krakenmat

My dog went blind a couple of years ago, and here's a brain dump of what I've learned over that time.

It's going to be hard for your dog. She'll likely be sad, maybe even depressed. She won't understand what's going on, or why, only that it's bad. She will need your love and understanding, even when she's doing things that don't seem to make sense, such as running away because she thinks it's caused by you or your home. Having said that, she also is blessed with whiskers as well as hearing and smell that is way better than a humans. Dogs' eyesight is also much worse that humans'. Our vet told us that normal human eyesight is 20/20 and a normal dog's eyesight is 20/100. That means that we can see clearly (read-ably) at 100 feet, a dog has to be 20 feet away to see. Dogs are also red-green colorblind. Having said that, it will still be the loss of an important sense and she'll take time to adjust. She'll bump into things a lot until she learns to be more careful. Pad anything that is sharp and around her height, like corners on coffee tables etc... You can buy corner pads targeted at parents. Keep your home neat and tidy and consistent. She'll learn where everything is and how to navigate by feel over time, but don't make it harder by leaving baskets of washing, bags, shoes etc in the way. Being able to trust her memory from the last time she walked a particular path will help her to adapt. It took about a year for our dog to stop bashing into things. She does this kind of weaving thing with her head now, using her whiskers to feel for obstacles. She also seems to have learned to turn her head at the last moment to avoid a knock while the rest of her body decellerates.

Provide tactile cues for her. I live in a house and we have a different type of doormat outside each door. I also installed 'bump dots' that they use for providing tactile feedback for vision impaired people at the top of our stairs so that she knows before she's about to fall down them. I saw that article about scent training, but to be honest I think it's probably a waste of time. I believe dogs can smell the differences in each room anyway. If you think about it, you probably can smell the difference between your bedroom and your kitchen, and their sense of smell is 25-50 times better than ours.

Start teaching your dog some new commands for while she's on the leash. We use 'step' to indicate that there's a rough patch like a pothole or speed-bump or something like that, as well as 'step-up', 'step-down' and 'bump' for when she's about to walk into something. We use 'free' to tell her that there are no obstacles nearby and she can trot or run safely. She knows them all now, but to be fair doesn't always seem to listen. I've found saying her name first and giving her time to process the implications helps. I might say 'Lucy, step-up' about five feet before reaching a gutter when crossing the road. She'll then do a silly walk until she finds the gutter.

We found she became much less exploratory and adventurous. She used to like to go new places, but now she prefers to walk the same familiar route. That's OK. She also now loves going places where she can just listen and smell to life going on around her, like a dog-friendly coffee shop. I get the feeling that being out in the world is much more exhausting for her. It seems to take so much concentration to walk down a busy street, even on a leash, that she'll sleep all afternoon after an outing.

Start playing games that rely on sound and smell rather than sight. Our dog loves it when we try to creep around her silently and she has to work out where we are. Our goal is to touch her on the flank. Hers is to touch us with her nose. It's like the kids game Murder in the Dark. You can also play this game in an open outdoor area, but running rather than creeping. We also don't throw a stick any more, but rather throw a succession of rocks into the river. She swims towards the sound of the splashes. We also scatter treats on the floor and say 'find-it' to cue her to use her nose to try and find them.

I highly recommend a coat saying that the dog is blind. We humans are a self-entitled bunch and it's amazing how we expect other people's dogs to get out of our way. I had no idea until my dog went blind. A coat makes it clear to others why she just walks into them and people will give her space on the street now. It also cues other dog owners to more closely monitor their dogs behavior. Just be ready for some people to ask 'so is the dog blind, or you?' while you are looking them in the eyes. I've come to see it as a kind of informal intelligence test. :) . You'll also get succession of 'Awww, how cute'. I'm not sure how being disabled is cute, but whatever.

If you have an iPhone I also suggest getting an airtag for your dogs collar. It gives you the comfort to know that if she does get lost you can find her because it's less likely that she'll be able to find her own way home. We've had to use it a few times now.

I don't think it's fair to put the dog down just because they have gone blind. We don't euthanase humans who are disabled, and it's possible for a disabled dog to still lead a full life. It will mean however that you have to accept your new role as a seeing-eye-person.

