Name, age, sex, breed: Stevie the Wonder Dog, 10 months, male, blind pit bull

Owner, city: Jen and Brian, Salt Lake City, UT

How I got my name: Being blind, it made perfect sense to name Stevie after Stevie Wonder, but we originally wanted to give Stevie a serious name with some sort of philosophical or artistic inspiration. However, in those first few days adjusting to our house, he was constantly holding his head up and swaying from side to side in Stevie Wonder style to find out what was nearby. Plus he’s a complete goof ball, so a serious name never would have stuck.

How we met: We foster a couple dogs through a rescue group, UAAF, in Salt Lake City. Last August, they took in three pit bull puppies from the local humane society. The puppies were all blind, likely caused by inbreeding. The humane society planned to put them down because of their disability and the associated medical costs, but luckily UAAF stepped in and rescued them. We met them when we were dropping off our fosters at an adoption event a few weeks later, and the rest is history. If it weren’t for all the hard work of groups like UAAF, a lot of great dogs like Stevie would never have a chance.

Siblings: We have four other dogs in addition to Stevie: a crazy terrier mix and three semi-feral chihuahuas. Two of our chihuahuas are puppy mill rescues that we foster through UAAF. They are available for adoption if anyone is interested. The other was another UAAF adoptee who spent his first three years of life without any exposure to people. While he’s only 11 pounds, he’s taken to bossing Stevie around and keeping him in line by nipping him on the ears.

Personality type: Stevie is probably the happiest dog in the world. He just goes with the flow and lets the good things come to him. He loves meeting people and dogs. There isn’t anyone in the world who he doesn’t like. We’re working on training him to be a therapy dog.

Pet peeves: Stevie isn’t so into baths. He also gets pretty nervous when he encounters steps in new places. Beyond that, he’s game for anything.

Favorite place to lounge: Stevie loves to cuddle in bed, but with five dogs, we can’t let them all on the bed all the time. So he makes due with the sofa.

Favorite foods: Stevie gets excited about pretty much any food. He does not discriminate.

Forbidden indulgences: Stevie is a very enthusiastic garden destroyer. He gets great joy out of chewing up sticks and branches and yanking new plants out of the ground. Also he enjoys chewing up zippers. Why? We’ll never know.

Strangest habits:Stevie loves squeaky toys, but not just chewing them. He starts howling once he hears the squeaky noise. After a minute or so of howling, he’ll go back to chewing, and once he gets a squeak, the howling commences again. It’s a never ending cycle that I’m sure our neighbors just love.

Stand-out physical feature: A lot of people would say his lack of eyes. Stevie’s eyes were so deformed that they would have been an infection risk, so they were removed and sewn shut when he was 8 weeks old. However, he is a beautiful gray color that I think is his best feature.

Things you might not know if I didn’t tell or show you: Stevie loves to run. Give him a wide open space and he’ll show you how happy a prancing pit bull can be.

^{Blind Dog Running from booizzy on Vimeo.}

(Images: Jen Milner)

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