I have a couple of new reader requests. One is about DEATH! which I will write about but I need to set aside some time for it. This much cheerier one from Roxanne is about guide dogs and I'm digging it out of the archives of my old blog. The weird thing about my life now is that I had this weird year in 2004 where everything changed. My mom died (in late 2003 actually), I lost my job, I moved, I got pregnant, and my dog died. So everyone pre 2004 totally associated me as a guide dog user and it was a huge part of my identity. Now, lots of people that I deal with day to day did not know me as a guide dog user. I'm just this mom of twins. I now have tentative plans to get a second guide dog when the kids are about three and a half in the summer of 2008. This will require a month of training away from my home and kids. I hope she doesn't mind me blabbing this, but the fabulous Shannon has courageously volunteered to come out and help with the childcare during that time, in which we will both start our master plan to get my guys and her daughter and future child matchmade together so that we can all have a fantabulous wedding which will probably take place in Vancouver, B.C. Because they rock in Vancouver, B.C.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, guide dogs. O.K. I wrote this about three years ago, so it may seem a little out of context, but you'll get the basic gist of it, I think. Plus I added pictures now, which are also completely out of context. I was a lot more anonymous on the old blog, using pseudonyms for everything, whereas now I just don't care anymore. Mara was MGQ, which stood for Mara Gene Quagmeier. Nik was Sven.
It was ten years ago today that I went off to guide dog school in Smithtown, New York at Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind. Two days later, on June 9th, I met MGQ. If you are wondering why even my dog goes by initials on this site, it is because I have a general policy of not telling the public my dog's name. Why? Because you try rushing to a final or a meeting with a guide dog while everyone is yelling, "Hi! Spot! Here Spot! Hey Spot!" Your straight shot to class ends up being a zig zag between friendly distant acquaintances. (It takes approximately 8.7 seconds for an entire campus/workplace/public building to know your dog's name after you've told just one person. This is tested scientific fact.) So why three initials? Because my dog has developed a first, middle and last name. Her first name was given to her by her sponsor, the folks that put up at least 5 of the 20 grand to get us both trained. My understanding is that her name was the name of the grandmother of the woman who founded Cinnabon, who was her sponsor. My friend MRY coined her middle name G. It has come in handy when I really need her to know I'm serious about something. "Siddown," I might say at a bus stop when it really doesn't matter that she's up loafing around. "M-G! siTTT dowNN!" I'll whisper in a job interview. The middle name and the hard consonants at the end of each word lets her know that I'm not in the mood for crap.
Me, a friend, and Mara at the Lincoln Memorial during an NFB Congressional Lobby trip.
Mara does Washington. She has been in the House Chamber as well as many Congressional offices including that of the Senate Majority Leader.
The Q, which is rarely used, and the whole MGQ has such a funny cadence to it, is is reserved for times when she is off leash outdoors and fixated on a pile of goose poop or some other natural element of disgust and she refuses to come. "M! G! Q! RIGHT! NOW!" will usually break her from her lovetrance with whatever crap she's found to roll around in. The Q came from a six-year-old student of mine, who drew a picture of her and wrote M___Q___ on the top of the page. Q is a character from the children's show "Eureka's Castle." Cool show by the way, in that I-have-to-sit-here-with-these-kids-and-watch-Nickelodeon-so-at-least-its-not-Teletubbies kind of way.
Mara's graduation from college. I did the papers, but she did sit through her share of boring lectures.
So the guide dog school doesn't teach you these tricks. And what the guide dog school did teach me, I have mostly either incorporated into my subconsience or totally forgotten. I hated almost every second of guide dog school. I dread returning. Its not that I don't appreciate what they've done for me, but as they say, some birds shouldn't be locked up in a cage. And being locked up in a cage is pretty much what guide dog school felt like. It was only for a month. And they had such total control over everything you did and every second of your time that I about went insane. But it wasn't all bad. I did get MGQ out of it, so it was worth it. I remember it all as if it were yesterday...
