Tag: Seeing Eye

Seeing Eye Day 3: Dog Day

Today was the day!

Today I met Little Buddy!

I am exhausted but happy right now, writing this from bed with Little Buddy in their crate beside me, wagging their tail whenever I look their way. But let’s back up.

First of all, as I mentioned in my post yesterday, I’m not going to be sharing any specific details about my new pup just yet. There are a couple reasons for this. First, while I don’t think this will happen, and we certainly hope it won’t happen, there is a chance that this match doesn’t work out in the next few days and we have to start again. It’s not fair to you, me, the school, or my dog for the whole world to get excited about the new pup and then have to go through it all again. It’s too much scrutiny on everybody, and there are so many reasons why a match might not work out that are no one’s fault. Again, I don’t think this is what will happen, but it is always a possibility. More importantly at this point, I need to be focusing on my new pupper, not on social media. So I’m going to keep specific details about the pup to a minimum for a few days, and I appreciate your patience through this process.

So let’s talk about dog day!

I didn’t get a ton of sleep last night. Too much anticipation and excitement! I did get more sleep than I thought I would though, mostly because I played rain sounds on my phone to block out the sporadically rattling radiator in my room.

We were up at 5:45 today. They wake us up, and call us to different activities, with loudspeakers in all the rooms. The wake up calls come with music. I’ve kept track of the songs for each of my dog days. For Mopsy, it was “Haven’t Met You Yet.” For Neutron, it was “Happy.” For this pup, it was the match theme from the Dating Game, I’m told. I’ll have to look it up to find it and be sure.

We had breakfast at 6:45, then a lecture on dog fears and then handling a new dog.

Our instructors had finalized our matches yesterday afternoon, and while we were attending these lectures, our pups were getting baths over at the kennels.

After the lectures, we went back to our rooms, and we waited. And waited. And waited.

At least that’s what it felt like.

Our instructors were getting the dogs and bringing them to their students’ rooms one by one. There are four different wings of students, and we aren’t grouped together by instructor, so it could be a bit of a process, and you couldn’t guess that they were getting close to you by eavesdropping on when your neighbors were getting their dogs, though occasionally I would hear a knock and a squeal of excitement from one of my hallmates.

It felt like the scenes in a YA dystopian novel, waiting to take some kind of aptitude test or go through some kind of ceremony where you get your career chosen for you or something, except not evil. Excellent, in fact, because puppies! But here I was, sitting on the edge of my bed, so excited and nervous I was seriously wondering if I was going to be sick.

Finally, my instructor knocked on my door, and she brought in my new pup, who I’m going to call Little Buddy.

While I’m not sharing their name yet, I will say that it is a very good name, and it suits them perfectly. They are their name, in the same way my family dog Rocket is in fact a rocket.

Little Buddy was very enthusiastic. They jumped straight up on the bed, the better to lick my ears. I got them settled enough that I could attach my leash to their collar, and my instructor could take her leash off the collar. And then my instructor left us to get acquainted.

I spent the next hour sitting on the floor getting thoroughly inspected by Little Buddy. They sniffed me top to toe, gave me a complete facial, nibbled on my ears and my hair, and even stuck their tongue up my nose, which I admit was a first. I gave them a tour of my dorm room, letting them explore everything, especially their new crate. I held their bone for them while they chewed on it. Finally, they lay down and leaned against my leg while they chewed.

And then my instructor was back. We practiced walking our dogs on leash down to the dining room. It didn’t go that well, honestly. My instructor trained my dog, and Little Buddy is very very attached to my instructor. Little Buddy kept twisting around me to try to get back to her, and I felt like I was twirling my way down the hall. But I stayed patient, and we got to the dining room. We practiced settling Little Buddy at my seat under the table, while my instructor went to get the next student in our group. LIttle Buddy was doing great until our instructor was back, but then Little Buddy was up and at ‘em again.

Once our whole small group was in the dining room, we talked for a bit about the rest of the day and what to expect, then one by one we walked our dogs on leash back to our rooms. We had our mid-morning outside time, we call it “park time.” We’re basically teaching these dogs to relieve themselves on command, and also reminding them of their potty training expertise, given that they’ve spent the past several months in the kennels. Little Buddy circled me for a long time, getting very interested in other dogs and of course my instructor. They even barked at my instructor once, like “hey what are you doing over there! Who is this strange Jameyanne you left me with!” But eventually they did their business and we got out of the cold.

