In the meantime, in case you missed out Yara was the featured “grown up” puppy yesterday at The Daily Puppy website. I am still in a state of awe about her being selected and very touched by all the comments on the post and her profile. And I’m super glad they left in the mention of EPI. Some of those photos they used were from the many photos we had taken at Washington Park and they seem to be quite a hit.

Take care all; will hopefully be back soon with a proper update!

My personal favorite from this last set would be this one below. The look of pure adoration on Yara’s face just melts my heart.

For those of you that aren’t on Facebook, you missed out on the small showcase of favorites I shared that the photographers had picked out and posted on their respective pages. However, I noticed that both of them have added some of the shots they took of Yara and me to the galleries on their websites and given what an awesome job they did I feel the need to link you all over to take a gander at the wealth of pretty. As a note, both of these sites use Flash extensively, so apologies to my fellow screen-reader users.

• Red Cottage Photography — First, my absolute favorite photo is displayed in the slideshow on the homepage. Anyway, under the “Gallery” link our photos are under the “Pets” category. Oh, and it was also mentioned to me that Yara may be featured on their business card!
• Heidi Benjamin Photography — Again our photos are in the “gallery,” click on “hello!” to find them. By the way, that first photo in that category (which was her splash page when I was researching photographers) is pretty much what sold me on hiring her.

I definitely recommend browsing around both of these fine sites. And certainly if you’re local, I would highly recommend either or both of these wonderful photographers without a second’s hesitation. They were truly phenomenal!

Still have to get all the other accompanied intricacies of moving settled — switching Internet service, turning off power, forwarding mail, etc. I feel winded by all that has happened and is still left to do, but mostly I am very relieved.

The facts are these:

• I have paid my rent in full and on time each and every month for the entire 29 months I have resided in my current apartment. You know, the one that I had to call Code Enforcement to get them to fix my collapsing ceiling in
• More times than I can count my landlady has stated that I have NOT paid her rent for a given month. Always, no matter what this is my fault.
• Aside from the initial time she claimed this (see below) I have had the ability to prove that a payment has been made — and often that it has even been cashed. (Initially I was using bank checks and sending them certified and for the last year or more I’ve had a bill pay account set up where I can print out the confirmation of the payment which shows with dates, the debit from my checking account, the USPS tracking the mailed check and (if cashed) a copy of the check).
• The first time she claimed my payment was missing she had in fact cashed it and attributed the payment (allegedly by accident) to another tenant’s account. During this time I was switching banks and had no ability to provide proof the payment had cleared and ended up going to court over the matter because I refused to pay her for the same rent twice.
• The several times beyond this basically fall into the pattern of me sending the payment (via verifiable means) and her calling me anywhere from a week to a month later to claim she hasn’t received it. I send her the proof and do a stop payment (which thankfully my bank doesn’t charge a fee for) and meanwhile she’ll petition me for a court appearance.
• If she hasn’t received the second payment in sufficient enough time, she’ll petition me to appear in court whereupon I get to embarrass her in front of a judge by providing proof I’ve paid her and thus getting the fees waived. I end up losing a day of pay, but mostly I feel smug.
• Rinse and repeat ad nauseum.

So, back in June I get the inevitable “haven’t got a payment for this month’s rent” call. I fax off the bill pay confirmation. She in turn sends me a three day present (which has the wrong amount listed as past due) and while the reissuing of the payment is going through the mail I’m petitioned for court in the beginning of July. I present to her lawyer both the proof of the original payment, the proof of the stop payment and the reissuing of the check AND an authorization for the payment to draft from my account along with August’s rent if she STILL hasn’t received it. In the middle of July she calls and wants confirmation her payment was sent, which I fax over. I catch her receptionist in the apartment building the next day who confirms they got said fax.

Three weeks go by.

This morning the receptionist calls me and is obviously being fed lines by the landlady because she keeps having to put me on hold after every sentence. Anyway, she says that they need a payment for the missing rent (which by the way is a slightly lower amount than the payment I actually sent and supposedly owed – if you’re keeping track this is the third amount quoted to me as owed). In fact, they need this payment by tomorrow morning in the form of a money order because they will be going to the sheriff to file for an evicition.

And the only way I can fight this is by waiting for the evicition notice and bring her to court. At my own cost.

