Happy Anniversary, Chase

Today is one year since Chase and I graduated from Guide Dogs for the Blind.  We’ve had a few adventures here and there.  Here’s a small sampling:

·        Airplane flights to Milwaukee and Southern California

·        Three trips to Giants games at AT&T Park (one all by ourselves, negotiating crowds like slalom skiers)

·        One round-trip ferry ride between Oakland’s Jack London Square and AT&T Park

·        One trip to Stanford Stadium to see the Cardinal defeat UCLA

·        Daily BART rides to and from KTVU until I retired in late April

·        Three weddings and a funeral

·        Guests of our friend, Diane Dwyer, at a fundraising luncheon for Guide Dogs for the Blind

·        Puppy raiser Fun Day 2014 at Guide Dogs for the Blind (see picture) – the same event at which we graduated last year

Here are some things I have learned along the way:

·        Chase exchanges saliva for treats.  So when we work and I hand him his reward, I needed something other than my pant leg upon which to wipe my hand.  That’s a football towel from a sporting goods store you see hanging on my belt.

·        All my ideas about what I’d do if a dog attacked Chase were quixotic.  When it happened, it happened so fast, all those great plans went out the window.  Fortunately, Chase’s physical injuries were minor and his psychological wounds apparently nonexistent.

·        A 65 pound guide dog fits comfortably under the seat in front of you.  And after he cleans up all the peanuts within reach on the floor, he goes to sleep until the flight is nearly over.

·        Airports now have relieving areas for dogs

·        The sounders on walk/don’t walk signals indicate compass direction as well as when it’s safe to cross.  Tweeting is east/west.  Cuckoo is north/south. 

·        Guide dogs do not know when they’re supposed to cross.  They wait for us to tell them.  Guide dog handlers with no vision at all have to listen to the flow of traffic to know when it’s safe to cross.

·        Most people know not to pet a guide dog without asking.  An amazing number of people don’t seem to know that.

·        A lot of people don’t seem to know that “over there” is not a helpful or useful direction to give to a blind or visually impaired person.

·        Guide dogs are remarkably individual.  This conclusion comes from reading stories people share on forums for guide dog users.  Like people, the dogs all have their own personalities, quirks and failings.  They are not robots.

·        You fall in love with your guide dog, even if you think you’re not that kind of person.

Fancy Running Into You Here

I’ve had my guide dog, Chase, for nearly eleven months now.  In that time, we have never run into (literally or figuratively) another guide dog team.  That includes ten months of riding BART trains daily and an occasional bus ride.

On Saturday, the planets (or at least the Labrador retrievers) aligned. 

Chase and I got on the bus in Concord and someone was sitting in our side-facing, reserved-for-the-disabled seat.  He didn’t move.  So, Chase and I made our way to a front-facing seat next to him.  Someone commented that our dogs looked exactly alike.

I said, “Oh, you have a guide dog?”   His black Lab was hiding under the seat between his feet.  He said, “Yes, you too?” 

We both had gotten our dogs from Guide Dogs for the Blind.  He got his in September 2012.  I got mine in July 2013.

Chase normally gets really excited when he sees another dog.  But he just ignored the other guide.  The other guide dog handler said his dog, Max, usually barks at other dogs.  But he ignored Chase.  Not a sniff.  Not a tail wag between them.  Just two dogs lying on the floor of a bus, waiting to do their jobs.

I chalked it up to professional courtesy.

Shall We Play a Game?

I often think the things Chase does for me are a game to him.  We play a game where he stops whenever we get to a curb.  He stops at the edge and waits for me.  He gets a reward and waits for me to tell him “forward”.  On the other side of the street, he puts his front feet on the up curb, and waits for his praise and reward.  Then he waits again for me to say “forward”. 

We have games where he finds things.  “Find the stairs.”  “Find the escalator.”  “Find the curb.”  “Find the (walk/don’t walk) button.”  “Find the elevator.”  “Find the chair” (useful for everything from chairs to BART train seats to park benches).

But one of his favorite games lately has been the stairs game.  When I make any move toward the stairs at home, Chase goes immediately to the bottom step and puts his front feet on it.  He waits for his praise and reward.  If I start up the stairs, he goes slightly ahead of me and waits at the landing, his front feet on the landing, his back feet one stair down.  Praise.  Reward.  He turns on the landing and puts his feet on the first step of the next flight and waits.  Then at the top, he puts his feet on the second floor level with his back feet one stair down. 

