My Guiding Eyes (2017) | mymindisnotblind

She was my eyes, my heart and my soul. She was everything I needed at a time when my world was starting to shrink. When I first got her, she was a scrawny little thing. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to keep her. But she never judged me like I did her. She showed up at my doorstep ready to serve and asked for nothing in return. Faithful from the start, she learned my routes, my habits, my likes and my dislikes and she did everything I asked of her. She was my beloved guide dog and her name was Maggie.

Maggie came to me at the end of a long, New England winter. I already had a plane ticket in hand to go to San Diego, California when I got the call that she was coming. Once she’d settled into my place over the course of a couple of days, I broke the first rule related to getting a new guide dog. I traveled right away with her. Normally you don’t travel for at least four to six weeks when you get a new dog. That way the dog has a chance to get used to your daily routine.

But Maggie was a trooper on that first trip. Wearing a brand-new, stiff leather harness with a bulky handle, she crawled under the seat in front of me in the coach section of an airplane and did not move for hours as we flew across country. Once we got to San Diego she walked for miles with me, going from Pacific Beach to La Jolla, in what felt like mid-summer heat. At one point I paused on a path by the cliffs in La Jolla. I wanted to hang out and listen to the surf pounding against the rocks. With perfect posture, Maggie sat at the edge of a sandy sidewalk and waited for my next command. I noticed she was panting from the heat and realized my life was no longer about what worked for just me. After I found her some water, we walked to a local park, found some shade and lay down on the cool, prickly grass. I moved myself right up against my little girl and stroked her belly, gently working my way around her harness strap. While the coat covering her ribs was a little coarse, the hair on her belly was thin and silky. I twirled it around my right index finger over and over again. Out of the corner of my eye (I had some peripheral vision), I thought I saw Maggie grin and lift her paw up into the air.

It was while we were hanging out in the park that I figured out Maggie liked to people-watch. After her belly rub was over, she perched herself at the perfect angle to watch people passing through the park. She checked out everyone. First she cocked her head to the left and locked her eyes on whomever was walking in the distance. She followed their track until they were out of her sight. Then she cocked her head to the right and did the same thing. When she saw another dog, she wagged her tail in short, quick strokes while it still kept contact with the ground. Though excited, the rest of her body never moved an inch. Her head twitched when she saw someone on a bicycle, and she started panting when she saw kids on skate boards. I remembered that excessive panting was a sign that the dog was getting stressed. I felt her trying to figure out what the skate board was all about.

“What is that Pup?”

But the hard-to-see wheels made it all but impossible for her to understand what was happening. I made a mental note to reassure her everything was okay when we passed someone on a skate board.

Though small for a German Shepherd, Maggie had a set of ears meant for an animal twice her size. At one point I measured them and they stood a full four inches in the air. But when she was in focused guiding mode, those big ears were pinned straight back, pointing behind her. Sometimes, when she was distracted by something on the other side of the street, one ear would perk up while the other stayed pinned back. Regardless, she always kept her long, narrow chin parallel to the ground and had a slight bounce in her step as we moved forward together. At regular intervals she snuck a peek out of the corner of her right eye to make sure I was okay. I never felt more loved than when she did that.

On average, Maggie and I walked between three and four miles a day. When we came to a curb she slowed and tapped her nose on my left leg. The tap on my leg was Maggie’s way of telling me there was danger ahead. When we stopped at a curb I was responsible for listening to the traffic and figuring out when it was okay to cross the street. She was responsible for disregarding my command to move forward if she saw a car coming. People who watched Maggie and me cross a street often remarked about how she’d fix her eyes on a car stopped at a stoplight making sure the car did not pose a threat.

When Maggie was placed with me I was trained on the procedure to “correct” any of her bad behavior.

“You correct the dog by giving her leash a quick, short upward tug,” Jason, the guy who placed her with me, explained.

I gulped, knowing the leash was attached to a choke chain.

“You want to correct her immediately when she does something wrong. If you don’t, she’ll get lazy and start to cut corners. Believe me, the dog’ll know you’re soft and quickly develop a bunch of bad habits.”

Jason made me practice correcting Maggie until he was confident I had the procedure down. The first time Maggie and I were alone and I corrected her, she stopped dead in her tracks and turned and glared at me. The second time I corrected her, the stare was longer. It turned out Maggie was a super-sensitive dog. I did not need to man-handle her. I did not even need to yell at her. If she did something wrong, got lazy or lost focus, I just needed to give her a gentle talking to. So instead of yanking her leash to get her attention, I simply said in my stern but not loud voice, “Hey, what are ya doin’?” and Maggie quickly got back on point. I became as attentive to her needs as she was to mine.