Guess what! It’s all totally legal. Here’s how it works:

The payment is made and sent off. (I can prove this.) Maybe it gets lost in the mail; maybe it’s sitting on my landlady’s desk. Either way the payment isn’t cashed, which means my landlady can claim she has not received it. Without having the payment in their account she can then go to the sheriff and get a Warrant of Eviction on the grounds of non-payment of rent. Once the sheriff hands me that evicition, I can then go off to the town hall and file a court petition of my own and during that court date I can present the judge with my proof of payment.

Or, and this is seeming the less evil of my choices, I can let the bitch evict me and have my lease broken and move out. Given that my lease doesn’t expire until APRIL, I’m giving this option serious thought. Of course, I need an alternate place to live — and so far my only option is my mother’s, which is its own kettle of crazy and somehow looking like it would still be a better option. (Well aside from the actual moving, which I detest.) [EDIT: To clarify, I'm talking about moving back into my previous living situation wherein I rented half of my mother's two-family house. There's a whole story behind that but basically I moved because it was a pita getting back and forth to work.]

So, in short: No, I don’t know what I will do. Mostly, I want to cry at the injustice that is my life. Also, I want to punch people.

In a bit of a change from our daily (good weather permitted) strolls through Washington Park, Yara and I visited Schenectady Central Park today along with Sharon. I’d only ever been there the one time during guide dog training, but I didn’t really see much of the park itself given that everything was under several feet of snow at the time. We wandered around the pond and community pool, which is really just a dammed off part of the pond, and then made our way through the rose garden where the above photo of Yara was taken. More photos are here on Flickr for those interested in pretty roses.

A very happy birthday to Yara, who turns a whole five years old today! \o/

I fully expected her to have no interest whatsoever in this cake, but as you can see she was quite interested this morning as I hacked it into bits in preparation for her to eat it later today. I gave Patty a ring so she could share in the humor of it all, but like any good mom I took some photos. Shockingly the dog who never wants to eat went right for the cake when I set it down:

Some pieces required extra attention, so they got saved for later. “Saved” here meaning they were dropped on the floor. And then promptly distanced from . . . or that could just have been a reaction to me and the camera.

Eventually, Yara decided the best course of action to eat her cake was to take it piece by piece into her crate. Most probably this was her attempt to get me to stop taking pictures . . . so I tried a video instead. (I sound like a five-year-old in it, by the way.) Observe:

She did end up eating the whole portion I gave her, and even cleaned up most of the crumbs she left on the floor. Then came over to snuggle a bit with me. All things considered, I believe turning five was a good day for her.

Lastly, my favorite of all is the photo below of us lying in the grass together. Yara has her leg positioned rather possessively over my left arm, which we all found considerably adorable. It’s taken from behind so the composition of it has me looking off to the side at Mike while Yara is facing forward looking at Lisa. I think it’s a very natural and beautiful shot of us. Especially when one considers that at the time my back was getting assaulted by bugs and the close proximity of Yara had me breathing in her incredibly raunchy breath with every inhale.

I’ll post again when I get the images from Heidi Benjamin, but for now much thanks goes to Cindy Andreassen and Mike and Lisa Dack for their time and expertise!

During our walk this morning through the park I finally managed to grab a rather awesome shot of one of the many ducks that frequent Washington Park Lake. And now we are off to go meet with the photographer and pick up our professional shots from last week. \o/

Since her diagnosis in October 2008, Yara hasn’t had her TLI, folate or B12 levels checked. Her vet just called and informed me that, obviously, her TLI level shows that she’s EPI. But her folate is normal and her B12 is at 228, which while quite lower than normal is still significantly higher than it was when she was diagnosed. Given that she weighted in at 64 lbs, the highest she’s ever weighted, and is doing so well, the vet and I both agree that B12 injections aren’t necessary for her unless she starts exhibiting severe EPI symptoms or drops her weight drastically again.

So, basically, yay!

Yesterday, Yara and I took a stroll through Washington Park accompanied by Cindy and her camera. Cindy would be the fabulous photographer whose handiwork includes a few of these shots of Yara and this rather fetching portrait I used for my holiday card back in 2008. Given Yara’s looming retirement, I really wanted to get in another set of portraits with Cindy and/or Jean. Especially since Yara adores them both to no end and they’ve both been so awesome to us over the years. And while they are some of my personal favorite photos we’ve had taken in the last three years, I wanted to do something very different from the studio shots. So, long story short we walked all around the park and Cindy took a literal ton of candids of Yara and me. And, yes, I promise to share them all as soon as Cindy hands them over. (Probably sometime towards the end of next week.) Sadly, Jean wasn’t able to join us as originally planned, but I think we’re going to try and get some photos of her with the two of us at some point in the near future.