The value for me, of course, is that he is showing me where the stairs start and end.  I’m not sure if he knows that of if he just thinks it’s a great game that can bring as many as four rewards between the bottom and top of the stairs.

Now that I’m at home most of the day, we can play the stairs game twenty times a day.  He didn’t do this so much when we were traveling to and from work every day.  But now he seems to be locked on to the stairs game.  Maybe it’s his need to work.  Maybe it’s his desire for the treats.  Either way, he seems to enjoy it and does it enthusiastically.  

Back From Nowhere in Particular

Well, gosh.  I haven’t been here in a while.  I’d like to say, “I’ve been busy.”  But no busier than usual.   In fact, less busy in the past month.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I retired on April 25^th.  But I still live by lists, if not by routine. 

Chase and I don’t get on BART very often these days.  Instead, we try to get in at least one walk a day down to Todos Santos Plaza in Concord (about a half mile away) or get on the bus and go up to the hardware store on Clayton Road. 

Chase gets mopey if we don’t get out.  He seems to think sleeping on the dog bed in my home office is okay, as far as it goes.  But that’s just it.  It doesn’t go very far.  He seems to want to be in that harness, going places.  So, we try to get out every day. 

On Patti’s days off, we try to work in a trip to the grocery store where he can sniff the things on the low shelves, even though he knows he’s not supposed to.  Or we walk somewhere to have a bite to eat.  We eat.  Chase sleeps under the table in front of me. 

Sometimes something breaks the routine.  Last week, a neighbor’s dog attacked Chase as we walked him and Cody the Wonder Poodle.  (I call him that because sometimes Cody sits there staring, as if he wonders what’s going on.)  The dog came running from one of the houses and lit into Chase, who went down the way he does when he and Cody play.  The dog’s owner was in hot pursuit and pulled him from Chase, after Patti kicked the attacker in the rear end.  Cody cried and barked as if he were the one who had been attacked.  Chase got up and wagged his tail, apparently unaware of the single hole bleeding from his right ear. 

A trip to the emergency vet followed.  Two surgical staples closed the hole, and a head wrap (see picture) kept the ear clean and in place.  Chase seemed offended by the head wrap, but too polite to say anything.  Instead, he just lay there with (if you’ll excuse the expression) a hangdog look.  We’re now in his second week.  The staples are supposed to come out next Monday.  The neighbor was apologetic and will pay the vet bills. 

I allowed myself to a month to decompress, adjust and reorient.  Now Chase and I are looking for new adventures that DON’T involve other dogs attacking him.  Our dream is still to be – as far as we know – the only TV reporting team in America that includes a guide dog.  So far, no takers.  But we’ll keep trying.  I’ll likely get back to a couple of unfinished novels (writing, not reading).  The Giants play almost daily, so we might jump on BART and catch a day game in the middle of the week if we can find anyone who wants to go along.  

Three Weddings and a Funeral

I guess this guide dog thing is getting more routine.    The six-month mark came and went on January 13, and I didn’t even notice.  It could also be that I was in the middle of being sicker than a (guide) dog with the flu and had just come back home from my brother’s funeral in Southern California.

So let’s see.   How’s it gone?  Some of this will be a repeat if you’ve been reading along with the class.

Chase now goes pretty much everywhere I go.  He has indeed been to three weddings and a funeral with me.  He attended his first wedding the first day we were on our own.  On our way home from guide dogs graduation in San Rafael, we stopped at St. Mary’s College in Moraga where our son’s life-long best friend was getting married.  Next came the wedding of another our son’s contemporaries, the son of our good friends.  And then our niece, Leni, got married. 

At all three, he was the perfect gentledog.  He guided me where I needed to go and curled up at my feet most of the rest of the time.  My brother-in-law, Bob, made an interesting observation.  He said something to the effect that “before you used to follow.  Now you lead, even in the dark on a gravel parking lot.” 

At the funeral, Chase led me up the steep steps of the dais to the lectern so I could speak.  He lay down behind me, and then proved to be the perfect straight man (dog) for a blind joke or two.  (“People tell me my brother and I looked a lot alike.  I guess you’d have to be blind not to see the resemblance.”  Pause.  Look at the dog.  Rim shot.)   He negotiated the crowd very well, but I think he was annoyed with me that I wouldn’t let him swim in my niece’s pool at the gathering after the graveside service.  Margaret Baker, Chase’s puppy raiser, told me he loves to swim.  We haven’t had the opportunity to let him do that safely yet.

