The Seeing Eye – Jameyanne Fuller

Seeing Eye Day 12: New York City!

Last Friday, we did the big trip, the trip I’ve been waiting for since my first route with Frolic. We went into New York City!

Normally, we wouldn’t do New York City until our final week, since it’s like a culmination to all our training. But looking ahead at the weather for our last week, it was supposed to be frigid (and it is frigid, can confirm from the future when I am actually writing this). So we went to New York on Friday.

It was awesome! So much fun!

I was partnered with the same classmate I did the Elm Street route. We took a trip through the city that would more closely resemble C.C., so unlike training in New York I’ve done with past dogs, we didn’t go into Time square itself.

So we started at Port Authority. We walked about nine blocks, from 40th down to 33rd Streets, walking along 9th Avenue. The sidewalks were full of poles and cafe tables and planters and pop up stands. We had to navigate through crowds of pedestrians, some with suitcases, others with dogs. Basement doors jutted out into the sidewalks.

Frolic was amazing! She moved confidently and fast through all of it, while still being super careful. Whe had her tail straight up in the air, waving back and forth, and her ears were waggling the whole time. (My instructor was taking pictures, so I’ll update this post once I have them).

We turned on 33rd Street and made our way to Hudson Yards. There, we practiced escalators and also working through crowds in a large indoor space. We also found a great little place to have lunch.

On escalators, apparently I’ve been doing that wrong for years. Oops. I’ve been working my dog onto the escalator, but I should be having her just follow me onto the escalator on her leash. It worked way better, and I finally seem to have mastered the move of stepping off the escalator with her following behind me and picking up the harness handle in one smooth motion.

After we had lunch and walked around Hudson Yards some more and did some more escalators, we walked a couple blocks to the metro. This metro stop had a long long escalator down, reminiscent of some of the metro stops in D.C.. We even had a commuter rush past us, and Frolic wasn’t even phased.

We took the metro to the Time Square stop and then navigated through the pedestrian tunnels, which were full of people, luggage, and dogs, back to Port Authority.

It was a really amazing day. I felt like I was flying, safely and confidently, through a really busy intense environment. I can’t wait to be back in D.C. doing this kind of work with Frolic all the time!

Seeing Eye Days 10-11: Freelance Begins

My adventures continue with Frolic!

Wednesday afternoon, after our successful solos on the Elm Street route, we began freelance work. Basically, this is when we go off the planned routes and instead work in other situations we might encounter with our dogs in our daily lives. This training is tailored to our daily lives and is a little different for everyone, but there are some standard things we do and that I’ve done in every class.

It was good timing for a change, because our dogs were getting a bit bored with all the planned standard routes that are basically loops. These dogs are destination oriented, so loops, however many challenges we put in front of them, are going to get boring.

Also, while we had a few days where the weather was reasonable for January, the temperature is supposed to drop dramatically, and so yes we were all chanting “Indoor work! Indoor work! Indoor work!”

Wednesday afternoon, my group went to a Wegmans grocery store. We sat in the cafe area and practiced settling our dogs in public while we worked our dogs through the store one at a time.We practiced using a cart a little bit, but we only did it for a couple aisles, because I usually don’t use a grocery cart to shop because I’m often walking and so use a basket to make sure I’m not buying more than I can carry. So we switched from a cart to a basket (actually my instructor’s reusable grocery bag because we couldn’t find the baskets for some reason). We practiced going up and down the aisles and settling Frolic safely between me and the shelves so she’s out of the way of grocery carts and everything while I was looking at items on the shelves. It was a relatively chill trip while I still learned, or relearned, a bunch of tricks. It was also fun to be back with our small group. They switched up our lunch tables last Saturday, which felt like eons ago, so this trip all together felt like we were getting the old gang back together.

On Wednsday night, we had a lecture about dog food, treats, and toys, along with things that are very very bad for our dogs: chocolate, alcohol, garlic and onions, grapes and raisins, macadamia nuts, rqwhide, animal bones, antlers, chews from butchered animals, and toys that are too small or that they can destroy are all big no-nos.

On Thursday morning, we traveled by bus to a neighboring town, then walked to the train station, and took the train back to Morristown. Something about commuter trains, with the really steep steps to get on and off and me being irrationally worried that I’m going to get somehow stuck on the train made me a bit stressed about this one, but Frolic was a champion.

On Thursday afternoon, we did country work, which is work in neighborhoods without sidewalks. We walk on the left, facing oncoming trafic. We check frequently to make sure our dog is hugging the curb or grass line. We didn’t do a long trip for this work, because I really don’t have a lot of areas without sidewalks in D.C. But it was really good to get a refresher, and I learned a few new good tricks. Actually, Frolic was so good at this I almost felt bad that we don’t have much of this kind of work. But I didn’t feel too bad about that after what we did on Friday, which I’ll talk about tomorrow.

On Thursday night, we had another lecture on odds and ends. Basically, how to stsart giving our dogs some time off leash in our rooms, how to start allowing free access to water, and how to leave our dogs in their crates for small amounts of time. So far, we have kept our dogs on leash, attached to us basically all the time unless we’re sleeping or showering. This has helped with bonding and and also helped us make sure they weren’t getting into anything because they are still puppies. We’ve also been restricting their water as we basically re-potty train them, because they’ve been living in kennels during training for the last several months. And we need to enforce in general that we are their people and we are in charge now in all things, so they have to have good recall and also go to their crates on command in order to have small amounts of freedom. W also start practicing leaving them alone in the room because there are places we might want to go where it would not be appropriate to bring our dogs. Like I’mnot going to bring Frolic tandem biking, so she will need to be comfy hanging out without me. We started small, just five minutes at a time on everything. But as with all things, Frolic is awesome!