I’m not gonna lie, at this point I was feeling a bit worried. While both my previous dogs were and are very affectionate, especially Neutron who is definitely a velcro boy, I’ve never had a dog be so attached to a trainer that they would twist me around or bark at them. At least not that I remember. But after our mid-morning park time, I actually felt like Little Buddy and I turned a bit of a corner. Something about me giving them water and taking them out and giving them lots of praise when we got back inside, and they were climbing all over me, and also finally let me give them a belly rub.

After lunch, we went downtown, and we did our first trip with our new dogs guiding us in harness. It wasn’t the smoothest first trip I’ve ever had by any means, but after the morning it was way better than I’d been expecting. I wasn’t pirouetting down the sidewalk. In fact, my instructor unclipped her leash and let us go on our own fairly quickly, and there were several blocks where it felt like we were flying. Yes, Little Buddy was still distracted by our instructor, but when I called their focus back to me, they listened. My instructor was very happy at the end of this short trip and assured me that this was perfectly normal, even if it was new to me. And after our first working trip together, when my instructor offered me an arm to guide me back into the training center, for the first time Little Buddy stuck by my side and didn’t charge around me to get to her first. It felt like a real great step.

And things only improved from there. Little Buddy became even more affectionate after I fed them for the first time. They did their business right away at both our evening park times, and they didn’t even try to eat the grooming tools during our grooming lecture. By the end of the day, I was feeling really confident that they were listening to me as we walked around the house on leash. And while it certainly isn’t something I want to encourage, the persistent crying when I disappeared into my bathroom to take a quick shower before bed was a little gratifying. The enthusiastic tail wags that moved the whole crate when I reappeared even more-so. I think we’re well on our way from “who is this Jameyanne?” to “ok this Jameyanne might be okay” to “Jameyanne is a friend.” Hopefully soon we’ll be at “Jameyanne is my person.” My instructor says it will come, and once Little Buddy decides I’m their person, they’ll do anything I want.

It was a big day, with lots of ups and downs, but on the whole I’m feeling good about how it went and where we’re going. I can picture myself back in D.C. just flying down 1st Street on the way to work with this pup at my side. And I can tell they’re going to get along swimmingly with Neutron Star.

Because I want to focus most on the Little Buddy and building our bond, I’m not going to post for a couple days. We’ll be working a fairly straightforward route for a few days, and then on Sunday morning we’ll be doing that route on our own, our first solo. I think I’ll check in on Saturday afternoon, before the solo.

In the meantime, happy dog day friends!

New Beginnings Are Not Endings

It’s been a while since I posted, but let’s just skip my whole shpeil where I apologize for that and swear to do better and post more often. Okay? Okay.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about endings for the past few days. For one thing, after writing fifty thousand words on the first memory-wiping Academy novel in April and another twenty-five thousand so far in July (meeting my Camp NaNoWriMo goal both times), the ending is finally in sight. For another, Mopsy has retired and I am on my way to Seeing Eye as I write this, on my way to meet my new doggn. In fiction, my favorite kind of endings are the kind that feel like beginnings, like there’s another story waiting to be told if only you turn one more page, even if that next story only exists in my imagination. But this begs the question: are new beginnings always endings?

 

On Friday, I finished my internship at the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights in Boston. I learned a lot this summer. I have a much better understanding of how Cambridge and Boston are laid out. I can still use my cane without hurting myself, or anyone else. And, most important in my book, I can work a nine to five job and still write a lot. Then I spent this weekend not only packing up for Seeing Eye but also packing up all my school stuff to move to my brand new apartment as soon as I return from Seeing Eye with the new puppy.

 

There are a lot of things coming up that feel like new beginnings. A new school year—one or I plan to have more time to write and do social and extracurricular activities. A new apartment that is not a dorm and has a real kitchen where I can cook real food. A new Seeing Eye superdoggy. But it’s hard not to see new beginnings as endings. Right now, I’m trying to convince myself that’s not always the case.

 

School is more continuing than ending and starting again. And moving out of the dorms and into a new apartment is simply the next step.