Good luck!

I bring up these failings in the west to show that they are not an inherent part of socialism, and using them to dismiss socialism is not correct.

It's not about absence or presence of these failings, it's about the degree of them, and socialism (USSR style) has very serious levels of these failings. Western societies have failings too, but on balance, and on average, they represent a better outcome for the citizens.

| The siege socialism mentality taken on by the Soviet Union did have many negatives for those living in it, including lack of choice in products and lack of freedom of travel.

It's not just about lack of products or the ability to have a holiday in France, it's about the freedom to disagree, the freedom to express your ideas, beliefs and ideals in whatever language you want, or through whatever culture you want, and to expect fairness from those around you. The USSR failed in this and killed, imprisoned or tortured those who did not comply with often toxic cultural norms. It was traumatic for those who had to live through it.

| However as a system it raised the living standards of its people of what once was the backwater of Europe to an actual modern standard in a large part of the country. It did this in spite of its conditions following the revolution, which were much worse than those of the USA, and despite a destructive war fought in its borders which cost millions of its citizens lives.

Russia may have been a backwater of Europe, but other countries it conquered were flourishing and prospering nations (WWII damage notwithstanding). Just look at what those states have achieved since being freed from the USSR. The USSR wasn't some rising tide, it was a huge deadweight on the peoples conquered by the russians. The rush to join NATO demonstrates this. They weren't forced or tricked into joining NATO, they WANTED to join NATO. Think about why that might be? It's because they saw the USSR as such a horrific, traumatic period that they never wanted to be forced to participate in anything like it again. Ever. Period.

| The fact is socialism did work for the USSR, whether or not free market capitalism would have worked for it given its starting conditions is debatable, but I doubt it.

It may have lifted the standards of living for peasant russians further than they might. have otherwise expected, but vassal states were actually held back by the USSR. I'm old enough to remember the USSR, which I suspect you are not. I've spoken with family who were forced to live in the USSR. They disagree with your perspective. Vehemently.

| Ok, so the West Germans and France, who received economic aid from the US who wasn’t ravaged by war, fared better economically than those countries being supported by the Nazi devastated USSR.

You seem to have forgotten that the point that I am disputing is that socialism worked in the USSR. The USSR was offered aid (the Marshall Plan) but refused it. That's on socialism.

The simple truth is that the USSR failed its citizens. Non-russian slave nations would have been much better off being autonomous and free to pursue their own ideals and prosperity. Ethnic Russians....well who knows. It's a messed up culture and that's hard to break free from, but you could imagine a timeline where they dumped the idea that grinding others under your boot heel was the way to success.

| I’ve heard first hand accounts from people from the west who talk about the only way to avoid disproportionate targeting by police and other state actors was to be not black or other minority. Not to mention the institutionalised corruption of over the top corporate lobbying. That’s an absolutely fucked level of corruption too.

This is whataboutism and actually supports my point. Which was, again, was that socialism did not work in the USSR. If the west had all that 'fucked up level of corruption too', then it still out-performed socialism on pretty much all metrics. But regardless, selecting a disadvantaged minority in one country and then trying to create a false equivalence to the majority in the USSR is exactly that, a false equivalence.

| Of course people are happier now than at the fall of the USSR. The collapse of a nation has a massive and in this case negative instant impact on people’s lives. The fact that things if gone up from there is not surprising.

Oh, they were unhappy then! I have family who lived through it, and they HATED being part of the USSR. It was a miserable time of poverty, fear and suffering for them. The USSR was an authoritarian, totalitarian, one-party, state that had Orwellian propaganda, a cult of personality and in which the Russian ethic group had an overbearing sense of racial superiority. The state also carried out repression, torture and purges on scales that were genocidal. All of these traits are common with fascism, but the Russians claim to be anti-fascist. It's odd.

Non-russians much prefer being free and out from the Russian fascist boot heel.

| Black people and Native Americans are still dealing with past and current displacement and discrimination, including a push to eliminate their culture and language. Canada is currently dealing with the results of their very recent genocidal attempts on their First Nations people.