In the odds and ends lecture, we also talked about the importance of always having our dog on leash outside. Fenced in areas aren’t always secure, and dog parks can be dangerous because you don’t know anything about the other dogs who might be there, and since our dogs are working dogs they really don’t need that outlet. The instructors read us a letter they read every class, from a man who took his dog outside off leash, she saw a deer and took off after it and was hit by a car. It’s a letter that makes me cry every time and has successfully instilled a strong need to have my dog constantly on leash while outside, but unfortunately our instructors told us this is a situation that still happens.

I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about the great adventure of Friday! New York City! Spoiler alert, we crushed it! It was awesome!

Goodnight friends! 5:30 comes early.

Seeing Eye Days 8-10: The Elm Street Route

I recognize that I’m a bit behind on posting from where I wanted to be. Please understand that I’m starting my days at 5:30 AM and not finishing up training and other activities until 9:00 or 10:00 at night. So please bear with me as I try to capture everything.

So on Monday morning we started our second planned route, called the Elm Street route. This is a route that I’ve had a little trouble understanding the shape of the last two times I was here. Well, third time’s the charm. Also my instructor is an orientation and mobility specialist, so she explained it in a way that just clicked for me.

So this route is basically the shape of a pizza slice or pie slice. We start at the Seeing Eye’s downtown training center, walk down to South Street, where we cross and turn right on South. We walk two blocks on South Street, crossing Pine Street and coming out on Elm. Pine is kind of a tricky intersection, because cars have to creep up into the crosswalk in order to see around the corner. Then on the block between Pine and Elm, the school set up a planned dog distraction, where an instructor holding a safe pet would approach and be a bit obnoxious about trying to get her dog to play with our dogs, even circling us as we try to navigate around them. I never successfully made it through that obstacle on the first try, but more because Frolic was familiar with the instructor holding the dog. She was really good when it was an unfamiliar person and dog, which we encountered frequently. But once we get through the dog distraction, we finish the block and turn left on Elm.

Elm Street is a steep hill down. About halfway along the block, they set up a fake construction barricade for us to work around, including going into the street to get around it. Frolic rocked that every single time!

At the bottom of Elm Street, we turn left on Morris and climb back up to South, curving around and crossing five intersections—some with stop signs, some with traffic lights, and some with no control at all. Morris is like the crust of the pizza or pie slice connecting the edges of South and Elm. The hardest part of this stretch is all the pedestrians and other things on the sidewalk we have to weave around, and of course keeping track of all the intersections and how to cross them. Once we get all the way back up to South Street, we turn left and find the audible pedestrian signal for the mid block crossing, and then it’s just a slight jog around a building and one block back to the training center.

And of course throughout this whole route, we’re following our dogs and responding to their guiding, because our class manager was out to get us with the van to make sure we understand how it feels when our dogs stop or pull back when cars cut us off.

The cool thing about this solo is that I was working in a pair. I did a lot of this when I was training with Neutron, but I haven’t done it so far during this class. Basically, one of us would take the lead on each block, and then that same person would decide when to cross the street, and then we would alternate who leads on the next block. It was nice to have a partner to work with to talk through some of the trickier intersections and keep ourselves oriented on this route. My partner also lives in D.C., and we’ve already started planning some city adventures together, because we work so well together as a team. Actually, our instructor told us if we don’t she might kill us.

It turns out that Frolic has a little competitive streak in her. This little dog wants to be in front all the time, and is constantly trying to make moves to pass my partner when she’s in the lead. Passing is allowed when we work in teams, but only if our dogs can do it safely. I did have to correct Frolic a few times because there were places where there really wasn’t room to pass and she was just tailgating my teammate. But mostly Frolic was great at the maneuvers, and I would just narrate her actions as we passed so my teammate would know I was there and passing: “Frolic is getting close, she’s easing left, she’s pulling ahead, she’s merging back into traffic! FROLIC TAKES THE LEAD!”

Of course, Frolic has also decided that no one is allowed to pass her, and whenever my teammate’s dog tried, Frolic would move me over to block her. Again, this is allowed as long as the dogs are maneuvering safely, which for the most part they were. It was a lot of fun. This girl has some spunk!

We did the Elm Street route four times. Monday morning we got oriented to it, and encountered six buses full of elementary school kids while we were at it. Monday afternoon, our instructor stepped back but was close to coach us through it. Tuesday morning she was farther back. We rocked the Tuesday afternoon trip so much that our instructor actually counted it as our solo. We still had to do the trip on Wednesday morning, but it was more of an encore performance, no pressure. And it’s a good thing too, because Frolic was definitely bored with the route by then and extra distracted. Even then, by this point my partner and I were basically playing Marco Polo to make sure we were relatively close and heading in the same direction, and we were having a blast.

I’ve heard this time in class referred to as hell week. Our dogs are comfortable with us now and are starting to test the boundaries, and it’s right when we’re all starting to get really tired from the constant go! go! go! of class.But even with all the little testing of the boundaries, Frolic is a very good girl, and I can tell we’re going to have so much fun together.

Also during this time we had lectures on…I forget what exactly at this point. We’ve covered so much. Dog care, dog food/treats/toys, vets, how to give doggy massages, probably some other things I’m forgetting. They’ve been throwing a lot of information at us in a short amount of time and what we learned when is a bit of a muddle. But I have it all to look over later if I need to. The lectures are starting to slow down now.

After our solo for Elm Street, we began freelance work Wednesday afternoon, which is basically where we train on all the fun smaller things we might need to navigate with our dogs. I’ll talk about that more later, hopefully tomorrow. But I have to save it for now because 5:30 comes early.

The Big Reveal

This is it!

The big one!

The moment you’ve all been waiting for!

The introduction of my new little buddy!

This is Frolic!

