser at a downtown Scottsdale pizza restaurant brought in another $3,500.

There was something about Andre that brought out the best in people, Hopkins noted.

“People just wanted to see Andre, to hold him, to hug him,” she said. “And no matter how many people wanted to pet him, Andre never resisted. He was so calm, so gentle. It made me wonder even more why someone would treat him so badly.”

On Feb. 11, a permanent home was found for Andre. Sandy Powers had seen his story on TV. “It was love at first sight,” Powers said. “I had never adopted a rescue dog before, but I knew I wanted to care for this one.”

Andre walked carefully at his new home, several states away, and, though he couldn’t see, did his best to stay at the side of his new mom.

“When I talk or sing a little, he stays right with me on my heels,” said Powers.

He continued to get treatment for his diabetes. Amid other complications, there were some weeks Powers seemed to be making daily visits to the vet.

In recent weeks, his condition took a turn for the worse, and Powers did her best to keep Andre’s many fans informed on his Facebook page.

This week, she announced he had died Saturday. Andre has been cremated and his ashes brought home.

The dog who many were surprised didn’t die eight months ago now has — but not before getting a chance to give and get some love, add a few more chapters to his brave legacy and remind us yet again what being human is all about.

Attention humans: Today’s lesson comes from Tanner and Blair — two hopeless cases that, together, found some hope.

Tanner is a two-year-old Golden Retriever who was born blind and with a seizure disorder. When Sooner Golden Retriever Rescue was unable to find him a home, he ended up at Woodland West Animal Hospital.

Blair is a one-year-old black Labrador mix brought to the same hospital after she was shot while living on the streets. While recovering physically, she was timid, nervous, and unlikely to find a forever home, either.

“One day they were exercising in a play yard together and they got together,” said the hospital’s director, Dr. Mike Jones.  “Blair all of a sudden seemed to realize that Tanner was blind and just started to help him around.”

Seeing the connection, hospital staff began to board Tanner and Blair together, with amazing results.

Tanner began seizing less; Blair came out of her shell.

“His seizure disorder was really, really bad and nothing — no medications — seemed to be helping,” Jones told ABC News.  “Anytime he [Tanner] seizes he expresses his bowels.”

Tanner had been seizing almost nightly, Jones said, but  after two or three weeks with Blair, “we realized Tanner wasn’t seizing anymore.  He’s not completely seizure free but it’s not constant anymore.”

If Tanner has a leash on, Blair will pick it up and guide her friend around. Tanner, meanwhile, has had a calming influence on Blair, making the former street dog — now that she has a mission – less timid and anxious.

Now the hospital and Sooner Golden Retriever Rescue are trying to find the two dogs a home together.

“They absolutely have to be adopted together,” Jones said.  “But it’s going to take a special home with someone who understands their special relationship plus understands seizure disorder and is ready to take on the responsibility.”