Meanwhile, I actually got a new camera recently and have been attempting to figure out how to use all the new, complicated features. Mostly I’ve been playing, as is plainly evident if you’ve been checking out my Flickr account or the sidebar on this website. Or, well, have even a passing understanding of how I take photos in general! Yara, of course, is the main subject of these “tests” and she’s not exactly thrilled for photos on a good day so you can image how enthusiastic she’s been. Yesterday I played around with the timer burst and got some rather adorable shots of me pestering Yara, who was being a bit naughty and lounging on the sofa uninvited. Behold:

I’m still learning all the ins-and-outs of this new camera — it is far more sophisticated than either of the previous digital cameras I’ve had even though it’s classified as a point-and-shoot. Being totally color blind doesn’t make me especially discerning to the color abnormalities some digital cameras suffer from; mostly I just need a camera with a good sized screen and a nice zoom, which this one has in spades with a 3.0 inch screen (same as my last camera) and a 26x zoom. I have noticed that it tends to lean towards the bright side when taking photos, as opposed to my last camera which seemed to darken everything a tish. It’s especially noticeable on the auto setting and/or if it isn’t properly focused. For now, though, I haven’t any firm judgments.

Anyhoo, on a whole other subject, I put up a post a few days back attempting to visually showcase how the world looks through my eyes. Take a gander if you missed out. And I also think there’s some EDF news to share, but my puppy raiser contact and I are in the midst of some serious phone tag so what the particular news is and how much of it I can share is up in the air at this present moment.

That isn’t to say, however, that I don’t enjoy hearing how things are supposed to look. One of my favorite things is listening to someone describe a sunset to me — my dad in particular has a very vivid way of explaining the colors and how the sky looks. I don’t really get it since I have no perception of color, but it sounds pretty cool. I also have fond memories of listening to another friend of mine who lost her sight at 13 explain things to me that she remembers, like the colors of fireworks.

Anyway, I’ve long since wished there was a way to show others how I see. Achromatopsia is such a strange disorder because in a lot of ways what I do see is quite vivid and what I don’t see is indistinct and generally ignorable. But the difference between those two really depends on how much light there is and what kind of light, too. For instance, a lamp can cause me to loose detail but being outdoors even with the sun behind a cloud will completely blind me because the sky itself is a source of light.

Awhile back a few internet pals of mine posted about this topic and used some fancy photography to trick their cameras into being nearsighted to sort of show how their vision works. (See here and here if you’re so inclined.) I tried to emulate the saturation that light causes my vision by fiddling with exposure levels but couldn’t really get the results I wanted from my camera and so instead I decided to play with Photoshop and the results aren’t so very bad.

The photo on the left is just a greyscaled version, which is pretty much how I see things. I couldn’t tell the difference between the color and the black-and-white because while there is an absence of color there is still a very present definition of contrast. However, on that particular day this photo was taken it was very sunny and the dogs were in the snow, which also messes with my vision, and so the photo on the right is more close to what it would have looked like to me. The image is blurred not because my vision is specifically blurry but because all that light makes the focused image less distinct and harder to make out. If I had been right on top of her or it was less bright out or there wasn’t snow, I may have had a bit more detail and she wouldn’t have been so washed out.

Again, left is a greyscaled version and on the right is slightly more what I see on a sunny day outside. This was taken about a foot from the blossoms, but it was so incredibly sunny that day I couldn’t really see much of what I was shooting. In fact, there’s a bug on one of the blossoms that I only noticed when I uploaded the photo and had it displayed on my computer.

Lastly is a photo from an overcast day on Empire State Plaza, you’ll notice the photo on the right is less saturated than the previous but still there is much degradation of my detail vision. On a day like this I can usually make out more things around me than the random shapeless grey and black blobs that make up my vision outside, but I still can’t see well enough to trust myself without a mobility aid.

I didn’t bother manipulating any photos taken in doors because for the most part they’re much like the greyscaled images above. Generally if the light levels are to a point that I’m having trouble seeing things I turn off lights or close blinds or stop doing whatever it is I’m using my vision for, like reading. If I can, of course. But for the most part, if I’m close enough to something indoors, I don’t have much loss of detail in what I see.