Close up of Frolic’s face as she lies on a the floor of my bedroom with her paws stretched out of her

Frolic is majesty in stillness and mayhem in motion! We are going to take D.C. by storm at a slightly alarming 4.3 miles per hour.

Frolic is a lab golden mix. Unlike Neutron, she is 50-50 lab and golden (Neutron only has one eighth golden).

Frolic is 22 inches tall and weighs 54 pounds, and she was bron on May 13, 2023. This makes her the tallest, smallest, and youngest dog I have ever worked with.

Frolic flopped on her side, with her head lifted staring at the camera.

Frolic is all black. She is tall and skinny, with a tiny head and ears that are a little too big for her head. I love her ears! They waggle! She also has a tail that’s like a mix of lab angolden. It’s not a big floof like a golden’s tail, but her tail is much thicker than the lab tails I’m used to, and when we’re working, she holds it straight up in the air.

Frolic is a little speed demon, and an absolute goofball. She loves to fling herself bodily at me or climb me like a jungle gym. She also likes to try to shove her toys into my mouth. Her latest favorite game is when she throws her ball under the bed and goes berserk until I retrieve it with my cane, then gets very excited and chucks it under the bed again.

Frolic does not like her booties, but they are very cute!

Frolic sitting up and staring with a pleading expression, wearing neon yellow and teal booties meant for icy or too hot conditions

I’m told that Frolic has some excellent eyebrows, and she looks very statuesque and regal.

I’m also told that she is a velcro dog, like Neutron, and once she fully bonds to me I will be her one and onluy person. I’ve only had her for one week—I can’t believe it’s only been one week!—she’s already started to open up to me. She’s started to roll over to get belly rubs and to give me the classic golden paw thwap. She’s also stopped crying whenever I disappear to take a shower or something.

I’ve only had my Frolly girl for a week, as I said, so there’s so much for me to still learn about her. But I’m definitely loving the Frollypop I’ve gotten to know so far.

Seeing Eye Days 4-7: The South Street Route

Hello friends! Sorry it’s taken me so long to post more about my Seeing Eye adventure. I meant to post on Saturday, then Sunday, but as you’ll soon read, they have kept us very very busy, and when I’m not fully on with my new Little Buddy, I have desperately needed to decompress by myself or with friends in person or on the phone, but definitely not on social media.

I’m not going to share specific details about Little Buddy in this post, not because I’m not confident that it’s a good match or anything like that, just that I think she deserves a post all her own to fully capture her majesty.

*Gasp!* Spoiler alert: Little Buddy is a girl!

So stay tuned for a post all about her and only her, complete with pictures, tomorrow. I hope.

I have to say, this has been such a roller coaster of a class so far. The high points have been incredible. But I was also crying in the laundry room on Saturday so yeah there have been some low points too.

This is going to be a long post, and it’s a bit of a roller coaster too, but bear with me. There’s a happy ending.

I’m sure my previous classes here at the Seeing Eye had their bumps in the road, but I don’t remember them at all. When I look back, both for Mopsy and Neutron, they were both perfect matches and it was smooth sailing from start to finish.

But Jameyanne, you say, don’t you constantly joke about how you and Neutron failed revolving door training last time you were here?

Shhh! It was perfect nothing went wrong ever! Neutron and I even managed a revolving door perfectly on our last working trip together!

I say all this not to say this has been unusually difficult, but to comfort myself that in a few years, I’ll probably look back at this time in class and think that nothing went wrong at all, no problems whatsoever. Because I do think it’s a great match! Little Buddy and I are going to have a bunch of adventures together! And while crying in the laundry room was definitely not something that happened during either of my last two classes, I also wasn’t coming to either of those classes after two years full of so many huge life changes like I am this time. So I have to remember to be nice to myself.

To backtrack a bit and try to take this is some kind of order, from Thursday to Saturday, we focused on working with our dogs to safely navigate a route called the South Street route. We did the route twice each day, with our instructor at first staying right at our shoulder both helping to orient us to the route and coaching us on working with our new dogs. On Sunday morning, we worked the route completely on our own, with our instructors really far back to observe.

The South Street route is basically a big rectangle, but the trick is we don’t start at one of the corners, but just shy of a quarter of the way down one of the long sides of the rectangle. We start at the Seeing Eye’s downtown training center, then walk three and a half blocks down Maple Street to Madison. At that corner we turn left and walk along Madison to South Street (hence the name). We walk a full four blocks up South Street to market, take a left and follow Market back to Maple, then take a left on Maple and go that last half block back to the training center. All the while we are navigating through pedestrians and sidewalk clutter like poles and sandwich boards, tree routes and icy patches, and of course handling all the street crossings and navigating around some planned obstacles our instructors set up along the way, including some trainers with pet dogs designed to distract our dogs and fake construction barricades that take us out into the street. Our second time through the route, our class manager also started driving around the route, deliberately cutting us off so we would know what it feels like to follow our dog through what we call a traffic check, when our dog stops us to avoid a car that has cut across our paths.

So I’m doing all of this with Little Buddy, who you have to remember that as of Thursday I’d only had for 24 hours. At first, our biggest problem is that she was very very attached to my instructor, who trained her. She would listen to me, but she was constantly looking back. I wasn’t concerned though because she did listen when I verbally corrected this behavior. She handled the navigation around the barricade, the dog distractions that were both planned and unplanned, and the traffic checks beautifully. And there were parts of the route where we were just flying along. This dog is also just so smart and sweet, and I felt like we were bonding really well.

On Friday, we started to struggle though. She slowed way down on some blocks for no reason and wouldn’t speed up whatever we tried. Then suddenly I couldn’t get her to turn to the left, and then we started having trouble going up and down stairs—she was going so slowly I was really starting to struggle with my knee, because after my knee surgery two years ago, I really need some momentum on the stairs.