(Wayne and Garth Hands here) Do-dit-dit-doot. Do-dit-dit-doot. Do-dit-dit-doot...
I, like the general public, expected guide dogs to be perfectly behaved, somber animals. I had been at the school for two days and had yet to see a dog. On this day I was sitting in someone else's dorm room, waiting for my instructor to bring me my dog. They had put each of the ten students in a separate room and were bringing the dogs into each student one by one. I didn't know if I would be first or last, so I just sat there waiting.
And waiting...
And waiting...
Finally, the door opened and a big yellow dog came bounding into the room. My instructor barely even came in, he just told me to get to know her for a while and he'd be back to get me later. There was a stack of clean white towels folding on this girl's bed. M ran around, grabbed a towel and started shaking her head with it in her mouth and bounding around the room with it. "Oh, shit!" I thought. "She's crazy! She's not trained! I won't get to keep her! What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?" Every once in a while she would come over and shove her head on my lap and shake her tail so hard that her whole back half was going back and forth. She was one damned happy dog. They hadn't given us any instruction yet on how to work with the dogs. But I was so worried the instructor would come back and be mad that she had towels in her mouth. I told her, "Sit!" And instantly, she sat and spit out the towel. I thought that was so cool. When my instructor came back, I proudly told him that she had listened to me and he said, "You aren't allowed to give her commands when you don't know how to do it yet!" (This is what guide dog school was like. EVERYTHING was a drawn out procedure that we needed minute, detailed, instruction on. Yeah, I already know that I'm not good with authority, Leslie.)
With D and I at the end of the Oregon Trail. Mara has traveled from the beginning of Lewis and Clark's explorations to the end with D and I.
My instructor said that I was going to walk with my dog down the hallway to the living room and sit in a chair. Easy enough, I thought, that's only about ten meters away.
It took me 20 minutes to walk those ten meters. With my dog on leash, he made me stop at every doorway, go back and repeat any steps we didn't do perfectly, any time my dog even looked sideways we had to start over. When I got to my chair, I sat there and heard every other student go through the same painstaking process. I thought. I will never leave this chair again.
After a few days of indoor leash work, they started taking us out to the town and later into New York City. I remember the first time I walked down the sidewalk with M in harness. You can feel a lot more of what your dog is going to do in harness than just with the leash. You can feel every head turn and shoulder movement. Compared to a white cane, its like going from typewriter to computer.
There were so many procedures we were supposed to be doing. Which foot to put your weight on, which foot to step with after stopping. Which direction to turn when making a U-turn. How to go through a revolving door, how to push a shopping cart with the dog, how to carry luggage, how to walk on a double-edge subway platform. There was a procedure for everything. Some you lose the second you leave the school, some you lose months later, and some you keep and don't even realize you kept them.
Mara and I were asked to be in a modeling shoot for a photography studio. There were in harness pics too, but I can't find them.
They would put obstacles in our way on purpose. They would even drive cars around and try to run over us. You never knew when you were crossing a street and you would hear a car screeching around the corner to a stop and then an instructor would yell at you out of the window. I knew that I would be friends for life with classmate, Sven when they put a big trashcan in the middle of the sidewalk. The dog was supposed to stop at the obstacle and you were supposed to say, "Find the Way!" and then your dog would calculate if it was better to go around away from the street (the default) or towards the street. When Sven's dog stopped at the trash can, Sven reached out to see what the obstacle was. When his hand landed on an empty trash can, Sven picked it up and just threw it into the people's yard and kept right on walking. I was behind him, getting a play-by-play from my instructor who was all moaning and groaning in annoyance with him. The instructor had a strong Boston accent. "Awww, man! He just thwew that twash can wight on those people's poach!" I was laughing my ass off.
