Have Dog, Will Travel Read online

  I should say it’s quite likely she’d have fallen into the trash without my help, as she was always unsteady on her feet, drunk or sober.

  The can tipped over as she fell and the lid popped off and together she and the can had a rendezvous and there she was, covered with mire and ashes and waving the pruning scissors and howling. She’d bruised her elbow. I was the inciting factor. In the weeks that followed I was the one who ruined her elbow.

  * * *

  With three months to go before guide-dog school I decided to attend Al Anon meetings. I wanted to be new both inside and out. An offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous, Al Anon is designed to help the families of drunks. A group of strangers, seven of us, sat around a scarred table in a community center in downtown Ithaca. There were coffee cups at hand and ashtrays.

  A woman in her late seventies named Margaret, who’d once been an Atlantic fisherwoman and radiated competence, spoke up and recited lines from Ephesians:

  “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice . . .”

  Margaret looked up from her Bible and said, “Now ain’t that the truth!”

  We laughed. Everyone at that table had once lived with or was still living with a drunk. Each had bargained meager coins of the psyche while living with a dramatic, angry, and addicted person and often more than one of them.

  Margaret’s former husband was also a fisherman and a boisterous drunk who once stole a trolley filled with passengers when the motorman stopped to take a leak.

  “The cops chased that streetcar for blocks while Bert sang filthy songs and demonstrated uncommon driving skills. They finally cut off the electricity and cornered him. Some people said it was the best ride they’d ever had.”

  That was the thing. We all agreed. Drunks are vivid, manipulative, and dramatic. They can convince you of anything.

  Until being convinced becomes your job.

  So I told them about my blindness and how I’d lived according to my mother.

  Margaret and I reckoned that Bert and my mother would get along famously. Both believed in swashbuckling with whiskey and believed mind over matter makes the world go around.

  It was Margaret who said what should have been obvious: If I wasn’t blind then my mother wouldn’t have anything to feel guilty about. Moreover, if I wasn’t blind, if I never actually went anywhere, then I could look after her.

  “It’s the old love-hate dance all drunks waltz to,” she said. “Alcoholics love their own guilt,” she added. “It gives them reasons to keep drinking.”

  Chapter Five

  Four months had passed since Dave See’s visit. It was early March and snow was falling as I arrived at Guiding Eyes for the Blind in suburban Westchester County, a forty-minute drive north of New York City.

  Though my vision wasn’t seriously reliable, I noticed the pleasant grounds with old trees, a white colonial house, and a neat brick dormitory. Nearby stood a veterinary hospital. Guiding Eyes looked like a small community college.

  “You must be Steve,” someone said as I stepped from the airport shuttle. “I’m Linda,” she said.

  “Welcome. I’m one of the trainers.”

  “Great,” I said. “Is it okay if I admit I’m kind of nervous?”

  “Well the dogs never bite,” she said, laughing, “but you never know about the trainers.”

  “C’mon,” she said, “I’ll show you to your room.”

  As we walked Linda asked questions about my type of blindness. There are hundreds of blindnesses and no two people experience vision loss the same way. Linda was asking “How is it for you?”

  “It’s like I have Vaseline in my eyes,” I said. “Up close, pressing my nose on a printed page, I can read large print—but only with one eye.”

  “You know there are so many variants of the low vision–no vision experience,” Linda said. “I’m amazed by every blind person who navigates this planet.”

  It was such a simple thing to say and yet I was truly warmed. There we were, the two of us simply standing in a dormitory hallway and for the first time in my life someone had affirmed what it was like to be me. I’d been in the building sixty seconds.

  I remembered John Prine’s great folk song about aging—“Hello In There.” A person who didn’t know me was acknowledging my existence.

  My room had a dog crate and a wall-mounted radio with oversized tactile buttons. There was a back door that opened onto a cement sidewalk where we’d be relieving our dogs when the time came. “The dogs have been trained to do their business on cement,” Linda said.

  Linda then left me to unpack. She said students and trainers would meet together in one hour. I thanked her and after she left I wrote a few lines in my journal:

  March 1, 1994:

  I have an hour to kill before the first group meeting.

  This is a good time to think about trust . . .

  Trust probably has something to do with luck—as in, making peace with it . . .

  I’ve grown up not thinking of luck. Like most Americans I’ve imagined I’ll get ahead by thinking my way forward.

  I think this might be a place where people know a lot about trust.

  * * *

  Before arriving at guide-dog school I actually thought I’d be handed a dog who knew some commands and that would be it. It would be simple. Looking back, if I’d known how much my life was about to change I might have experienced some apprehension. I was going to be enlarged in several ways. All I knew for sure on day one was that I’d made a commitment.

  At our first group meeting I saw we were old and young, American and Israeli, men and women, northern and southern. Some of us were kids straight out of high school. We were black and white, Latina. One of us was very tall. Four of us had already had a guide dog. The rest were newbies. Everyone was chatting. The simmer of talk was pleasing.

  We were Tina, Mike, Aaron, Joseph; we were Harriet, Doug, Constance, Sally; Jeff, Anna, Bill, and Steve. The trainers were Linda and Kylie and Hank and Brett. We were drawn together not just by blindness but also because training with a guide dog is about the future.