We practiced turns on this harness handle on wheels that they have on the main campus, and my instructor thought the problem was my arm position. My elbow was popping out to the side, when it should really be tucked into my ribs. I stuck a piece of paper between my arm and my side and practiced turns with the wheely thing holding the paper there until I thought I had it, while Little Buddy watched in deep confusion.

But then it seemed I was pushing the harness too far forward, so we switched me to a shorter harness handle. For a hot second it felt like that solved all my problems, until we started struggling again. This time it was my wrist bent wrong. It should be extended in front of me, if not a little concave, but I was bending it and pushing the harness forward. When I pushed the harness handle forward, Little Buddy would lose the feeling of tension in the harness and slow down, which would cause me to lose the feeling of the pull, which is how she is guiding me, and we’d basically come to a stop. And me trying to correct myself seemed to be confusing her even more. I felt absolutely terrible, because I’d experienced what it was like to be flying along with her, but I’d picked up these bad habits from the last few years of working Neutron, and Little Buddy didn’t understand my language and I didn’t understand hers, and it felt like whatever we tried we weren’t communicating.

Saturday morning was a bit icy, and since they’d salted the roads we had to put booties on the dogs, which of course they hated, and that just made all my issues worse. Little Buddy was being extra persnickety about everything, and even parts of the route that we’d previously done great at were a real struggle.

By Saturday afternoon I felt absolutely terrible. My instructor had said she wanted to zip tie my harness to stop me from pushing the handle forward, something I didn’t know they could even do. My instructor reassured me that none of this was a big deal and I shouldn’t worry. She wasn’t worried. Well I wasn’t worried until she said that. Now I was definitely worried. By Saturday afternoon, I had worried myself into a mess, and my instructor had the afternoon off so I was just stewing (don’t recommend BTW). I felt like actually even though I loved Little Buddy already, maybe it wasn’t going to be a good match after all, and it would be all my fault, because I was doing everything wrong. It didn’t help that the person I most wanted to talk to about my week, all the joys of meeting Little Buddy and those first amazing routes together and then how things got hard and all my feelings now, of course, was my mom. And I couldn’t call her. And then of course my clothes came out of the dryer soaking wet, which is when the tears started.

Huge thanks go to the classmates who gave me hugs down in the laundry room and continued to check in throughout the rest of the day, gave me pep talks, or else provided helpful advice, like how I should think of working a guide as water skiing—if I don’t have tension in the harness, I can’t go because that’s what’s pulling me along (or in this case guiding me). I especially appreciate that this classmate also told me that for both her first and second dogs, she had to have her harness zip tied because she was doing the same thing, and both times she got through it had many years of adventures with her dogs. Our class manager also assured me that no, it was not actually possible to fail our solo route on Sunday morning, because it was not a test, more a chance for us to work our dogs on our own while our instructors observed from a distance so they could see what else we needed to work on (as of Saturday night I was pretty sure for me that was everything, and we wouldn’t stop at just zip tying my harness, we would need to duct tape my arm into the correct position).

Even though she said the solo wasn’t a test, I didn’t sleep well Saturday night, and our 5:30 AM wakeup call was not super welcome. I felt super groggy and stressed and just generally not with it, even though I knew that probably wouldn’t help anything because our dogs are so attuned to our emotions.

My instructor was at my door before breakfast with the new harness with the zip ties. She helped me work Little Buddy down to breakfast, and things went much better than they had been going, particularly on the stairs. But I was still pretty nervous about the solo. I wanted this to work so badly.

I don’t know if it was the absence of the evil snow booties on Sunday morning, or all the practice with the wheely thing was finally paying off, or if the third harness was the charm, or maybe if Little Buddy and I were finally just talking on the same wavelength, but whatever it was, it worked. From that first step out of the training center, it finally clicked. We were in perfect sync. Moving together, listening to each other, avoiding obstacles, making great street crossings, just flying down the block. When we successfully made the left turn ad Maple and Madison, I actually shouted “Victory is ours!” loud enough that my instructor heard half a block away and cracked up. Even on that last block on Market Street, where the sidewalk narrowed and Little Buddy had the hardest time keeping up her pace on previous trips, I kept her going steadily forward.

We cruised back into the training center, and Little Buddy and I mutually threw ourselves at each other while my instructor squealed in delight.

There are still things to work on, of course. There’s a reason training isn’t just four days and one four-block by one-block rectangle. But we did it! We did it! We did it!

And here’s another spoiler alert for a future post about the route we’re working on this week: the solo wasn’t a fluke.

Whatever finally worked seems to have solved all the problems, and Little Buddy and I are cooking! I’m now looking forward to our trip into New York next week, where we’ll really put her through her paces. And even more-so, I’m picturing us cruising around D.C. at 4 miles per hour, taking the city by storm.

This post is already way longer than I meant it to be, but a few other thoughts I want to memorialize. First, the food is delicious. I haven’t kept track of every meal, and I’m on a special diet so it’s not the same as the rest of the class. I’m sorry to all the Seeing Eye regulars who are following this adventure who were hoping for loving descriptions of food (you’ll have to check out some of my fiction for that). Unrelated, I have to say I do love existing in a place that is designed to be entirely accessible to the blind, from Braille labels on the coffee machines and vending machines to strategically placed carpeting to help us oriented, and of course the tables and chairs with no bars or rungs underneath, perfect for settling our dogs under. And finally, there is at least one case of confirmed covid in the class. Precautions have been taken, and most if not all of us are continuing to mask full time, but please cross your fingers that it doesn’t spread further. Finally, I am tired of wearing long underwear 24/7. I love this dog and I’m so glad I’m here, but January classes are not my favorite.