I later came to blows with the school's training staff when I went off on my own to a Japanese Garden that was built on campus, donated specifically for blind students. It had specific flora with distinct textures and smells and the trails were tactile marked. The problem was, students could only leave the residence hall with a staff person, but there was never a staff person available to take you anywhere. I was always buggy in the residence hall, and here is this garden especially made for blind people just two easy blocks away that blind people can't even use without supervision. While I was there, it was only being used for fund raising events. So one night, I left M safe in my room, and went out via cane. I told the staff person on call to babysit us that night that I was going...and ran out the door before she could say anything. I literally ran to this garden, cane tapping like mad. I was only there a few minutes when two staff came chasing after me. I had broken out! We had a fight...and eventually I won. After agreeing to allow a staff person to show me around, I gained the right for myself and my fellow students to go there by ourselves. Sven, me, and another student Luc, hung out there a lot together in the evenings to get away from everything and reclaim just a little piece of our independence. I still feel good about that, and hope many other blind students got to get away for a little bit on their own and go to that forbidden garden that was supposed to be made for them.
My guide dog graduating class. I am the one with severe hair issues at the right end. Nik is in the middle with the jeans and cap.
So finally we graduated from guide dog school and M's puppy walkers (the people who raised her the first year) came to a little reception and gave me lots of little gifts. Then, I nervously took her on the plane and took her home. I remember she shook on the plane. After going on the plane with me now probably over 100 times, that was the only time she ever shook. When I got home, I realized how much of what they teach you didn't apply to my life. I lived in an apartment where there were no sidewalks. The only way out was to meander through a series of small parking lots. By cane I could do this by following the speed bumps and estimating angles. But M was uncomfortable without a sidewalk or roadside to follow. Then, I would walk to school and to my job by taking a series of shortcuts that meant I had to walk across open fields. M was never taught to guide through an open space. But it would add a mile or so to my already two mile walk to class to not take shortcuts, so I had to teach her to guide across open spaces. But she learned quickly, and I spent a great deal of time teaching her new routes and naming them new words. I would teach her how to get to my classes using left/right but then when we got there, I would name the class. Then I could just tell her, "Let's go to Assessment!" Yup, Assessment was in my dog's vocabulary. Although to her it meant a building, not processes of evaluation. Once I wrote down all the words she knew, and it was over 80. (She now also knows about 20 words in sign language. Convenient for when you don't want to interrupt someone by giving your dog commands.)
My dog barfed for the first three months that I had her. I don't know why. Nerves? Change in water or climate? I don't know. But name a public place in Lincoln, Nebraska and my dog has probably barfed there. The capital building, the movie theatre on 17th and R street, Claire's boutique in Gateway Mall, Target on 48th and O, The Post and Nickel, the Zoo Bar Downtown, several classrooms at the University of Nebraska, McPhee Elementary School, Bob Devany Sports Center, and a random StarTran bus or two. It eased up after a while, but man is it an experience to have to go tell the manager that you are very sorry, but your guide dog just hurled in isle nine.
At the Broadmoore Hotel in Colorado during one of our Craig Hospital trips.
She did stop barfing, but she does have one weird problem that never went away. Whenever she is in a place that either has a lot of incense, indian or asian smells, she shits. I don't know what it is. But take my dog into Gifts from Afar and she has a little fit where she starts foaming at the mouth and turning in circles and the poop just drops right out of her. I don't know if it is an allergic reaction or what, but my days of shopping in cute little ethnic stored ended when I got M. The only other time she ever had an accident in public was one time in the Chicago O'hare airport. She had been on the plane an exceptionally long time due to delays, and we were running to catch my connection through that long tunnel with the epileptic disco fever lights on the ceiling, and she just stopped mid run and took a crap. And God forgive me, but I had been stuck in airports and on planes for too long in a two day period; I just kept running. Sorry, O'hare janitor, that shit you had to clean up in 1999 was my fault.