  Linda called the meeting to order.

  She said: “Let’s talk about dogs. Let’s talk about how tomorrow is going to unfold.”

  “Oh boy, dogs!” someone said. Everyone laughed.

  Linda turned to trainer Kylie and said, “I don’t know, do you think we have any dogs here?”

  “I think I saw one,” Kylie said.

  “Probably a stray,” Linda said.

  “Okay, jokes aside,” said Linda, “tomorrow, we’ll ask each of you to take a walk with us. The trainers will pretend to be guide dogs. Our goal is to get a sense of your walking gait, your speed, and what kind of pull is comfortable for you.”

  She explained there were multiple dogs “in waiting”—dogs “all trained up” and ready to go.

  There were twenty-four dogs for twelve students.

  “Just as no two human beings are alike, no two dogs are the same,” Linda said.

  “Part of a trainer’s job is match-making,” she said, “knowing which dog will fit each and every one of you.”

  “In the morning we’ll walk the grounds of the school. Trainers will move fast and pull the front end of a dog harness, and you’re going to hold the handle and pretend you’re walking a real guide dog.”

  I wasn’t sure what I thought about walking around with a “pretend” guide dog. Somehow it seemed embarrassing, oddly performative, but my comfort wasn’t as important as my safety, and ultimately getting the right dog. This much I knew.

  * * *

  At eight the next morning I stood beside a fountain with Kylie, who was ready to be my dog. I was going to walk a harnessed woman around a parking lot.

  Once, in college, a friend persuaded me to help him walk about in a donkey suit. We were going to perform at a children’s fair. My job was to hold up the back end. “It would be perfect,” my friend said. I d
idn’t have to see, just keep myself upright. Of course the problem was my friend couldn’t see either. The eye slits kept shifting. We stumbled into a trash can. We walked over a beach blanket and broke a toy. I grasped my friend’s arm. He staggered. I laughed so hard I fell out of the donkey and lay on the grass. “Look,” someone said. “The donkey has given birth to an idiot!”

  I thought, “Okay, I can be the back-end fool.”

  “When I’m a good dog you’re going to tell me,” said Kylie. “When I’m a bad dog you’re going to give me a correction with this leash.” She showed me the leash.

  “How will I know when you’re a bad dog?” I asked.

  “I’ll stop when we’re supposed to be walking because I want to sniff the grass,” she said. “Or I’ll veer off the path.”

  “And what do I do with the leash?”

  “You’re going to give it a tug and you’re going to say ‘no, hup up!’ ”

  “Hup up?”

  “Yes, hup up.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It’s an old guide-dog command, it tells your dog to refocus.”

  “Kind of like a reset button?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Does it mean anything else?” I asked.

  “Yes, it can mean it’s time to go faster.”

  She went on to explain that when she stopped for curbs or steps I should praise her. For the purpose of the exercise her imaginary dog name was “Juno.”

  “All the guide-dog schools use the name Juno for this exercise,” she said. “There’s no real guide dog named Juno.”

  “Juno,” I thought, “Roman goddess of war, fertility, and youth.” It was one of those throwaway thoughts. Juno. Juno. Make me young.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s go.”

  We walked and Kylie pulled with steady force—“a real guide dog,” she said, “will pull. They’re not like pets trained to heel. The pull allows your dog to have fluid movement as you’re walking. She’ll see an obstacle and guide you around it without breaking stride. You’ll also learn during training that the pull creates a trust factor.”

  “Yes,” I thought. “Trust. My weakest area.”

  “Good dog, Juno!” I said as Kylie stopped at a curb.

  “Now you’re going to tell her to go forward,” Kylie said.

  “Juno, forward,” I said.

  Off we went. We veered and zigged and zagged—I said “hup up” when Kylie turned toward a flower bed. We recommenced our little journey.

  When our Juno walk was over Kylie said I had a good handling technique. I had no idea what this meant. She also said I was a speedy walker.

  That night I wrote in my journal:

  Can trust be taught? Is trust related to embarrassment? Maybe I should have risked more embarrassment in my life?

  Tomorrow is dog day.

  * * *

  By the second day I’d come to see Guiding Eyes as a sailing vessel. It was a contained and intense place. We were on the ocean together, trainers, students, and dogs. At 6 a.m. the intercom crackled. It was time to hit the deck. There’d be a morning class and then in the afternoon we’d be given our dogs. I stumbled around my room. I hit my head on the bathroom door. I rubbed my brow and thought, even with a poor start, this was a different day from all others—it was dog day. “Dog day,” I thought, “is like getting married but it’s an arranged wedding—the bride and groom don’t know each other.”

  Our first class was about technique. Everyone received a stiff leather leash. We learned how to use brass clips and rings to make it long or short. “The short leash,” said Linda “is for working dogs in harness. You’ll learn more about this tomorrow—the short leash is kind of like a dog’s throttle and brake. The long leash is for potty breaks or letting your dog sniff the grass.” We practiced making our leashes long and short.