I never claimed that other countries were perfect, I just did a comparison and found the USSR to be severely wanting in terms of whether it worked. I think it's a good thing that First Nations people are finally getting their language, culture and rights recognised and respected. Maybe Russia could contemplate doing the same and leaving the Ukrainians alone; as opposed to, for example, the Russian man who recently THREW A 10 YEAR OLD UKRAINIAN CHILD OFF A BRIDGE for speaking Ukrainian in Germany.

| That 'only a small number of people’s argument really doesn’t wash when you factor in the alternative that is capitalism. The very system that is increasing inequality faster and faster since the fall of its former main ideological enemy. It’s true that light industry in the Soviet Union was underdeveloped, people didn’t have as much choice in things like food products or consumer goods, but they were building from a completely different set of conditions. The ability of the west to produce so much that then gets wasted while still having starving, homeless, and undereducated people living in it is not a ringing endorsement of the system.

I'm not claiming capitalism is perfect, far from it and I think the USA goes too way far the other way. But the point (again!) is that Socialism did not work in the USSR. People suffered, literally starved by the millions, and did not have autonomy, the freedom to speak either their language or their thoughts. People were abducted by the state never to be seen or heard of again, connections to community and land were broken, and countries other than russia were worse off than if they had been free to pursue their own path under a democratically elected government.

If you want to see a state where socialism has worked, look at Norway, not Russia.

| It shouldn’t be surprising that prosperity advanced much more in the already advanced and industrialised west than in a former semi-feudal peasant economy country.

If the Russians wanted to industrialize, then good for them. But they did it off the back of the slave labor of other countries obtained through violent conquest.

Many European countries were decimated in the aftermath of WWII, not just Russia. West Germany, case in point. The West Germans had it significantly better than the East Germans under socialism. France had it better than Poland under socialism. etc... Socialism made peoples lives miserable.

To whit: 85% of Poles think positively of the change to a multiparty system and market economy. 85% and 83% (respectively) of East Germans. 82% and 76% of Czechs. 70% and 69% of Lithuanians. 74% and 71% of Slovaks. The only people who see it as a negative are the Russians. Go figure.

| Also, corruption and lying? That isn’t specific to the USSR.

True, but I never claimed it was. It's about degree. I've heard first hand stories from former soviet residents of how the only way to get a doctor to treat you with anything more than an asprin was to bribe them. That's an absolutely fucked level of corruption. The idea that that sort of corruption existed in the west at the same time is laughable.

| People are and were miserable in the west too.

Claiming that there are some miserable people in the west misses the point. There are miserable people everywhere, but what % of the population are they?

Research (you know, data), shows that people in South Eastern Europe, Central Eastern Europe and the Baltic states are significantly happier than they were at the fall of the USSR. The only region where this is not true for all countries in the region is the former CIS, which surprise, surprise, includes Russia.

| cultural genocide was and is happening in the west too

Where? Show me a country in the west where your mother tongue is banned? Show me a country in the west where you can be sent to prison for practicing your cultural rituals (assuming you aren't hurting others ofc)? Don't compare the mixing of cultures due to increased levels of mobility and the internet to Russiafication, because that's bullshit.

| socialism worked well for the USSR. It was able to heavily industrialize, house populations, create a space program and compete with the USA on the international stage.

Socialism worked well for a small number of people and only compared to the rest of the soviet bloc. Gorbechev ordered his motorcade to stop at some random small supermarket in the USA to see what it was really like and was initially convinced it was some elaborate CIA setup because he couldn't believe that the average American had access to a wider range of high quality produce than the party elite in the USSR. American's weren't special in that regard. Everyone in the west had the same. Occupied countries would have been just fine with industrialization and housing their populations. All the USSR did from your list was create a space program which did almost nothing for the average person of the USSR, and it was so inept that Vladimir Komarov insisted on an open-casket funeral to force the point.

| Socialism worked in Russia:

Bullshit. Prosperity advanced much more in the west than in the Soviet Union, or anywhere in the soviet bloc. Corruption was rampant. Lying was rampant. People were miserable. Cultural genocide was the name of the game. Subjugated people hated it, and have fared significantly better since getting out. The only people who seem to be nostalgic about the USSR is the Russians, because they lost the ability to benefit from the slave labor of conquered vassal states.