Once I served on a speaker's bureau and got roped in to being on a panel to talk about disabilities and sexuality for a college human sexuality class. It was me, a person with mental retardation, a para and a quad. I didn't have much to say because, hey turn the lights out next time if you want to know what it's like to have sex when you're blind. Not too much difference? So I talked a little about dating. The pretty good looking para guy's message was basically "paras don't get laid." Which was funny because the not so attractive high level quad was doing his dissertation on sexuality among wheelchair users and had actually made a videotape of him getting laid. (All for research, don'tcha know.) So he played excerpts of his tape for the class. I couldn't see the tape, but I could hear it, and you heard the usual, er, moans of pleasure. So my dog, who had been peacefully resting underneath my chair, suddenly jumps up, looks straight at the video, and starts howling at the screen. Everyone is trying to be so sensitive and mature while watching this quadriplegic, who is right in front of them, have sex on TV, and my dog is whining and howling at him. I told her to be quiet and I started to say, "I'm sorry," but then I just burst out laughing, and then everyone else did, too.
Living in D's hospital room for days on end at Craig Hospital.
But my dog has earned a few mistakes. She has potentially saved my life on numerous occasions. I can still cross streets by using traffic patterns, but my main problem in crossing streets is the right-turn-on-red car that speeds by without looking for pedestrians. There have been several times when M has literally pushed me out of the way of one of these cars. Then, she literally did save my life when we were both hit by a hit and run driver. We were walking down the sidewalk and were waiting to cross a driveway of a Walmart. We stopped, a car pulled up to exit the driveway and stopped, and then we went forward. I can't see into people's cars, so I can't see what they are looking at. Many times, cars stop for me and wait, even if they could have gone, or would have had I been sighted. That is what I thought this car was doing. But it was really just looking the other way, trying to find a space in the oncoming traffic of a busy street so it could cross over into the far lane. When I was right in front of the car, it quickly pulled forward, hitting M first and then me. M went right under the car, and I fell into the busy street, with my head landing underneath the front bumper. I was disoriented but knew I had to move and get out of the street. Laying down under a car in a busy street with cars screeching around you is not a fun place to be. I didn't have M's harness, anymore. M almost instantly butted her shoulder into me and pushed us both out from under the car, then I grabbed her collar and jumped up and she pulled me almost instantly to the sidewalk. Her fast orientation, which was way faster than my senses would have oriented me to what I needed to do, got me out of that street and probably saved me from getting hit by one of the oncoming cars. The car was courteous enough to stop long enough for my dog and I to get out from under it, then it sped off, never to be found. I had bloody knees and elbows, a bruise on my head, and achy muscles for two days afterward, but was not seriously hurt. M had a scraped elbow as well, but seemed fine.
Her spot in one of my classrooms I taught in. She laid on that same blanket in all my workplaces for over ten years.
M does a lot of little things for me that are hard to explain and were not taught at guide dog school. She extends me senses and gives me information about the environment around me. Because I am also deaf, I don't always hear when a person is walking behind me or starts talking to me on the bus. I don't always know if something is happening down the street like a traffic accident or something. I don't always know if the person walking right up to me is someone I know or a stranger. I can read M's reactions to the world around her and that gives me information. She can't always tell me who or what is going on around me, but she tells me that something is and which direction, whether it is an ok thing, a strange thing, or a dangerous thing, and then I can investigate further if I need to. She lets me know who is a stranger and who is a friend from far away, just based on her reaction. (Another reason blind people don't let everybody pet their dog is so the dog's friends and the owner's friends are one and the same. If I let her, M would be best buds with every smelly homeless guy on the train. She has an affection for smelly people that I don't share with her).
Pals with our Kansas bunny, Pheobe.