Oh and one more thing: I can’t believe that all of this happened in just four days! As of Sunday, we’d had our dogs for five days. And we made so much progress and have done so much together already!

I’m planning to post again tomorrow and give you all the specifics about Little Buddy and all her amazing majestic speedy glory. Why can’t I tell you now, you ask? Because now that things are going well, I’m enjoying torturing you just a little bit. Also I want to go to bed. So stay tuned!

Seeing Eye Day 1 and 2: Settling In and Juno Walks

Yesterday was a big day!

We got our leashes, but don’t get too excited—there’s no one on the other end of that leash yet. I’m sure I said the same thing when I was handed Neutron’s leash seven years ago, but I can’t believe the leash was originally this color! It’s so light and new and stiff! It will darken and lengthen and loosen up with use as it breaks in, but it was definitely a bit of a shock to be playing with it last night. The picture on the left shows a light-colored leash on a desk. There’s also a Braille book and a thermos visible on either side of the leash.

So yesterday, we arrived and got oriented to the building. I mostly remember where everything is from when I was here in 2017, but my dorm room is on the opposite side this time from where I am was then, and I did get a little turned around and attempt to get into some guy’s room my first try. Oops!

Once we got settled and unpacked, I did a Juno walk with my instructor out in the driveway—it had stopped snowing by then. A Juno walk is basically like a test drive, with the instructor playing the part of the dog. It’s a little awkward, because you’re holding the harness handle and your instructor is holding the other end, and also you’re praising another human being as if they’re a dog, and also practicing corrections with them, but it’s all part of your instructor learning how you operate as a handler so they can find the best match. Yes, you come into class and they have a few options for you on paper, but the instructors still need to get to know you, and learn your pace and how much pull you like on the harness and everything for themselves. They also have to break us folks coming back for successor dogs—or retrains as they call us—from all the bad habits we’ve picked up with our prior guides. Yes, I have a few from my time with Neutron, like pushing forward a little on the harness when I say “forward.”

So yesterday afternoon we did our first Juno walk. I should say I’m not sure exactly where Juno comes from or what it means, but they use it for a generic dog name. After the short Juno walk, I was free to finish unpacking, get settled, and explore the building a little more. I finished unpacking, unfortunately discovering that I couldn’t find my air pods. I was afraid I left them at the hotel, and Find My confirmed it. Our instructor team had someone stop by the hotel but they said they couldn’t find my air pods. I was a bit sad, but these are old and it’s probably time for me to get new ones, so I accept it as a consequence of the mad scramble to get here.

I then went down to the library in the basement, where they have a bunch of Braille books. You all know my weakness for hardcopy Braille books. And true to form, I found an astronomy book and a WWII history book to borrow. I spent a little time reading the astronomy book in the common lounge with some hot chocolate before dinner. After dinner was a welcome lecture, where we went over the basic house rules and everyone introduced themselves. After that, I hung out for about an hour with a few of my classmates, then went back to my room, did a little writing, and went to bed.

Back in D.C., I’m told Neutron is having a blast in the snow!

The picture shows Neutron whith his face covered in snow and his ears waggling. Did he stick his whole face in a snow bank? Seems like it!

I was really tired from all the traveling, particularly all the chaos of my early departure, but I didn’t sleep well. The radiator in my room would rattle at irregular intervals, seemingly just when I was about to drift off, as if it was trying to keep me up. I did some sleep some, but I woke up at 4:30 and never did get back to sleep. Wake up call came at 6:00, at which point I threw on clothes and stumbled into the common lounge for as much espresso as I could fit into the cup.

This morning we went downtown and did a second Juno walk, this time on the busy sidewalks. We navigated street crossings, icy patches, pedestrians, the works, all while trying out different paces, practicing keeping tension in the harness, and not moving before my dog—in this case my instructor—moves. I also talked a lot with my instructor about what I’m looking for in a dog in terms of their personality—a happy little go getter who likes to zoom through the city but is also okay if we’re chilling for a bit.

After everyone did their Juno walks we returned to the Seeing Eye’s main campus and met to go over how to put on and take off the collars, harnesses, and gentle leaders, practicing on the stuffed doggos in the common lounge. This would normally be old hat for the retrains, but they actually have a new kind of harness with a magnetic closure now. It took me a minute to get the hang of it, but I think it will be way easier and faster to take the harness on and off.

Next was lunch, then another trip downtown for our third and final Juno walk, this time following the route we’ll do tomorrow with our new dogs. We had another welcome lecture, this one including some historical facts about the Seeing Eye. I’ve heard this a couple times but it’s always nice to get a refresher, and there were definitely a few factoids that I didn’t remember. We had dinner, a fire drill, a rundown of how dog day is going to go tomorrow, and then a wine and cheese reception where we got to socialize and say hello to our class manager’s dogs, which was great because some of us are very dog deprived at this point. I also made a point to introduce my classmates to The Cheese Tax. Very important cultural knowledge.

My instructor tells me that she thinks she knows who she wants to give me and says they are a good little buddy. I’m not supposed to share with everyone the details about my new dog for a few days. I need to give both of us time to bond and get used to each other and make sure the match is working well. So since I can’t share for a bit, I’m going to refer to them on here as Little Buddy, because I think that’s the perfect code name.

Today, it’s finally starting to sink in and feel real that I’m getting a new Seeing Eye dog. It’s finally starting to feel exciting! I’m super tired already, so I hope I sleep tonight, but of course, it’s the night before dog day, so probably not.

Neutron in Time Square

As I write this, I’m flying home from Seeing Eye, with Neutron at my feet under the seat in front of me. This is Neutron’s first plane flight. I’m glad to be going home, but this has really been a fabulous class with a great group of people, and I’m not sure I’m ready to get back to the real world. There have been a lot of things I’ve been putting off while I’m here, saying I’ll deal with it when I’m back from Seeing Eye. Well, I’m almost back from Seeing Eye, so now I’m going to have to deal with all that stuff. (Note: At the time I’m posting this, I’ve arrived home, been mobbed by dogs, and started unpacking, organizing my life, and catching up on sleep).

