Fate Brought Us Together

I believe in fate and have believed in it for many years. Fate has been a guiding factor in my life, especially very recently. A couple of years ago, I started working on a deaf couple; she is hard of hearing and he is completely deaf. Initially, I was very nervous to spend time with him because I had so many questions about deafness and when I’m unsure of something, I get nervous about it. Anyhow, I would meet with him, Ronnie, twice a week and our communication was in writing. I would write everything and he would have to write back to respond; how was he doing, did he have any body pains/issues I should work on, and also stuff about his social life. It got to be really frustrating, not only for me but for him as well. So I made a decision to sign up to learn American Sign Language at the Rochester School for the Deaf (RSD) and my classes were scheduled to start April 14th, 2009. About a week before my classes started, I felt an urge compelling me to get on my computer and look at puppies on a website called Puppyfind.com . At this point in my life, I had absolutely no interest in having a dog. I liked my life the way it was and I didn’t want to be bothered with raising a puppy, no matter how cute it was! But something still pulled me to the computer to look at this website. When I opened it up, I did a search for puppies in New York – I definitely wouldn’t want a puppy that I had to drive too far for or would have to have it shipped it to me! I remember a few puppy profiles showing up on the screen and I scrolled down through them until this one caught my eye. He was almost all white with a big black spot on the left side of his nose – it kinda looked like a booger! His left ear was flipped back in the photo exposing his pink flesh inside… and his eyes were as blue as the sky! He was adorable and pathetic looking at the same time. I opened up his profile to find out that the breeder was looking for a very special family to raise him because he was deaf. Aww… My heart immediately went out to him and I started crying… I had never heard of a dog being deaf. It seemed like an outrage that this could even happen to a dog or any pet for that matter. I wondered how does one even relate to a deaf dog…? I immediately opened up my browser and did a search for how to raise a deaf dog and loads of information popped up! I couldn’t believe there was so much available on this topic. It made me wonder just how many deaf dogs are there??

What I found out surprised me… You train a deaf dog with hand signals and American Sign Language… the very thing I was to start learning the following week. I absorbed as much information as I could in a couple of hours and when Steve came home that day from work, I told him about the puppy I found and I explained that this dog was meant to be mine… Fate literally drew me to him.