Aiden Mann, Instagram
The last several weeks have been pretty rough on everyone. We are all so desperate for something new to happen, something good to jolt us out of the doldrums that self-isolation and fear of the unknown have wrought upon us. Well, today, at least for a few minutes, we’ve got just the thing.
A guy named Aiden Mann is causing tears to well up in the eyes of millions of people this week thanks to the absolutely heartwarming story of him and his 10-month-old pup, an Australian shepherd named Plum.
You see, Plum is deaf and blind so when one of his co-workers who was fostering her was looking for someone to adopt Plum, many people would have declined due to the pup’s obvious limitations and the extra effort it would take to care for her.
Aiden was not one of those people.
“I got Plum July of 2019. She was 6 months old and just the sweetest pup,” Aiden told Bored Panda. “My coworkers work with a lot of rescues and were fostering her and her brother, and I was trying to find homes for them. When she brought Plum to work, I immediately loved her and wanted her.”
Easy to see why…
“She was just a happy pup and I knew Lola (my other dog) and I would make a great home for her,” Aiden added. “It wasn’t really a hard decision to make, she deserved a loving home and a happy life.”
One of the issues Aiden had to sort through was how could he wake Plum up without scaring her since she couldn’t hear him or see him.
“The biggest struggle was probably learning to communicate and learning what works and doesn’t,” said Aiden. “No dog is the same, so what works for my dog may not work for another. So it was a lot of trial and error until we were both on the same page.”
If he touched her while she was sleeping Plum would become very startled. If he left snacks under her nose she would still wake up alarmed.
So then he tried the most peaceful way he could think of to wake up Plum: by gently blowing on her nose.
“Then she wants all the love. Daddy’s here, and always will be,” he wrote in a caption on the video.
“It took a little for her to memorize the house, get used to the way things were set up, and get used to the way we did things,” said Aiden. “Her and Lola got along right away and Lola quickly became her ‘safety blanket’.”
Aiden says that even with her disabilities, Plum “lives life to the fullest and is still such a happy dog.”
Of that, there is little doubt.
What a very, very good girl she is!