I’ll talk about arriving home in the future, when I’m awake enough to string two words together. This post is about my last week of training with Neutron.

We cruised through our second solo. There were a lot of challenges: dog distractions, planned and spontaneous; an idling bus sticking out of a driveway; the facial salon Neutron was intent on taking me into; people not looking where they were going and nearly mowing us down. Neutron was fabulous the whole way through, and we had a lot of fun. I’m not sure when, but somewhere between our first solo and our second, things really clicked into place for us and we just started zooming along.

After our solo, we began freelance work. During freelance, we did some standard things as well as work that was similar to what we might face at home.

We started with escalators. Yes, it is possible to take a dog on an escalator, and no, the dog doesn’t have to wear shoes to do it (though I must say Neutron has some super snazzy shoes for snow storms and extra hot summer days). The trick with escalators is to keep your dog resting at your left side and reach out along the railing with your right hand, and the second you feel the railing start to flatten, you and your dog start moving and walk off the escallator. If your dog is moving, there’s no chance of their feet getting caught. Neutron is a huge fan of escalators. His tail was wagging all the way, and when we got off, he was all wriggly and prancy because he did it right.

Revolving doors didn’t go so well. On our second morning of freelance, we went to do revolving doors. I never learned how to do revolving doors with Mopsy—I always took the regular door—and once I found myself in a situation where the regular door was locked and the security guard refused to open it for me, so we had to wing the revolving door and it stressed everybody out. So I wanted to make sure I actually learned how to work Neutron through a revolving door. We practiced primarily on manual revolving doors, the kind you push. The trick with these is to keep your dog on your right side, rather than your left, so they’re in the widest part of the door. Keep them up as close to the glass in front of you as possible, and push the door with your left hand. I didn’t do so well my first try, and I accidently bumped Neutron’s butt with the door, which caused him to get nervous and not trust me so much on revolving doors. The second time I did better. And yesterday, we went to another, bigger door to practice on (because I wanted more practice to feel confident), and we nailed it. Neutron was super happy about it. We learned how to do the automatic revolving doors too, but we didn’t actually practice on them, and honestly those freak me out so we’re going to generally stick with the regular door to the side, which by law they have to have (so there, random security guard who wouldn’t let me in with Mopsy).

We also did work on roads with no sidewalks—country work. Neutron and I walk on the left side of the road, so we’re facing oncoming traffic and I’m between Neutron and the traffic (I’m more visible and it makes Neutron feel safer). We went to a grocery store and practiced using a cart with Neutron. I said it seven years ago and I’ll say it again: there’s a reason I didn’t pass driver’s ed. We wandered through the Morristown courthouse, which was a maze of interconnected buildings with lots of trick staircases and short turns and narrow hallways. We also went to the pet store, where I got Neutron another bone and an ID tag and we worked through all the distractions (there was literally a wall of dogs). We worked on how to deal with medians in the middle of streets, and we cruised around a shopping mall where we practiced getting directions for different stores and in general dealing with the public. Personally, I prefer Amazon, but we found Neutron some nice lacrosse balls to play with, and we fended off small children who wanted to pet him and people who were trying to take sneaky pictures of him. Folks, I can hear your phone make the little camera noise and I will chew you out for it, because taking pictures of my dog can distract him and possibly endanger my safety, and also it’s just rude and an invasion of my privacy. Flip the situation and ask how you would feel if someone was sneakily taking pictures of you without asking and you get it. Just don’t do it. Rant over.

We worked with buses and trains as well, and we used the clicker to get Neutron to target the bus stop (more training me to use the clicker than Neutron). We did a trip in downtown Morristown at night, so I could practice with Neutron when my residual vision isn’t nearly as good, and we rocked it. And of course, we took a couple trips to get ice cream, because ice cream is life and we had to make sure Neutron had proper exposure to ice cream shops with me.

Finally, we went to New York City for a day. We started at Port Authority and walked down to 30th Street, where we encountered a lot of construction. I wanted some construction work because there’s a lot of construction in Boston. We worked on how to deal with construction that blocked the sidewalk and funneled you out into the street with a barrier between you and the cars, as well as scaffolding slalom, both things I had to handle this summer on my way to my internship. Then we took the subway up to Columbus Circle. In the subway station, we worked on platform awareness with the dogs in the subway. If you tell the dog forward thinking you’re facing the way to go but you’re actually facing the platform, the dog won’t take you into the platform but will steer you right or left, guiding you along the platform. Neutron brought me close, following my direction, saw the edge, went “oh nope,” and then steered me away. When I insisted, he steered me even farther away from it. All indicators that, if I was confused and thought I was heading somewhere else but was really facing the platform, I would need to reassess where I was. We also did more practice with the clicker, teaching Neutron to target the turnstile to get onto the platform. When we got out at Columbus Circle, Neutron took me right to the turnstiles even though it was a totally different station. From Columbus Circle we walked down Broadway to Time Square, where we worked through the crowds of people and dogs over to a burger place for lunch. And after lunch, we walked back down to Port Authority and went back to the Seeing Eye. Neutron was just flying through New York, weaving around pedestrians, poles, dogs, pigeons, bicycles, mail carts, gratings, and the one guy in a wheelchair with three off-leash chihuahuas in sweater vests. It was really an incredible experience, and I feel like if we could handle that, we can definitely take on Boston.

