Estimated Blind Dog US Populations, 2010
Blind and Blind-deaf Dog US Population: in April 2011 our "best estimate [1]" was over 300,000 dogs. Data are sparse. (see deaf dogs population page for sample deafness calculations.)
Typical Causes of blindness and-or partial blindness:
1. Inherited – “flashy coats” genetics. The more common of the DNA mutations were recently identified. The ancient biological origins of genetically caused early and old age blindness and deafness overlap biologically, and began with the origin of those species who owned backbones. Thus the numbers of dogs born with genetic blindness and partial blindness can be reduced but never entirely prevented. The extreme wwhen excessively in-bred for the high risk Flashy coats: 1) Merles and double merles, 2) dapple and double dapple, 3) white-Great Danes and pit-bulls, 4) polka-dotted without patches, et al.
2. Other inherited difficulties, sometimes Breed driven, lead to blindness or partial blindness: glaucoma, cataracts, diabetes, etc.
3. Accidents. A sharp stick fallen from a tree along a familiar path, and a fast squirrel, in combination are fun but on rare occasions cause injuries. Our dog one day as usual vanished into the woods, jumping over brush piles in pursuit of a squirrel, and came back a few minutes later with a bleeding wound at her eye. Eventually, with the skill of our local Animal hospital, she recovered.
4. Medical/medicine Side-effects. ………….
5. Infectious Diseases of various sorts. ……
6. Old-Age (Geriatric): cataracts, pupil-muscle tone loss, near or far-sighted, etc. . ….
We recently, in 2010, begun trying to gather readable information that we hope will be useful for the owners of blind and partially blind, and blind-deaf dogs. Research about their biology, behavior abilities to adapt to blindness for good living, and medical advances have been amazing in recent years. Our efforts are guided by questions, comments, and experience observations of “readers.” Often the contributed observations of the dogs’ owners preceded by years the official publication of research that clarified and explained “exactly” how it was that specific blind dogs achieved surprising abilities to live with great freedom in modern homes with caring people, and even proceeded to compete in public venues against “ordinary” dogs.
[1] Analytical Details: The root-source of the data were the previously mentioned data from Dr Strain, reportedly sponsored by the DCA and AKC [See deaf dogs population page]. From those sources, it was possible to estimate that the total of US deaf and partially deaf dogs was roughly 15,000 or somewhat larger (excluding dead deaf puppies, etc). Knowing from the archives of the pertinent Web list-groups, a lower bound estimate of how many deaf and partially deaf dog owners exist in the US, and their blind dog counterparts; from the comparative size of the deaf dogs list (about 3300), and the blind dogs list (about 5,000); it was possible to estimate that there were roughly twice more blind and partially blind dogs in the US than deaf and partially deaf. The archives showed that comparable fractions seemed to exist where some deaf dogs were blind or partly blind, and some blind dogs were partly or entirely deaf. By rounding off the resulting statistics to the most significant digit (the first one) and then rounding off the ratio of blind /deaf dogs to the most significant (the first) digit logically we got the posted estimate of about twice more blind and partly blind dogs than deaf dogs, so about 300,000. From the relevant laws of physics, biology and statistics, the population distributions per breed and aggregated must be roughly log-normal (because there can't be zero or negative populations of deaf and/or blind dogs and there is a decreasing probability of extremely large populations numbers (such as approaching 100 percent!). Further, in both populations, the conceivable unreported partially deaf and-or blind numbers of dogs within the laws of physics and biology are certainly larger than the respective numbers of persons who joined the Web lists. Not only that, but the one-logsigma deviation value of deaf dogs population must be roughly 300, and the one- logsigma deviation of the blind dogs total was about 200 - because the "left" edge of the distribution is never negative, a crude estimate of sigma for a distribution is obtained by dividing the mean by three (3) or perhaps four.
Typical Causes of blindness and-or partial blindness:
1. Inherited – “flashy coats” genetics. The more common of the DNA mutations were recently identified. The ancient biological origins of genetically caused early and old age blindness and deafness overlap biologically, and began with the origin of those species who owned backbones. Thus the numbers of dogs born with genetic blindness and partial blindness can be reduced but never entirely prevented. The extreme wwhen excessively in-bred for the high risk Flashy coats: 1) Merles and double merles, 2) dapple and double dapple, 3) white-Great Danes and pit-bulls, 4) polka-dotted without patches, et al.
2. Other inherited difficulties, sometimes Breed driven, lead to blindness or partial blindness: glaucoma, cataracts, diabetes, etc.
3. Accidents. A sharp stick fallen from a tree along a familiar path, and a fast squirrel, in combination are fun but on rare occasions cause injuries. Our dog one day as usual vanished into the woods, jumping over brush piles in pursuit of a squirrel, and came back a few minutes later with a bleeding wound at her eye. Eventually, with the skill of our local Animal hospital, she recovered.
4. Medical/medicine Side-effects. ………….
5. Infectious Diseases of various sorts. ……
6. Old-Age (Geriatric): cataracts, pupil-muscle tone loss, near or far-sighted, etc. . ….
We recently, in 2010, begun trying to gather readable information that we hope will be useful for the owners of blind and partially blind, and blind-deaf dogs. Research about their biology, behavior abilities to adapt to blindness for good living, and medical advances have been amazing in recent years. Our efforts are guided by questions, comments, and experience observations of “readers.” Often the contributed observations of the dogs’ owners preceded by years the official publication of research that clarified and explained “exactly” how it was that specific blind dogs achieved surprising abilities to live with great freedom in modern homes with caring people, and even proceeded to compete in public venues against “ordinary” dogs.
[1] Analytical Details: The root-source of the data were the previously mentioned data from Dr Strain, reportedly sponsored by the DCA and AKC [See deaf dogs population page]. From those sources, it was possible to estimate that the total of US deaf and partially deaf dogs was roughly 15,000 or somewhat larger (excluding dead deaf puppies, etc). Knowing from the archives of the pertinent Web list-groups, a lower bound estimate of how many deaf and partially deaf dog owners exist in the US, and their blind dog counterparts; from the comparative size of the deaf dogs list (about 3300), and the blind dogs list (about 5,000); it was possible to estimate that there were roughly twice more blind and partially blind dogs in the US than deaf and partially deaf. The archives showed that comparable fractions seemed to exist where some deaf dogs were blind or partly blind, and some blind dogs were partly or entirely deaf. By rounding off the resulting statistics to the most significant digit (the first one) and then rounding off the ratio of blind /deaf dogs to the most significant (the first) digit logically we got the posted estimate of about twice more blind and partly blind dogs than deaf dogs, so about 300,000. From the relevant laws of physics, biology and statistics, the population distributions per breed and aggregated must be roughly log-normal (because there can't be zero or negative populations of deaf and/or blind dogs and there is a decreasing probability of extremely large populations numbers (such as approaching 100 percent!). Further, in both populations, the conceivable unreported partially deaf and-or blind numbers of dogs within the laws of physics and biology are certainly larger than the respective numbers of persons who joined the Web lists. Not only that, but the one-logsigma deviation value of deaf dogs population must be roughly 300, and the one- logsigma deviation of the blind dogs total was about 200 - because the "left" edge of the distribution is never negative, a crude estimate of sigma for a distribution is obtained by dividing the mean by three (3) or perhaps four.