  We learned the proper command to encourage a dog to relieve itself. “Get busy!” It felt silly to say it but we did.

  “Guide dogs,” said Linda “will ‘get busy’ on pavement or cement—they don’t need grass.”

  “Now we need to talk about your dogs,” Kylie said.

  “Later on this afternoon each of you will be united with your dog. Remember, this will be as powerful and beautiful for her as it is for you. When we release her you’re going to call. She’ll be excited—she may come straight to you, or she might run in circles before she comes—she’s been in a kennel for months, working each day with her trainer. Today will be something new for her as well.

  “By the way,” Kylie said, “I’m using her when speaking of the dogs, but half the dogs in this class are male. There is absolutely no quality distinction between the genders—both male and female guide dogs are equally good at their jobs.”

  Linda added: “All the dogs in the class are Labrador retrievers. Some are black Labs, some are yellow. There’s no difference between them—in fact they occur in the same litter of puppies. Some of the dogs are big, some are smaller—again, there’s no difference.

  “Don’t compare your dogs,” said Linda.

  “Your dog won’t be better because it has a longer tail than your neighbor’s dog. This is a group activity requiring encouragement.”

  “Well,” I thought, “here’s where a guide-dog school isn’t like the navy—no admiral describes a flotilla as a matter of encouragement.”

  “The next three and a half weeks will be stressful, engaged, tiring, and even thrilling, but the goal behind everything we do is to see that you and your new dog become a superb team. Your dogs need encouragement. And so do you. And you should give it to each other,” Linda said.

  I thought of lines from Dickens’s Oliver Twist: “For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.”

  “A single word of blessing,” I thought. “A single word of blessing.”

  The trainers shifted gears. “Now we’re going to tell you the name and color of your dog,” said Kylie.

  “The dogs were named at birth—and each litter of puppies receives a letter of the alphabet. Every dog in the litter has a name beginning with the designated letter,” said Linda.

  “Some of the names are a bit unusual,” said Kylie. “We name a lot of dogs.”

  “In other words, don’t get wigged out about your dog’s name,” said Linda. “Your dog likes her name.”

  The names of our soon-to-be dogs were read aloud.

  The names were at once splendid and silly: “Tinsel”; “Abby”; “Norway”; “Tammy”; “Henry”; “Whisper”; “Captain”; “Johnny”—I was amazed by the silly nature of the names—who’d have thought a hero dog would be named “Whisper”?

  “Steve, your dog is a yellow Lab named Corky,” said Kylie.

  “Corky,” I thought. Wasn’t there a killer whale named Corky? It seemed both carefree and tough. Perhaps that’s how we’d be together?

  Our dogs were going to have baths, Linda said. Then we’d be united with them one by one.

  * * *

  I waited in my room and imagined a map—a “might be” map of life to come. What if the future would be okay? What if it would be truly lovely? What if having a guide dog “worked” for me? I saw these were the proper things to think about. And then my name was called via loudspeaker and it was my turn to meet Corky. I grabbed the leash and walked to the lounge.

  * * *

  Corky burst in like a clown. I sat in a tall armchair and Kylie told me to call and damned if she didn’t run full steam into my arms. She placed her large front paws on my shoulders and washed my face, and then, as if she fully understood her job would require comedy, she nibbled my nose.

  She was brilliant and silly. I couldn’t believe my luck. Back in our room she bounced, cocked her head, backed up, ran in circles, and came back. All the while I kept talking. “Oh let’
s go anyplace we choose,” I said, feeling I was on the verge of tears.

  As our first hours unfolded we began the lifelong art of learning to read each other.

  She was happy but she had something else, a quality of absorption. She looked me over like a tailor. She took me in. She wasn’t searching for a ball to be thrown. Was it my imagination or did she actually have the most comprehending face I’d ever met?

  There are times when you can’t describe your feelings. You say, “So this is the new life.”

  I thought: “So this is the new man with the big dog—the big yellow dog, who cares not a whit about the old man’s history and already believes in his goodness.”

  Chapter Six

  At a traditional university students listen to professors and take notes, but at a dog college you and your canine sidekick are handed the tools to live your lives.

  Our first lecture was about praise. Sitting with Corky and the other students I realized that despite my thirty-nine years no one had ever taught me a thing about praise. Here we were, a bunch of young and old blind strangers, dogs, and dog trainers, together, in a room talking about admiration.

  Linda sat before us with a leash in her hands.

  “Our dogs are gentle,” she said.

  This was not hard to believe.

  “Our dogs are gentle because their breeding has changed. If you’re an old-time guide-dog user you need to know that things are different with today’s dogs.”

  There were murmurs from some of the long-timers. A few of the students had been guide-dog travelers since the early sixties and they were used to a different kind of guide—“hard dogs,” as they liked to call them. The old-time students were being told today’s guide dogs were softer and required more subtle handling.

  “Our new dogs require praise—lots of praise,” said Linda. “It’s all in the voice. Nowadays a guide dog loves it when you say ‘Good dog’ with a tone of true joy. Try it!” And we all said “Good dog,” just as Linda had shown us.