Chase is now up to six airplane rides (three round trips). He came with us to Milwaukee in late November and to Southern California in early January.  He rides under the seat in front of me.  Yes, a sixty pound Labrador retriever with a skinny butt can fit under the seat comfortably.  Patti and I pre-board (isn’t that a funny term?  How do you board before you board?) and sit in the window and middle seats.  Chase does all his shifting around and settles under the window seat in front of me.  Somewhere in mid-flight the person who sat down in the aisle seat looks over and notices there’s a black dog between my feet.

He is a good hotel dog.  I usually tether Chase to a desk or easy chair in the hotel room, and he curls up to sleep there.  We find a nice, grassy, out of the way place for periodic outside visits and bliss ensues.

At work, Chase is on a schedule like Mussolini’s trains.  Arrive, water, relieve, get a Kong (google it) filled with peanut butter, sleep, eat lunch, relieve, retrieve a tennis ball for about fifteen minutes, sleep, eat, relieve, get harnessed up, go home on BART.  People come by to visit.  Sometimes Chase gives them the full butt-wag greeting.  Sometimes he just lies there and rotates his eyes up toward them. 

At home, he’s getting increasing freedom.  He is off-leash quite a bit now inside.  He still sleeps in his big wire crate.  He and Cody, our small standard poodle, are best buddies.  They growl and wrestle, run and nip, chew on each other, and then find separate places to lie down and collapse.  They take turns being the instigator.  Cody will bark at Chase until Chase engages.  Chase will chew on Cody’s neck until Cody counter attacks.  They both have waggily tails and smiley dog faces. 

The representative from Guide Dogs for the Blind came by a few weeks ago to see how we’re doing.  He gave me some specific instructions on how to keep Chase from engaging with other dogs when he’s guiding and on how to teach Chase not to walk me into the backs of people in crowded places. 

I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of stuff about six months of me and Chase.  If I remember it, I’ll try to write more.

A Mutt in Milwaukee

Chase and I went back to work today after a week-long adventure.  Last Tuesday, Patti, Chase and I flew from San Francisco to Milwaukee to visit our son and daughter-in-law.  It’s the first time Chase and I have flown together. 

He did a great job clearing the TSA checkpoint.  I was delayed because it took some time to find a TSA agent who could swab my hands (because of my insulin pump) and pat me down.  So Chase went with Patti and did just fine. 

We preboarded our flight on Southwest Airlines.  I had to make a choice whether to take a bulkhead seat or a regular one.  After reading several posts on the forum of the National Association of Guide Dog Users, I decided to take a regular seat and have Chase go under the seat in front of me.  People on the forum assured me he would fit, and he did.  They suggested it was safer to have him under the seat if we hit turbulence.  He did a little circling and settling, and finally come to rest with his back half under the seat and his head by my feet.  He pretty much stayed that way for the full four hour flight. 

As usual, Chase found a crowded place to be stimulating.  We had brisk walks through the airport going to and from our gate. 

In Milwaukee, we stayed at the Hyatt Regency downtown.  Part of the fun of having a guide dog is finding a place to relieve him three or four time s day.  For this Californian, it was especially challenging to take the dog out in sub-freezing weather. 

Chase got to meet a new dog in Milwaukee.  Georgia belongs to our son and daughter-in-law.

They played together like the two young dogs that they are.

We took a drive down to Chicago to see our daughter’s home.  Chase met her cat there and was properly cautious.  He was also appropriately deferential and did not incur the wrath of the kitty claws.  In Lincoln Square, we encountered the first person who has told me I can’t bring my pet dog into their restaurant.  When I explained he was my guide dog, they apologized and backed off.

All in all, we had a great adventure.

Rainy Day Dog

It finally rained this week in the Bay Area.  So Chase got to wear the rain coat I bought for him in July.  It's a nice safe yellow, with a reflective stripe on the side.  Stylish, no? 

 

 

It kept me from having a wet, smelly dog when I arrived at work. 

As with most things, Chase just went with it.  He's very mellow about new things and new experiences.  We also road the bus over to the veterinarian's office.  I weighed him and he came in at 59 pounds (compared to 63 pounds when we left Guide Dogs in July). 

I called Guide Dogs' support center, and Beth said to feed him more.  So he's now getting four cups of kibble a day instead of three.  I'll weigh him again in a couple weeks.