User:M McLean/sandbox

Validating my dog and making her photo appropriate
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Potential Subject:
"Dogs having one eye." Alas, this does not exist as an appropriate subject in Wikipedia.

Potential questions to be explored in relation to this subject:

 * Abilities of one-eyed dogs: Is it possible that having one eye enhances some abilities? (I'm thinking here of Ripley's seemingly exceptional ability to track balls in darkness when compared with the two-eyed dogs of her acquaintance)? Are there some impairments to certain abilities that arise from having one eye? I'm thinking of Ripley's difficulty, in comparison to other dogs in my life, with curling up and flopping down in one spot - it takes her many times longer, and she is oddly awkward for such an athletic and graceful dog.

Here is one of the places I've been able to get anecdotal information. Interestingly, there is a thread where one-eyed cats are discussed, and this was the first time I found someone else talking about a pet who is startled when people come up on her no-eye side. http://www.petforums.co.uk/threads/one-eyed-dogs-animals.278869/
 * Are there effects on temperament? Here I'm thinking of Ripley's crankiness and occasionally snapping when approached suddenly from her no-eye side.

Here is a link to video of Dudley, having one eye, competing in agility at Crufts. I put it here not for some kind of "wow" factor, but simply because it would have been great to know, before Ripley started agility training, that there are dogs who are doing this and loving it, and also I think they say somewhere in the video that Dudley ran the course backwards - this would have been great to know since our trainers had no idea about accommodations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTUMtFPS084
 * What about training? Ripley is an exceptional athlete, but performing in agility competition is limited by the course layouts, which assume both humans and dogs have two eyes working. She is a dog who adores going to school, but there have been a few other times when there was a training challenge posed by her one-eyedness.


 * What about potential health concerns? When we adopted Ripley our amazing vet had no information for us about caring for her eye socket, which had some discharge at the time, and which we were a little intimidated by. It would be useful to know what are legitimate health concerns and what are measures taken by pet owners, supported and enacted by some veterinarians, for "cosmetic" reasons.

The Journey to Appropriateness
Here are the steps that I pursued trying to find out if I might submit a photo of Ripley to Wikimedia with the goal of increasing the visual record of dogs having one eye and potentially challenging narratives about dogs and dogness.

1. I Find photo of a dog having one eye in WikiMedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:One-eyed_Dog..jpg Uploaded 2014. Categories: “Diseases and disorders of the eyes in dogs”; “Unidentified dog colours”;  “Dogs of China”.

2. Go to “Diseases and disorders of the eyes in dogs” in Wikimedia Commons. There are 45 photos of dogs and their eyes, diseases and disorders include glaucoma, cysts, a prolapsed gland, issues with cornea and lenses. There is the photo of the dog from above, who does not seem to have any disorder or disease of the existing eye.

3.I also find another photo of a dog with one eye, seemingly not diseased, and an eye socket that does not look damaged or injured in any way.

4. I see that the dog above in (3) appears on three wiktionary sites!!! https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/jednooki#pl Uploaded 2009. Categories: "Miniature Pinschers", "jednooki" This dog photo shows up on other web sites, the first is titled jednooki. I use the "translation" feature (yay me!) to learn that jednooki means “one, which has one eye,” and that it is a synonym for “half-blind”. There is nothing more on the wiktionary site - just the photo of the dog, the term jednooki, and its synonyms. The same site has been published in Greek and Swedish.