 

But it’s hard to see that with Mopsy. I’m on the way to the airport as I write this, and I left Mopsy behind. Seven years ago, I graduated from high school and hopped on a plane to Seeing Eye. I didn’t know Mopsy yet, but two days later, our trainer placed her leash in my hand, and Mopsy has been by my side ever since. We have literally been attached by the harness for seven years. We went to college together. Then to Italy. Then we worked at the Disabilities Rights Center together. Then we started Harvard Law together. Mopsy was with me when I lost my eye and she was with me when I finished novels. Mopsy hasn’t been working for about six weeks now, but she’s still been with me all summer. And even though I’ve been trying to transition her so my parents are the ones who are feeding her and taking her for walks and everything, this morning when I picked up my suitcase, Mopsy still came running, tail wagging.

 

I tried to get Mopsy to work with me this summer, but after a few weeks, it was clear it just wasn’t going to work. And she’s been happy as a retired dog. I feel like she’s discovering her inner puppy. She comes running, wagging her whole butt, a toy in her mouth, grumbling happy and sometimes spinning right around a few times. She’s going for long walks with my parents in the woods, smelling everything along the way, which she couldn’t do while she was working. And after seven years of me trying and failing to get her to go swimming with me, Mopsy has decided she likes the water after all. But that doesn’t make it easier when she comes running as I walk out the door.

 

It feels like an ending. It feels like one chapter of my life, the chapter with Mopsy, is ending, and a chapter with a new doggy is beginning. But I hate to think of it like this. Mopsy is a healthy, happy dog, and since she’s living with my parents, I’m going to get to see her all the time. I’ll need to exercise restraint this fall and not go home every weekend to see Mopsy, because she needs to cetime her relationship with my parents, and I need to bond with the new doggy. But in three weeks, I will be returning home with the new doggy, and Mopsy will be there waiting for me. This is the beginning of a new chapter, certainly, but it’s a new chapter in the same story, and thinking about it like this makes all the difference in the world for me.

 

I’m still a few chapters away from the end of my novel, but I already know how it’s going to go. Keeping this as spoiler-free as possible, here’s what happens: the main characters are sitting on the back of a wagon. They’re riding to safety, but they’re still looking back the way they came. Then, at the last minute, they hop off the wagon and turn to face their next challenge head on.

 

I’m planning on this book being the first in a four-book series, so the story will continue. And that’s how I have to think of this next chapter in my life too. I can’t deny that as sad as I am about leaving Mopsy at home, I’m excited to meet the new puppy and see what adventures we get up to.

 

It’s a tough schedule at Seeing Eye. We’re up at 5:30 AM and we’re going all day, as far as I remember. But I’m planning on posting regularly over the next three weeks to keep you all updated on how the training is going and most importantly, who my new partner in crime will be.

Mopsy Goes to Florida

As you might have guessed from the title, three weeks ago I went with my sidekick, her parents, and her younger brother to Pass-a-Grille, Florida. It was lots of fun. For one thing, it was terrific to escape the never-ending winter-without-snow of New Hampshire. It wasn’t hot enough to swim, but it was still very warm. I got to canoe, terrify some enormous birds on the beach, relax in the sun, and overcome my fear of dogs.

 

Now I know most of you have heard stories of how I’m not a huge fan of boats. I’ve gone kayaking with my sidekick before, and let’s just say it didn’t go so well. She couldn’t do any paddling because I was either trying to drink the ocean—which she tells me is a bad idea—I definitely wouldn’t be wagging my tail if she let me try it—or I was trying to jump into the ocean. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t want to go swimming. I don’t like swimming that much either. I just wanted out of the boat. I really wanted out of the boat. After that, my sidekick usually left me at home when she went kayaking with her family, and I was pretty happy about it. But in Florida, she didn’t want to leave me in our hotel, because I wasn’t that familiar with it and she didn’t want me to get anxious. I might have been fine staying behind, but it turns out I like canoes better than kayaks. There was room for me to flop down on the bottom between my sidekick in the front and her dad in the back, and I got this nice combination of warm sun on my fur on one side and the cool bottom of the boat on my other. My sidekick said she was very proud of me. I did almost tip the boat with my wagging tail.

 

And I almost tipped the boat because of the birds. My sidekick was not so proud of my interest in the birds.

 

They were pelicans. They were everywhere—on the beach, on the piers, out on the water—and they were big. Really big. Huge. Bigger than me. And I kind of liked to leap at them and watch them fly off. I know. Not super good Seeing Eye dog behavior, but how often do you get to chase a pelican?

