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.