It’s taken me longer to write this than anticipated, because Neutron was a bit anxious during take-off and landing on the plane (it was his first flight and there were so many noises so he tried to climb into my lap). But he was zooming through the airport. I can’t wait to get home so I can see Mopsy again and Neutron can meet her and our pet black lab, Rocket. We’re going to have a relaxing couple of weeks as much as we can, letting Neutron settle in and get familiar with home and my new apartment at school.

It’s the sleep-deprivation talking, I’m sure, but all of this still feels really surreal to me. I just can’t believe that I went to Seeing Eye, was matched with this super smart, sweet, curious little boy, and now I’m almost home with him. But we did it. For me, training at Seeing Eye this time was almost all about learning to listen to this new dog, and this new dog learning to work with you. Training’s over now. We’re a team, and off we go.

Neutronian Physics

Exactly one week ago, I was matched with my second Seeing Eye dog. He’s a sweet little black lab golden retriever cross named Neutron. He’s 22.5 inches tall and weighs 55 pounds, and he’ll turn two years old in September. So he’s roughly the same size as Mopsy. I’m actually told that he bears a striking resemblance to Mopsy (based on the pictures I’ve sent home).

It’s hard to believe I’ve only been working with Neutron for a week. It feels like it’s been at least a month, if not longer. Part of that is because I’m tired. We’ve been going from before 5:30 in the morning to after 8:00 at night with very little time to stop, and the last few days the heat has been incredible.

In our first week of training, we do set routes with our dogs. The first route was a big rectangle—down four blocks, left for one block, up five blocks, left one block, and then left again to find the training center. At first we did it with our instructor coaching us through each crossing. Then our instructor backed off until, Sunday morning, we were doing it completely independently. There was a barricade and a planned dog distraction we had to work past as well, but otherwise it was pretty straightforward, and I could focus on learning to feel Neutron’s signals through the harness rather than on where I was going. Even though I know how to work a dog now, Neutron is still different from Mopsy, and we need to learn how to dance together.

After our successful solo Sunday morning, we started our second set route. This one was more complicated both in terms of the crossings and obstacles and the general orientation. It’s like a quarter of a pie with a hook on the end, if that makes sense. The street crossings are wider, and the sidewalks are narrower with trees, telephone poles, and sometimes trash cans. It’s a significantly greater challenge, but this was the point where Neutron and I hit our stride, and we’ve been flying. He’s had to wear his booties a couple times because it’s been so hot, and he goes even faster with those on. Like the first route, there’s a baricade set up to block the sidewalk that we have to work past. This baricade is more complicated, because it blocks the sidewalk but also extends to block us on the left as we approach, so we either have to approach the barrier and turn out of it to get to the street, or we have to turn before we reach the extension at all (that choice is up to Neutron). There’s also a more complicated dog distraction, where we have to work past a poodle who then follows us down the street. I’m pretty sure Neutron thinks poodles are part of a weird religious cult. We’re doing our solo for this second route this morning.

This afternoon we’re going to start our freelance work, where the training is tailored to what we’ll face when we go home. We’ll learn to work escalators, elevators, and revolving doors. Seeing Eye has two rows of airline seats to practice sliding our dogs under the seat in front of us or situating them in the bulkhead (I’d prefer to slide Neutron under the seat in front of me because it’s safer, and I think he’ll fit there, but we’ll see). We’ll work through department stores and shopping malls, and we may practice on roads with no sidewalks, paths through the woods, and college campus settings. We’ll also do buses, trains, and subways, and one day we’ll be going into New York City.

It’s been a lot so far, and it’s going to be a lot to pack into our last week here. Of course I’m also grooming Neutron, cleaning up after him, and playing and cuddling with him. He really is a sweet little lab. He loves belly rubs and cuddles. When he has a toy he likes to run around holding it in his mouth and making little snorting noises. He likes to claim me with his paws, and if I’m sitting next to him on the floor giving him scratches, he’ll put his paw on my arm and sort of wrap it around my elbow like a hug.

And of course there are all the science puns I can do with his name. My favorite nickname for him right now is Neutron Star, and I’ve already determined Neutron’s first law of motion: a Neutron in motion tends to stay in motion; a Neutron at rest wants to get moving.

I’m still considering Neutron’s superdog name (Mops was Mopsy the Magnificent). A friend suggested Neutron the Wonderdog, and I came up with Nuclear Neutron, but I’m not sold on either of those. Any suggestions are welcome.

Obviously at this point we’re both still learning how to work with each other, but we’ve come leaps and bounds in just one week, and I’m sure we’ll go leaps and bounds this week too.

And the New Dog Is…

Just kidding. I don’t know. I will be meeting my new superdog partner tomorrow morning. But I wanted to write about what I’ve done since I arrived at Seeing Eye yesterday before it gets overwhelmed by the excitement of the new doggy.

I arrived at lunchtime on Monday. I’d forgotten how good the food is here. Also one of the instructors in my class was my instructor when I was here seven years ago training with Mopsy. She isn’t my instructor this class, but it’s cool that she’s there.

After lunch, my instructor gave me a tour of the campus so that I could navigate independently. I remember bits of it, but they’ve renovated the building since I was here in 2010, and they’ve changed things just enough that I’m a bit confused.

After the tour of the campus, we went on a juno walk. A juno walk is when I hold the harness handle and the instructor holds the other end and measures my pace and pull on the harness. These are the most important factors in matching me with a guide dog. Of course there are other factors. There are different lengths of harness handles, but no one’s going to give me a Great Dane or a Chihuahua. For this first juno walk, we went up and down the Seeing Eye driveway. We worked a lot on my pull on the harness handle. It’s different with a person rather than a dog, but apparently my arm position was wrong, so either I’ve forgotten how to hold the harness or I’ve been doing it wrong for who knows how long. To be fair to me, they’re teaching a different grip on the leash than what I learned and did with Mopsy, so that might have thrown me off. Still, I’m figuring it out.

