Happy Holidays!
Wishing you and yours a very safe and joyful holiday season!
[Photo courtesy of the wonderful Megan, our Fidelco instructor.]
Yara and I have a busy schedule through the holidays, starting off with my uncle’s wedding this afternoon at The Belvedere Mansion. Which is to say, we’ll probably be rather absent for a bit; but fear not, we promise to be back in the new year with many a witty post and adorable photo. :)
W00T!
Today is a momentous day because Yara ate all of her breakfast this morning!
That is all.
“This must be what going mad feels like.”
I think Yara is trying to drive me insane tonight. She’s fine so long as she’s not anywhere near the front door. She’ll lay quietly and chew on a bone or contentedly bat a toy around or even snuggle up close to me. But the second she gets up for any reason she inevitably heads for the front door; where she camps out and starts up that obnoxious whining thing of hers. Literally, I’ve gone to fetch and distract her away from the door six separate times tonight.
Oddly, the whining isn’t even the thing that bugs me the most, it’s the camping out by the front door because she starts growling and barking at anything she thinks is on the other side. It’s really just the worst habit to let her get into, especially as a guide dog.
I think it’s a loosing battle, though.
Just Say No (to Distractions)
There are a fair number of things people have done to me and/or my dogs that are greatly annoying. People pet the dog even when I very politely request they not. Some try and feed her1 regardless of my pleas. Others still are just plain rude or inconsiderate. However, in my very humble opinion, the most unacceptable thing to ever do to a guide dog is to distract her while she is very evidently working. I’m all too used to explaining how much “work” it is for a dog to be calm and merely sit or lie down at my feet, but I really think it’s rather obvious what a guide dog is doing when walking with a blind person in harness!
Today, for the second time in my years working with a guide dog, I had a person stoop down and pet my girl as I was in the middle of crossing a street. Both times I’ve wished we were in a less dangerous and busy place so I could share a few choice pieces of my mind. Probably it’s been a good thing all around that I haven’t. Yet, it hardly changes the fact that I think of such a heinous thing to be right up there with suddenly clapping one’s hands over the eyes of a person driving a vehicle. It’s literally that amount of stupid and unsafe.
You could say these people were not thinking or that they were just ignorant of proper guide dog etiquette. I agree and yet I don’t. Was I the only little girl taught not to go up to strange dogs I don’t know and pet them? I think not.
1. One of the most appalling examples occurred while I waited for a bus. A woman walked by us finishing off a barbecued chicken wing and tossed the bone to Dolly. Thankfully, a friend was with me and retrieved the bone before my girl could potentially choke on it.
Introspective Thoughts
As the only somewhat interesting thing I can report on regarding Yara is that she’s spent the whole morning in my office driving me insane with the whining thing, I thought I’d instead bore you with my ramblings write about some things that have recently been on my mind.
Nearly two years passed from the day I retired Dolly until Yara arrived here and I’ve done a lifetime’s amount of thinking on the subject of guide dogs. Specifically the decision to obtain a successor to Dolly. While there may remain debate on the soundness of me having a guide dog amongst some of my family and friends, I maintain that the pros far outweigh the cons.
I have said it time and again, though not nearly enough, how profound it is to have a guide dog. It’s relatively obvious to most that the decision to use a guide dog over other mobility aides can be, and is, quite life-changing. Having a pet, dog or otherwise, may help you to properly care for a guide dog. Being a parent certainly compares with the amount of responsibility it would be. But unless you’ve experienced it, truly you will not be able to understand how incredibly unique such a thing is. No other relationship that exists comes as close to the amount of trust there is between blind handler and guide dog. How easy it is to watch a guide dog team cross a street, yet the level of give-and-take there is in simply picking up that harness handle, saying “forward,” and stepping off the curb.
During the years I worked with Dolly, I often times would try to explain to friends and family how intense the bond was between us. I was so in tune with her that even in the deepest sleep I would know if she moved even slightly. I used to joke that I was more consciously aware of her when she wasn’t around than when she was. She was like an extension of my own left arm in some respects.
While I was at Guiding Eyes, a classmate once lamented to me that he felt your first dog was the most special, “She’ll be the dog you hold dearest in your heart; the one whom you compare every other dog to.” At the time, I thought that meant that Dolly would be “the best” guide dog I would ever have. Looking back, I realize that isn’t necessarily what he meant and neither is it true for us. Surprisingly, I readily admit Dolly was not the most upstanding guide dog. However, she will remain a fixture in my life because of all the things she taught me. Mostly, she taught me about myself and truly that is a wonderful thing.
I find it rather ironic that some of the things I find most satisfying about our nearly eight years in a working partnership are exactly those things many people would cite as the drawbacks of guide dog use. There is no denying that walking in public with a guide dog is pretty much a blinking neon sign of a blind person and while there are a few people who find such scrutiny loathsome, I found it more to be a burdensome weight lifted off my shoulders. Granted, it’s easier to ignore people gawking at you when, frankly, you can’t seem them; still, for so long I had felt ashamed of my own blindness and sought any method possible to not draw attention to it.1 I gained a confidence about my own self that I never realized I’d been lacking. I learned the true meaning of advocating for myself when denied rights I was entitled to. But most of all, I discovered my truest and best friends. It still boggles my mind that people I thought were so dear to my heart ended up being so terribly shallow; at the time it nearly crushed me, but I soon learned that I was better off as they never had been sincerely my friends.
I could go on far longer about all this, but sadly there is much else to be done today so it will have to keep for another time.
1. Truthfully, I think I only made more of a spectacle of myself and in the end only made it more difficult for those close to me to understand how limited my vision actually is.