Also, I didn’t bother showing any night photos, but I will say that my vision is very good. Not just because of the low level of light but because that is when the rods (the functioning part of my retina) are meant to be working and as I am so used to seeing minus distinct detail and all I probably could get around even better than most sighted people. I don’t have any distance vision or depth perseption, though, so it’s not like I’d be driving a car. But I can safely walk around without Yara guiding me and make out buildings and other landmarks usually absent to me.

Anyway, it isn’t a perfect representation. But I hope it helped to show you all a bit of what it’s like to see through my poor eyes. ;-)

The Good: Hunter College is a definite go for the spring. Still a bit iffy on whether I’ll be non-degree or fully in the rehab teaching program as yet. [EDIT: Finally talked with an academic advisor and it looks to be that I'll be going non-matric for the spring and applying for entrance into the fall semester of next year.] But application period doesn’t end until October so I’m far from worried. Also, I decided to take some Braille courses through The Hadley School to refresh my skills since I won’t be in class over the fall semester, which just beefs up my application to Hunter that much more.

In Conclusion: I am fully excited and very pleased. I won’t say I’m glad that UALR and UB have made my graduate career a nightmare, but at least things are working out quite well.

I was actually very surprised at how supportive she was. I didn’t really know what to expect, but historically things at work that involve Yara haven’t always been dealt with in the best way by my superiors. Anyway, she seemed to take everything fine and well. Maybe because she had her own little bombshell to drop.

Turns out that there have been complaints about the smell from my area due to Yara. She was quick to affirm that she personally never noticed anything (none of the people near my desk were aware of any odious smells from my area or Yara herself either), but that it had been decided the carpet under my desk would be cleaned as soon as possible. She also wanted to have an air freshener sprayed around daily to help mitigate any lingering odors.

I really don’t even know. But I did mention to her that perhaps this smell that someone is bothered by doesn’t have so much to do with Yara’s lack of cleanliness — which I stressed was unlikely anyway since she’s groomed daily and often sprayed with a coat spray that has a lovely scent of tea tree oil. Rather this might have more to do with the medicated spray she was being dosed with for the sores on her rear end and back legs. I also noted that during the whole of my time at VESID I’d only ever heard such a complaint about my dog stinking one other time and that was in January when she had hot spots — which did smell quite terribly — and was also being medicated with a topical treatment that wasn’t so pleasant on the olfactory sense.

She admitted she hadn’t thought of that. But even though Yara’s healed up from her wounds, the cleaning regimen was already in place and honestly I think they are pretty lazy about cleaning the building anyway so I wasn’t going to make a big fuss about it. I did ask that if they were going to use any scented air fresheners to perhaps only do so on Fridays after I leave so as to limit my exposure to any migraine triggers. Shouldn’t surprise you that suggestion was most agreeable to her. I also told her I’d bring home Yara’s blankets and have them laundered, even though I routinely switch them out every few weeks. Hopefully that will resolve any wayward complaints from random coworkers about any possible smells.

On a sort of related topic, Yara will be off the antibiotics in a few days. Her sores, as I mentioned, are fully healed. I can’t tell if she still has hives, but the steroids seemed to have finally kicked in and relieved the itchiness. She still seems to be sneezing quite a bit, but her nose isn’t all stuffy sounding or drippy. All in all, I think she’s basically on the mend. Fingers crossed that we can get through the rest of our working days with limited interruption in my work schedule because I need all the leave time I can accumulate.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m also reapplying for my next guide dog. Fidelco’s process is pretty simple for graduates and the requirements are quite basic: up-to-date medical forms filled out and submitted and a home interview. I already had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for Wednesday and figure I can have that all sorted then.

The home interview took place yesterday. Sort of randomly at that. I’d taken the day off because of Yara’s eating strike and the fact that my eyes were hurting a lot and I figured I was getting a migraine. By mid-morning I’d convinced her to eat her breakfast and decided to run a few errands with my free day. This required a visit to Crossgates Mall and while I was wandering around I got a call from Dave who was in the area and wanted to know if I was able to work in my home interview.

I had been anticipating a call from Fidelco, but this one took me quite by surprise as I was expecting my interview to be with Mary sometime next week. She and I had talked last week and in fact she was the one who finally helped me ultimately decide to retire Yara. I’m quite familiar with her and as she was planning to be in the area over July 4th weekend had suggested conducting my home interview. Anyway, I told Dave all that and basically expressed some mild confusion as to what to do. In the end, with Mary’s blessing, we all decided the best course of action was to get this all moving as quickly as possible.