Maggie changed people’s perception of me almost immediately. When I walked down the street with my white cane, people would cross the street to avoid me. With Maggie, they crossed the street to say hello to her. When I got on the bus with my white cane, no one ever moved their stuff off of an empty seat so that I could sit. With Maggie, as soon as we got on the bus people made room for us. When I entered a classroom to teach at the university, I felt like my cane was a barrier between me and my students. With Maggie in the room, my students seemed to be more comfortable talking to a blind woman.

In fact, Maggie loved going to the university. She would lie in front of the classroom while I taught accounting. When I lectured for an extended period of time, she often stretched and groaned out loud. My response was always the same: “Come on Maggie, pay attention.” The students always laughed and it was a great way to break the monotony of learning about debits, credits, balance sheets and income statements.

Although Maggie had a sign on her harness that said “Do not pet me I am working,” whenever we were in the stairwell between classes, students loved to give her a scratch on the top of her head as they passed by. I called it “copping a feel.” But I let it go because I knew how much both Maggie and the students appreciated those fleeting moments of contact. And when the students came back from summer break, Maggie always had a big smile on her face as we made our way across campus.

Regardless of where we were, I trusted Maggie to take care of me. And Maggie trusted me to take care of her, too. From the beginning I groomed her every day. As part of our morning ritual I grabbed her grooming comb and asked, “Can I make you pretty?”

She trotted over to me and sat at my feet. I ran the comb through her coat from head to tail.

“Making the puppy pretty,” I sang with each stroke of the comb.

By the time I was done, I had caressed almost every inch of her body. I knew where she was ticklish, where she was prone to having skin problems and where she liked to chew herself. When I was done with our morning ritual I always asked her, “Who’s my little Miss America?” And then she shook herself with pleasure.

I learned to brush her teeth, picking up her wet, floppy lips to scrub her fangs with coconut oil. She furiously licked her teeth, the toothbrush and my fingers as I brushed. It was our little game. Her vet was impressed with my efforts.

“This dog has the cleanest teeth I’ve ever seen!” I was ecstatic that others could see how much effort I put into the care of my dog.

As diligent as I was in tending to Maggie, I did fail her on one very memorable occasion. On the first day of Maggie’s placement Jason told me, “Never let the dog drink out of a public water bowl. That’s how dog mouth diseases are transmitted. And don’t let anyone give her any snacks or food. You want to know the source of anything that goes in the dog’s mouth. Got it?”

The rule seemed simple enough. But I liked to go to Friday happy hour at my favorite Irish bar. And while I typically only drank two beers, it only took two beers for me to get a buzz. On one such occasion one of the other regular customers offered Maggie a treat and, while I hesitated, I allowed her to do so. Maggie happily chomped on her biscuit. We left soon thereafter and headed home. About an hour later Maggie started to heave and vomit. No problem, I thought. I just cleaned up the mess and tried to comfort her. She lay in her bed, and thirty minutes later she was sick again. The third time she got sick she started to foam at the mouth. At that point it was close to eleven at night, and I had no way of getting Maggie anywhere. I panicked, prayed and stayed right beside her for the next six hours. When the sun came up I took her outside, and she had a serious case of diarrhea. Oddly, I could tell that once she relieved herself she felt a lot better. We went back inside, and she drank some water and ate some food. I lay low with her that day and resolved to never, ever let anyone give her a treat again.

Yeah, Jason. I got it.

When we spent the bulk of our day indoors, I fastidiously took Maggie outside every four hours so she could go to the bathroom and stretch her legs. But if we were outside walking somewhere, she was trained to give me “the signal” that she needed to take care of business. Since she was not allowed to relieve herself while in her harness, she would stray to the left or right indicating she needed to go to the curb. That was supposed to be my cue to remove her harness and let her “go get busy.” But it was a subtle signal, and I often missed it. She’d drift off left or right and, when she realized I was oblivious to her cues, she’d stop, sit at the edge of the sidewalk and look at me like I was a dope.