After the juno walk, I had some time to unpack. Then it was dinner and a welcome meeting. After going over the schedule for Tuesday, they handed out our leashes. It’s funny because Mopsy’s leash has become super soft and either dark dark brown or black, I can’t tell. But the new leash they handed me is all stiff and rough and this light light brown.

We were up at 6:00 this morning. After breakfast we came to the downtown training center for a brief lecture on what class is going to be like, and then we took another juno walk, this time in a much busier area. I learned that actually I haven’t been doing anything wrong with Mopsy, but because Mopsy and I were so familiar with each other that I didn’t need to do a lot of the things that I’ll need to do with this new dog, like coming to full stops before turning. To work on my issue with keeping pressure on the harness handle, we did an exercise where I held the leash as if it was a harness handle. The instructor explained it out the difference between towing a car with a chain and towing a car with a tow-bar. If you tow the car with a chain, it could be flopping around in the back. I have to maintain pressure so that the dog can feel me. It’s just as important as me being able to feel the dog, because if the dog loses the pressure the dog isn’t sure I’m still with them and could become anxious. With just the leash, rather than the rigid harness handle, it was much easier to feel when I was losing pressure and correct for it. It was really effective in showing me just how important it was to maintain pressure, because if I lost the pressure I felt like I was floating in space with no direction.

We did another juno walk this afternoon, and it was really great for cementing the pressure thing. I still have to work on waiting for the dog to go when I say “forward” instead of leaping into action myself. This has resulted in me trying to both move and not move at the same time and doing what one instructor called “quite the charleston.”

With every hour that passes I become more and more excited. This afternoon, we had a terrifying demonstration of silent cars (they are really silent!), and the lecture on the history of the Seeing Eye while our instructors decided which dogs we’ll get tomorrow. By the time we sat down to dinner, they knew, but they won’t tell us anything. In a few minutes, we have a cheese and wine party, which will be our last chance to eat food with our hands without our dogs’ leashes dangling off our wrists. Then it’s off to bed to try and sleep despite the anticipation. Morning comes early here (once we get our dogs it will come even earlier).

Tomorrow morning, we’ll get up, have breakfast, and have a quick meeting while our dogs are being bathed. And then we’ll meet the dog. Despite my best efforts, my instructor has given me only a few hints. The dog will either be a male or a female, and it will have four legs, a tail, and soft ears. The suspense is killing me.

Seven Years a Team

Jameyanne and Mopsy cuddling on the floor Yesterday, June 21, was our dogiversary. Seven years ago, my sidekick came wagging into my life. Okay, she wasn’t wagging. She doesn’t have a tail, which is a shame, so I wagged enough for both of us.

Since we met seven years ago, my sidekick and I have been all over the world, having all the adventures. Four years of college at Kenyon, where I learned all about literature and Italy and how to sing in tune with my sidekick’s clarinet and also why chocolate chip cookies are bad for me and bounding through the snow is the best. Then a year in Italy, where we conquered the sidewalks cars and motorcycles liked to race on, mastered the art of jumping into trees without dropping any gelato, and taught a small Italian town a thing or two about what a Seeing Eye dog and her sidekick can do given a chance. When we returned victorious from Italy, we spent a year at home. I got to explore where my sidekick grew up and meet her high school friends while we learned about disability rights and applied to law school. And last year, we started law school together at Harvard, which mostly involved my person learning the basics of world-saving (she could have just talked to me) and me reminding her when she’d been studying long enough and it was time to play. We got out and about and explored Cambridge and Boston some too.

Towards the end of the spring and at the beginning of the summer, we started going out a lot more into the city, which was fun, but I realized I can’t guide my sidekick as well as I used to. I was nervous in crowds, and even when my sidekick and I had the whole road to ourselves, I got startled when another person or a dog came too close to us. I felt like I had to tell the other dogs to stay away from me because I was so nervous, so I started barking at them and lunging at them. My sidekick tried to remind me that this was not proper Seeing Eye dog behavior. She even tried to bribe me with treats to get me to stop—as if I, a well-groomed Labrador, would stoop to the level of doing things for food. Nothing helped, not even the treats. I just didn’t feel like I was able to guide my person the way I used to, and I wanted her to understand that, because I didn’t want her to be relying on me for her safety. So my sidekick had a talk with the trainers at the Seeing Eye, and then my sidekick and I had a talk. We decided that it’s time for me to retire.

Don’t worry, I am not giving up my place on this blog. I have way too much fun writing these posts, I’m looking forward to telling you all about retired life and giving my sidekick’s new superdog partner some friendly advice. I’ll be going to live with my sidekick’s parents and their dog Rocket. Rocket isn’t a superdog because he’s never guided anybody anywhere, but he’s a black lab too, and he’s nice enough, for a crazy puppy. We’ll be good friends, and I like my sidekick’s parents lots too.

My sidekick will be going back to Seeing Eye at the end of July to meet her new superdog. I can te’l that she doesn’t know how to feel about it. She’s excited, because she hates using her cane (that long white stick that for as long as I’ve been with her, she only uses to fish one of my toys out from under the bed). But I can also tell that she feels bad for being excited, like she feels like she’s replacing me or something. I want to tell her that’s stupid, and I think she wants to tell herself that’s stupid too. Sometimes feelings don’t listen though. But I don’t want to work anymore, and I want my sidekick to have a superdog partner who will keep her safe, so I’m glad she’s going back. Also I’m sure the new superdog and I will be great friends.

And my sidekick and I aren’t done having adventures. We have sunbathing and cuddling to do, ropes and bones to wrestle for, walks and walks and walks to take. And who knows? Now that I’m learning to be a retired superdog, maybe I’ll try that swimming thing again. No promises though. My butt sinks.

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