And so that was how I found myself at Friendly’s with a kiddie straw feeling a might jittery. I don’t know exactly why, since I’m fully behind my decision to retire Yara. And equally so with getting a new dog. But something about affirming that and having everything, well, just happen is vastly intimidating in some intangible way. I spent most of the time waiting for Dave trying to distract myself with pestering friends via text message. Mostly I think I was just freaking my waiter out with how jumpy I was. He was pretty sweet about it, especially when I briefly explained what was going on and why my nerves were strung so tight.

Anyway, after waiting for about an hour, Dave finally showed up. Turns out he got turned around in the mall and had a bit of trouble locating Friendly’s. He didn’t waste any time and immediately started asking about my reasons for retiring Yara and the specifics of her health issues. He also inquired about my plans for Yara in the interim and post-retirement. To which I affirmed my desire to work her until I have a match, stressing how very much I didn’t want to repeat such a lengthy wait between dogs as I did with Dolly. And I explained my two as-yet-unconfirmed options for Yara’s post-retirement home, noting that I won’t have any specifics for a few months. Yara busied herself with discretely sniffing every inch of him she could reach without moving from her spot camped on my feet. After, we walked back through the mall so Dave could observe us working inside. And then we then drove to my apartment and chatted some more about my needs in a subsequent guide and what would best work for me with training. I gave him the very condensed version of my issues at work with time off as well. Dave seemed fairly confident that a match wouldn’t be available until at least the end of this year, which we both agreed is both good and bad. He’s made many placements in this area during his career and is quite familiar with the harshness of training during winter. Though, he did say that an alternative to taking off two weeks from work would be to start on a Friday after work and train the full nine days following. Thus I would only have to take off one week. Personally that sounds fine and great, but I’m not exactly thrilled about ending a day of work only to train for ten days and then go right back to work the very next day. We’ll see.

When Dave was through taking notes on all this, we headed back outside into the lovely summer day and walked through my neighborhood to Price Chopper and back. I joked to Dave while we were out that with my luck in terms of guide dog training and weather they’ll most certainly call in December/January (when it’s freezing and snowing) or next July/August (when it’s sweltering and humid) because I’ve yet to train in weather this pleasant. Anyway, once we were back home Dave concluded that “[we] look really good together and seem very much in tune.” And that he was sorry that it wasn’t going to work. But he very much understood the reasoning behind the decision and fully supported it.

And that was basically it. Once my medical forms are submitted, my file will be presented to the selection committee and I’ll officially be on the waiting list for my next guide dog.

It’s all a bit much to grasp for me just yet.

On June 17th I started the process to retire Yara and obtain a successor guide dog from Fidelco. It still feels incredibly surreal to me. Many of you who know me off the web and probably a good portion of you who do not but are familiar with service animals and our particular health struggles are most probably not surprised that this has been a decision I’ve mulled over for quite some time. But actually making the final decision and going forward from there was hardly easy. Not that retiring a guide dog is ever easy.

Aside from her health issues, I sincerely have no complaints about her as a guide. I won’t say that she never has a moment of distraction or doesn’t make a mistake now and again, but from that very first day in frigid Schenectady when we took our initial steps together she has always been my partner. I don’t think I can adequately express it in words without sounding like I’m exaggerating or being boastful so you can believe me or not. But so far as I’m concerned, she is without a doubt a wonderful match for me and constantly proves that she’s practically precision in harness. And it is because of these things that retiring her nearly breaks my heart.

One thing that I have mostly kept to myself was how rough that first year was while we tried to diagnosis her weight-loss and assorted health issues. There were days that I would just break down and cry because here I had this amazing working dog, but for whatever reason she was having accidents all over my apartment on a daily basis. I felt like a failure as a guide dog user because I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong that was affecting her so adversely. Worst of all, I felt I was being selfish for wanting to keep her as a guide and cruel for doing so when the reality of it could have been that she just wasn’t cut out to be a guide dog. At least not for me. I was so very near calling Fidelco and begging them to take her back at several points that I remain to this day shocked it didn’t happen. Especially when as I explained once before how she is when she’s being particularly stubborn about not eating.

