Standing between them, the puppy seemed to sense that her fate was being decided. Her tail wagged tentatively as she looked from one to the other. Eric noticed that although her ribs showed through a dull coat, her eyes were bright and animated. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, if you want to fool with her, go ahead. But let's get one thing straight: We don't need a Heinz-57 mongrel." The puppy nestled comfortably in Jeffrey's arms as they walked toward the house. "One other thing," Eric continued. "Let's wait a few days to put her in the pen with Tex. We don't want Tex exposed to anything. He has all the troubles he can handle."
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Eric Seal thought the scrawny puppy at his feet was perhaps five weeks old. Some time during the night, the little mixed-breed female had been dumped at the Seals' front gate. "Before you ask," he told Jeffrey, his wife, "the answer is an absolute no. We are not going to keep it. We don't need another dog. When and if we do, we'll get a purebred." As though she hadn't heard him, his wife sweetly asked, "What kind do you think it is?" Eric shook his head. "It's hard to tell. From her color markings and the way she holds her ears in a half lop, I'd say she's part German shepherd." "We can't just turn her away," Jeffrey pleaded. "I'll feed her and get her cleaned up. Then we'll find a home for her."
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Tex, the six-year-old cattle dog the Seals had raised from a puppy, was unusually amiable for a blue-heeler, a breed established by ranchers in Australia. So, although he already shared his doghouse with a yellow cat, soon Tex happily moved over and made room for the new puppy the Seals called Heinz.
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Not long before Heinz showed up, the Seals had noticed that Tex appeared to be losing his eyesight. Their veterinarian said he thought the dog had cataracts that might be surgically removed. But when they brought Tex to a specialist in Dallas, he determined that the dog's poor eyesight was only partially due to cataracts. He made an appointment for Tex at the local college's veterinary laboratory. Doctors there determined that Tex was already blind. They explained that no medical or surgical procedure could have halted or delayed Tex's progressive loss of vision.
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As they talked on their way home, the Seals realized that over the last few months, they had watched Tex cope with his blindness. Now they understood why Tex sometimes missed a gate opening or bumped his nose on the chain link fence. And why he usually stayed on the gravel walkways traveling to and from the house. If he wandered off, he quartered back and forth until he was on the gravel again.
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While the couple had been preoccupied with Tex's troubles, Heinz had grown plump and frisky, and her dark brown-and-black coat glowed with health.
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"On sunny days, Tex sleeps stretched out on the driveway asphalt," says Jeffrey. "If a car approaches, Heinz will nudge him awake and guide him out of danger. Any number of times we've seen Heinz push Tex aside to get him out of the horses' way. What we didn't understand at first was how the two could run side by side, dashing full speed across the pasture. Then one day, the dogs accompanied me while I exercised my horse, and I heard Heinz 'talking', she was making a series of soft grunts to keep Tex on course beside her."
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Each evening when the dogs settled in for the night, Heinz gently took Tex's nose in her mouth and led him into his house. In the morning, she got him up and guided him out of the house again. When the two dogs approached a gate, Heinz used her shoulder to guide Tex through. When they ran along the fence surrounding their pen, Heinz placed herself between Tex and the wire.
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It was then they recognized that what they had assumed was puppy playfulness -- Heinz's pushing and tugging at Tex while romping with him -- actually had a purpose. Without any training or coaching, Heinz had become Tex's "seeing eye" dog.
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The Seals were awed. Without any training, the young dog had devised whatever means were necessary to help, guide and protect her blind companion. It was clear that Heinz shared more than her eyes with Tex; she shared her heart.
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It was soon obvious that the little German shepherd crossbreed would be a large dog -- too large to continue sharing a doghouse with Tex and the yellow cat. One weekend, the Seals built another doghouse next to the one the dogs had shared.
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