 

But while I did chase the pelicans once or twice, I was very good about not chasing dogs. I’ve been having some problems with dogs ever since Italy, so this was a big big deal. Lots of tail wags.

 

Here’s what happened. We’re in Assisi. The drivers are crazy people, and they just keep driving where we’re supposed to be walking. They’re pulling in front of us, creeping up behind us, screeching to a stop exactly where we were a second ago. I already let my sidekick get hit by one car—and we were on the sidewalk!—and there’s no way I’m letting it happen again. I will drag her into a hedge or up a tree if I have to (and I had to). So I am seriously wound up, and this is just outside. Inside, we have people yelling at us and blocking turnstyles. My sidekick describes riding the bus on the way to school (with all the students), like a claustrophobic roller coaster where you’re standing up, and she wasn’t the one looking at a hundred kneecaps (she learned to be very forceful with her elbows so that I didn’t get trampled).

 

Add to all this craziness the large dogs—either stray or off-leash—who came charging at me barking, and I forgot my training a little bit. Maybe a lot. Hey, they were scary, and they could understand me. I was working. I had a very, very important job—keping my sidekick alive until we could get home. So I barked back. I’m not supposed to bark ever. I know that. And no way am I supposed to get distracted by other dogs when I’m working. But they were bigger than me, and they were coming at me, and I couldn’t let them distract me from my job, so I had to tell them to stay back.

 

When we finally got home from Italy, my sidekick started working with me to stop the bad behavior, but by this point I had it in my mind so firmly that other dogs were bad—scary, even—that we weren’t making much progress. She called my school, The Seeing Eye, several times. They gave her advice about how to correct me and told me that whenever I barked at dogs she had to put the gentle leader on me. The gentle leader is not a muzzle. It doesn’t keep my mouth closed. It doesn’t prevent me from barking. It just puts pressure around my face on the points where my mommy would pick me up when I was a baby and liked to chew on her ears. It reminded me to stay focused on my job and not bark at the dogs. I didn’t like the gentle leader, and I knew I needed to stop barking at the dogs. I knew when I did it right, because my sidekick would get very excited and give me lots of pets and even kneel down so I could lick her ears. We both thought we were making progress, but then, every time, I would get startled by a dog, and I would bark, and we would be back to where we started.

 

Around Christmas, my sidekick tried a new tactic. Instead of just correcting the bad behavior, my sidekick started rewarding me with kibble every time I was a good girl. We’d gone to New York to pick up her brother from college, and we spent the day walking all over the city with her mother. When a dog was coming, she had me sit and focus on her and the treat until the dog passed, and if I didn’t bark and pull towards the dog, I got the treat. If I did, I got the gentle leader. It was slow going, but now we both felt like we were finally making progress. I don’t need to be afraid of walking past dogs: there are treats on the other side of it. Pretty soon, my sidekick didn’t have to ask me to sit. She could just tell me to leave it, and I would trot right past the dog. We kept practicing, and she starting weening me off the treats, replacing them with pets and cuddles and lots and lots of praise, which I like too, especially if it comes with the chance to chew her ears. (I like chewing ears.)

 

Which brings me back to Florida. We were walking on the beach, when we wandered into a section where dogs were allowed. Now, I’m a special dog—I have a mission—so I’m allowed to go anywhere with my sidekick, even if other dogs can’t. But all of a sudden, we went from having the beach to ourselves to being surrounded. And I mean surrounded. There were maybe fifty dogs, all off-leash, playing in the water, chasing balls, running around with each other. I slowed down a bit and looked at my sidekick. I was a bit nervous about all this. But she said “Leave it, Mops. Let’s go. Good girl!” And I kept right on going, right through all those dogs. I was so proud of myself, and my sidekick was so proud of me! We both knew I’d been making progress, but this really sealed the deal.

 

The dog problem isn’t behind us. If a dog appears suddenly, I still startle, and I might bark or just pull too hard on the harness, but we’re working on it, and I’m confident I can do it. If I can handle those fifty dogs in Florida, I can handle one, even if it’s giant and sneaky. I got my sidekick through Italy, and I’m going with her to law school, and no dog is going to stop me.

 

So thank you, Florida, for the springtime, for the relaxation, and for showing me that I don’t have to bark at dogs to do my job right.