【英文原文1】
The Eyes of TEX
Eric Seal thought the scrawny puppy a t his feet was perhaps five weeks old.Some time during the night,the little mixed-breed female had been dumped at the Seals’ front gate.“Before you ask,”he told Jeffrey,his wife,“the answer is an absolute no。We are not going to keep it.We don’t need another dog.When and if we do,we‘ll get a purebred.”As though she hadn’ t heard him,his wife sweetly asked,“What kind do you think it is?”Eric shook his head.“It’s hard to tell.From her color markings and the way she holds her ears in a half lop,I ‘d say she’ s part German shepherd.”“We can’t just turn her away,”Jeffrey pleaded.“I’ll feed her and get her cleaned up.Then we‘ll find a home for her.”
Standing between them,the puppy seemed to sense that her fate was being decided.Her tail wagged tentatively as she looked from one to the other.Eric noticed that although her ribs showed through a dull coat,her eyes w ere bright and animated.Finally,he shrugged his shoulders.“Okay,if you want to fool with her,go ahead.But let’ s get one thing straight:We don’t need a Heinz-57mongrel.”The puppy nestled comfortably in Jeffrey’ s arms as they walked toward the house.“One other thing,”Eric continued.“Let’s wait a few days to put her in the pen with Tex.We don’t want Tex exposed to anything.He has all the troubles he can handle.”
Tex,the six-year-old cattle dog the Seals had raised from a puppy,was unusually amiable for a blue-heeler,a breed establish ed by ranchers in Australia.So,although he already shared his doghouse with a yellow cat,soon Tex happily moved over and made room for the new puppy the Seals called Heinz.
Not long before Heinz showed up,the Seals had noticed that Tex appeared to be losing his eyesight.Their veterinarian said he thought the dog had cataracts that might be surgically removed.But when they brought Tex to a specialist in Dallas,he determined that the dog’s poor eyesight was only partially due to cataracts.He made an appointment for Tex at the local college’s veterinary laboratory.Doctors there determined that Tex was already blind.They explained that no medical or surgical procedure could have halted or delayed Tex’s progressive loss of vision.