This week was an exhausting week. I caught a cold, and eventually most of the other students caught it as well. When I wasn't walking with Dori, I was usually sleeping or reading. I did have visitors last week. Kathryn and her husband brought Annmarie on Saturday, and Rachel came on Sunday. I hadn't seen Rachel since 1994. We walked around the leisure path and sat in the Eustis lounge and talked for a while.
Dori is working very well, and I am proud of her. I've been enjoying her much more and am actually looking forward to taking her home. Earlier this week, we began to have problems with park times. She didn't want to relieve herself then and would go while we were on a trip. The rest of the students were already picking up after their dogs, and I was still stuck on trying to recognize when she was going if she went at all. These problems seem to be resolving themselves with time.
I have had minor difficulty with adjusting to Dori's temperament while working with her. Elli is more aggressive and required harder corrections physically. Dori is timid and requires fewer and lighter corrections, and her attention can often be redirected back to the task at hand with a very stern vocal command. Issuing these strong vocal commands is painful for me, much more painful than the corrections I had to give Elli. I don't know why this is. Perhaps it's because Dori is so timid and somewhere that guilt still lurks. Perhaps I don't want to have to correct Dori at all because I feel that often I overcorrected Elli or did not praise or appreciate her enough.
My next step will be to learn how to enjoy both dogs together. Oh, Elli is now being referred to as my parents' dog, but it's all the same because we all live in the same house. I may have taken Elli's presence in my life for granted in the past, but she is still here and needs to be enjoyed just as much as Dori. I must learn to give attention to them both rather than just to one or the other.
I don't remember training being so hard in 1991. I know that it was and that the problem is my memory. What I do remember most about that time is the people. Such a mixture of ages and personalities! There were four between 18 and 21, a couple in their thirties, a few in their forties or fifties, and two or three in their sixties. That was an early summer class. This is a fall class, and there are only three of us under 35. It's harder for me to judge the make up of the class, but there is a fair concentration of people in their fifties and possibly sixties. In 1991, the class was made up of ten women and eight men. This class is made up of sixteen women and seven men.
Another big difference between the two classes is the number of students in this class who have low vision. If my memory serves me correctly, there were no low vision students in the 1991 class except for me--and I still struggle with identifying myself as low vision. In this class, there are a number of students who do not read Braille and who have vision which is useful in some way or another. I include myself in this group; for I have had to work hard at being alert to whether I am using my vision in ways which take Dori's responsibilities from her. I am not accustomed to being able to see oncoming traffic, curbs, or even my dog. I could have done these things when I was 12 and possibly even 16, but I was never able to look at Elli and see that she was staring into space instead of relieving herself by judging the position of her body. My new glasses are much more helpful than I could have imagined they would be. I have intentionally gone on a couple of trips without them so that my vision would be too blurry for me to rely on. These trips make me appreciate my first pair of bifocals more than I can put into words. I can hardly wait to go home and try them in a familiar environment.
There are other habits I am trying not to develop with Dori. One very important one to break is a habit I had no idea I had developed. The best way I can describe it is that I would give her the command, "forward," and accompany it with an almost imperceptible shove on the harness. I did this with Elli and didn't realize it until I listened to one of our lectures on tape. The lecture was about how the dogs perceive traffic. I also realized with horror that when Elli had gotten hit by a car in New York City it was not her fault or the driver's fault. It was my fault. It was my fault for not listening to her body language, for being so preoccupied with what I was doing that I corrected her for sniffing when what she was really doing was backing up and ducking her head out of the way. Guilt struck again, and it took a lot of talk to forgive myself and accept the fact that Elli is all right and I am now with Dori and have a chance to learn to travel safely again.
It's hard to admit that an accident like that is my fault. I wanted to be the model dog guide user. I wanted Elli to be the model dog guide. It's much easier to blame someone else--the driver! But it isn't truthful, and truth is more important than feelings. Truth can free me to become what I want to be. Lies only bind me to my imperfections. I never learn where I must improve. And the only one who truly believes the image I've attempted to create through all those lies is me. Other people see through it in a heartbeat--and I don't just mean the instructors!
So here I am, about to take Dori, my second Seeing Eye dog, home. Thursday is Going Home Day. In the space of three weeks, Dori and I will have traveled all kinds of intersections, played with cats, walked down country roads, gone to office buildings with revolving doors, shopped at the drug store and perhaps the grocery store, gone to a day care, gone through a buffet-style line set up in the cafeteria, and much more. This is just a taste of what our lives will be like from now on. Of course, help is a phone call away if I should need it, and I have no doubt that I will encounter instructors and field representatives at conventions during the summertime. But for now, I will go out on Thursday morning proud of myself and Dori; for she really is a wonderful guide, and I have mastered my habits so far.
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