In fact, it was only a few short weeks before she was ultimately diagnosed with EPI that my paranoia over being the cause of her issues was set to rest. I won’t say that the circumstances were especially ideal, but it was such a relief to voice the fear that Yara was possibly too stressed by the job and have a guide dog instructor calmly reply, “She doesn’t look stressed to me,” without missing a beat. And if my own inner-battle as a competent handler wasn’t enough to drive me towards the idea of giving up on our working relationship, there was also the months of going between Fidelco’s suggestions and my vet’s as to Yara’s health.¹

Somehow, though, I muddled through it because I just kept coming back to the fact that she’s such an awesome guide dog. And, perhaps naively, I felt that things would get better. She would always have EPI, but once she was recovered and back to a healthy weight it would no longer rule my life. Except, it totally does. The fact is I have taken off twice as much sick time from work because of Yara than I have for myself. Rather than call in sick, I went to work all five weeks I suffered from a horrendous viral cold last year because of the pressure from my superiors to not use my paid leave. I’ve gone to work with migraines because I have practically exhausted all of my accruals, which only serves to make the headaches worse through strain and stress. I don’t blame Yara in the least for this, though; she can’t help being sick. But that fact doesn’t make it less frustrating when she stubbornly refuses to eat for days on end and then is sick from not eating and not getting the proper dosage of enzymes in her system.

On top of this she’s also developed some severe allergy issue. My best assumption is that she’s reacting to something at my grandparents’ house, since both of her major attacks have manifested after we’ve spent extended time there. I realized after our most recent trip to the vet that I can no longer risk her health and can’t bring her to my grandparents’ any longer. And the moment that thought passed through my mind, I quite literally had to catch my breath. Many times through the years I have come across two major situations with my guides in terms of taking them places: I didn’t feel comfortable bringing them with me; or, I’ve been told that I can’t bring my dog to such-and-such place. With the first, it’s always been my own initiative to determine this and has more to do with my willingness to subject them to an uncomfortable environment for them (i.e., a loud concert) or me (i.e., a job interview) or a situation where I wouldn’t feel safe working them (i.e., Friday nights during college wherein I’d most assuredly get drunk while clubbing). On the second, I usually find myself responding that I most certainly can and am eagerly waiting for someone to try and argue differently. But never have I been limited by my dog itself in where I could take her. It was with this realization that I came to the conclusion that this partnership isn’t working.

There’s a lot of good, but the few negatives that exist are far too much to handle. If she were a pet, I think I’d feel differently, but because she is a working dog her health issues greatly impact my own ability to use her as a guide dog. I certainly can’t work a dog that is displaying signs of being ill, but as I live alone I have no one else to step in to care for her and I definitely can’t leave her alone for a day while she’s sick. Frankly, I don’t want to not work her and use a cane instead or leave her in someone else’s care since as her handler that really is my responsibility. Still, the fact is that when I made the decision to work with a guide dog I signed on for a healthy animal. The expectation is that the dog will be as dependable as a white cane. And while it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a guide dog will become ill, the reality here is that I have gone above and beyond a bit of give-and-take in this respect. I don’t regret any of that: not the money spent or the time off work or the endless hours stressing myself sick. But it has gotten to a point where I have given as much as I can and it’s time to admit there is no more left. And so, the best alternative is for both of us to move on.

This is a bittersweet event, though, because there are many things I am truly happy about. One, I will be working Yara until Fidelco finds a match for me and as it stands currently the earliest they will call is December.² So, while her retirement is pending, it is still quite a ways off. I plan to soak up as much enjoyment from this fleeting time we have as I can. Two, while there is no firm answer as to where she will go once retired beyond the fact that I am not keeping her³ there are two very viable options for a superb post-retirement home. Either of which will allow for us to remain connected! I’ll natter on that later. Most probably when there is solid news to share. And, third, as difficult as it is to let go of a guide dog, it’s hard to not be excited about getting a new dog. Even if that is still a ways off, I’m still a bit giddy about the prospects of my next guide and making a new friend.

I was going to get into the specifics on the retirement/reapplication process, but this post has gotten a might long, so I’ll save that for a subsequent post. Instead, I want to end this with a very heartfelt thank you to the handful of people who have been “in the know” about this entire situation. I was hardly in the best frame of mind before this became official. I had many qualms about this and a list as long as my arm of questions that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get answered. And without those few ears and shoulders I probably would have shattered into pieces. But just as important was that these same glorious people were around after the decision was made to listen intently to my play-by-play of the most finite details and reassure me. Everyone should be so fortunate to have such a great support system as you. <3

1. I won’t even get into the aftermath of her diagnosis here because just thinking about it sets my teeth on edge.
2. I am not entirely happy about the very real possibility of training during the winter again.
3. Much as I would love to, keeping her as a pet wouldn’t alleviate the issues of her health impacting my life.