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.