The little maskless heeler, who had been acting so dejected ever since I got home, perked up and dashed to the front door.

The way she does when the wife comes home from work.

It was the wife. And the masked sister.

And I knew immediately this would not be good.

And it wasn't.

The vet first pointed it out a couple years ago. Cataracts, in the masked heeler's eyes. Kinda young for those to show up, but, as you might see from any old images of her in here, her eyes have always been different. A bright, wide-open green glow in the dark or a flash, even when her sister's and mother's were not.

"We can take care of those now, you know," he advised. Remove the cataracts, just like with humans.

Ooookay. When it gets too bad, we'll be back.

This past year, we started noticing her having trouble seeing things. Particularly at night. Then, this spring, she started staring at trees that did not have squirrels in them. Listening in vain for the scratching of their toenails on bark.

Cats and rabbits run across the road, and both heelers are up on the dash. But only the little one actually tracked the prey across the road. Her sister just staring ahead excitedly. The little maskless one picks out an antelope walking slowly by, a half mile away, and her sister sees nothing.

Few weeks back, she ran into the clotheline pole in the back yard, while escorting the wife at night to move a sprinkler. Several times this spring, while loading into the truck in the dark and early, she jumped into the side of the seat and fell back out. Unable to see where the bench was.

More than once she has stared up the stairs in the dark, waiting for me to carry her up to the lights above.

Last week I watched them on a drag race, and noticed the little maskless heeler made the usual barks to announce it was time to turn around and race back to the truck. But she did it just moments before they ran out of road.

She turned her sister before she could get hurt. She's her sister's seeing eye dog.

Last week, on the burn tour, the heelers accompanied us up into an aspen stand, looking at fire response and beaver activity. The tree guy, after commenting on the masked heeler literally following on his heels, looks at me in disbelief when I tell him she's going blind. This as she bounds happily through sage and over logs.

And then stumbles face first into the dirt because she didn't see a minor dip in the ground.

Time to get her eyes fixed.

But nope, the vet doesn't do that anymore. To quote him, the operations they did were not as successful as they should have been.

Best hope is my old Alma Mater, at the veterinary training school, four hours away. Appointments available this week, or not until well into September.

So, while I spent today on the Res, learning the latest research on sage grouse, the wife took the masked heeler down for her pre-surgery examination. With surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning, then a followup appointment on Friday. With luck, they'd be back just in time to say goodbye to youngest son on his way to university Friday afternoon.

And now, here they are.

Wife breaks into tears as she tells me.

They've had six heelers in for cataract surgery so far this year, and haven't operated on even one.

The cataracts are there, but they're not the problem.

Her retinas are degenerating. Blood flow is inadequate, and the retinas, the inside linings of her eyes, are dying. First to die are the rods, hence the loss of night vision. Then the cones, and blindness.

It's congenital.

It's inevitable.

There is no treatment.

The masked heeler will go blind. She's already well on her way.