People say with great reverence, "A guide dog is not a pet. You have such a special relationship." Well, yeah and no. I don't like it when people get all sappy-romantic about my guide dog and act like its this magical, mystical thing that only Angels in Heaven can create. A relationship with a guide dog is different from that of a pet dog for many practical reasons. First of all, dogs are just living things that are less intelligent than humans, but still have a degree of intelligence. Most people don't have eight hours a day for two years to educate their dog into reaching its full potential. My dog had that intensive education. So my dog has a Ph.D. to most dogs who have never went to preschool. There is going to be a difference, but it isn't that my dog is magical or special. She's just educated. Going along with that, my dog gets to experience everything people do, whereas most dogs are limited to their houses and parks. My dog knows the routine in a restaurant, the grocery store, the airport because she has done it a thousand times. She has a context to work with that other dogs don't have. So, if you took two equally intelligent people and gave one a Harvard education and let him travel the world and gave the other one no education ( or three weeks of preschool) and he had to stay in his house and yard his whole life, there is going to be a big difference in their ability to understand and adapt to the world around them. M is a purebred lab and had good breeding and all that, but she just has experiences that most dogs don't have. That is why she acts different, she is not any more mystical or special or magical than any dog. Also, she gets to stay around me 24 hours a day. The longest M and I have been apart has been 5 days, when I was in the hospital. We are apart a few hours here and there, but in ten years, that is it. Most people don't even spend that much time with their own children in ten years. When you are with someone 24 hours a day, (she even stays in the bathroom when I take a shower), you build an incredible ability to communicate without words. You know that person's routines, how they are going to act, what their moods are. So M and I know each other and can communicate extremely well without much effort, not even many words really anymore.
Being on the beach was her most favorite thing on earth.
Its not that it bothers me so much that people romanticize my dog, it mostly just bores me. And sometimes there is this implication that my dog completely takes care of me and that blind people can do nothing without a dog to help them. After ten years of EVERYBODY in the universe talking to me about my dog, I'm mostly just bored with the topic of dog altogether. Literally, now it all sounds like "dog, dog. Dog, dog, dog." And I push play on my prerecorded responses. This is a rare thing for me to write so much about my dog. But, she has been a good dog, she has been lugged all over the country with me without complaint. She has endured endlessly long days of sitting quietly under my desk, hot cement under her feet at the bus stop, five mile impromptu hikes when we've missed the bus, she has missed out on being a slobbery, dirty old dog in my need to have her clean and well mannered, she has put up with rock concerts, smoky bars, and taunting behaviorally challenged children, evil right-turn-on-red drivers, and my occasional mess-up of going out with her for twelve hours straight without finding any opportunity for her to drink water save me letting her drink out of the public bathroom sink. She's a good dog, and has served her ten years well.
Where I spread her ashes.
I still miss her.
That made me cry. Very pretty pictures of you by the way!
Posted by: baggage | December 09, 2006 at 06:02 AM
Delurking to say hi! I found your site via Peter's Cross Station. I wanted to say what a beautiful tribute this was to Mara. A few years ago I got a Hearing Ear dog (I'm Deaf) and the two of us are so close. Now it's a bit different because I went abroad for four months and couldn't take her with me. My then fiance, now husband, took care of her and now the two of them are best buds. I'm okay with it, though as I have a 16-month-old leech for a son. ;) Your boys are beautiful and I love reading about them.
Posted by: Keri | December 09, 2006 at 07:11 AM
That was a very informative post.
And what a sweet girl, Mara was. I want a dog with a PhD. Sounds nice!
Posted by: shannon | December 09, 2006 at 11:30 AM
i love the photos of the dogs because it is just like the one i have.get this heros story but iam very sad because i have to loose this good friend of mine.this guide dog was left with me by an american lady who was working in cameroon with the shantal's biya foundation.her husband(completely blind in one eye) died of a car accident in cameroon close to 2 years ago and when she was returning back to her home country, she sold most of her properties and shared the rest to friends like us who really helped them during their long stay in cameroon.i who was working in their house was a good friend to this dog and was in love with this dog for its wonderful talents of guidiance to late mr shivas and as a dog footballer. so i requested the dog as part of my own gift and she kindly gave it to me especially as her husband was no more to use it again.but now i have lost my jop because the campany i worked in is closed. so i do not have enough money to continue feeding this dog,though its really but i have no choice rather than to giveit out to someone else as it was also given to me. so i am giving it out to anyone who will prove to me that he or she is able to keep this dog in its normal diet.my e mail is [email protected] phone number is +2375879227.
Posted by: moses | May 10, 2007 at 05:12 AM