“Duh,” I’d think to myself as I bent over and unbuckled her harness so that she could do her business. Ultimately, she modified the signal veering to the left or right and staring at the grass and then at me until I got it. Maggie and I had only one accident in the six years she guided for me. We were in New York City, and I missed her signal to go to the curb. Instead I went into Lord & Taylor on Fifth Avenue. As soon as we got inside the door, Maggie squatted and pooped on the shiny marble floor. I quickly pulled a poop bag out of my pocket and scooped up the evidence. As if nothing had happened a woman working in the front of the store pulled an orange cone out of nowhere and placed it on the landing spot. She smiled at me and simply said, “I’ll take that for you.”

“I’m so sorry” was all I could muster.

“No worries, I’ll have maintenance come clean this up in no time.” Then she took the bag and told me to enjoy my time shopping. I smiled at the woman, gave Maggie the command to walk forward, and silently chastised myself for being too self-absorbed to take notice of the signals Maggie was trying to give me.

Although Maggie was exceptionally well-behaved, it was important to incorporate obedience work into her routine.

“It’ll keep the dog’s skills sharp,” Jason told me.

I made sure we did obedience work every morning. Our routine was fixed from the beginning. I gave her the following commands in succession: sit, come around, repeat two more times; down, come around, repeat two more times; sit and stay while I backed up two steps, repeat two more times; down and stay while I backed up two steps, repeat two more times; and finally, I walked around my living space asking her to heel. An accountant by training and temperament, I embraced the repetition that became part of our morning routine.

Maggie was not only incredibly obedient, but her navigation skills were stellar. When we walked through crowded areas, she’d pick a line that took me between bodies, around poles, away from bumps in the sidewalk, and around any obstacles that might have fallen on the ground. She was not the most patient dog when it came to walking behind people who were blocking her path. She’d wait for about five seconds to see if they were going to move out of the way and, if they didn’t she’d stick her nose into the space between them and they’d have no choice but to notice her and step aside. People always apologized.

“Sorry,” they’d say when they realized I was blind.

Maggie was also an alpha dog, which meant if I walked anywhere with friends she had to be in front of everyone. If my friends were unaware of this trait and walked in front of us, Maggie would automatically pick up her pace to make sure she got ahead of everyone. She left no doubt she was the leader of the pack. Sometimes if I gave Maggie a command to go right or left, my friends would think I was talking to them.

“Oh, we’re going right? Okay,” they’d reply. Most of the time I didn’t mention I’d been talking to the dog.

Besides navigating around people and objects, stairs were another challenge for us. Maggie had to let me know when we were at the top of a set of stairs. She did this simply by pausing at the top stair and turning back to wait until I was next to her before she proceeded. When we were going down stairs, she let me know we were at the last stair by pausing and waiting for me to take the last step down before she moved forward. She did this like a champ and never missed giving me my cues.

One unexpected outcome from getting a guide dog was how Maggie’s presence changed me over time. When I walked with my white cane, I often had a scowl on my face because I hated the stigma of being defined as disabled. With Maggie I had a smile because I always had my best friend at my side. Introverted by nature, I did not like talking to strangers. But Maggie was a people magnet, and I had to adapt to that. In the short time we sat in the park in La Jolla, three or four people came up to me and said the same thing, “What a beautiful dog.”

“Thank you,” I replied, not wanting to be social but not wanting to be rude either.

“Is she a German Shepherd?”

I was probably asked this question more than a thousand times because, while Maggie was a German Shepherd, she did not have the traditional black-and-tan markings. Instead, she had flecks of black sprinkled throughout her tannish coat. But the coloring from her forehead to the nape of her neck was what made her stand out. It was tinted with red highlights. I always thought she looked like the gentlest soul walking on the face of the earth, and anyone who laid eyes on her agreed. As beautiful Maggie was in the outside, she had a heart of gold on the inside and she never hid it. Any time we got on the bus, our routine was the same.

“Find a seat,” I’d command. She’d then stop in front of the first empty seat she saw. I’d sit down and then she’d back up in between my legs and sit as well. Once situated, Maggie would turn and give me the deepest, most loving look a dog is capable of. Almost without exception some passenger on the bus would see the connection between the two of us and comment out loud.

“Oh my god, look at her. Look at the way she looks at you. That dog loves you more than anything in the world.”

Then after a pause I’d always reply, “Yes, she is special.” My heart melted every time this happened, and often tears wet my eyes. Like in an arranged marriage, we started out as strangers and, over time, became partners in life.

While Maggie was a social dog in public, she was aloof with me in private. I learned that she needed her private time when she was not working. She wanted to be in the same room with me but in her own space. She was comfortable seeing that I was okay but not being directly responsible for me. If we were in the living room, she often lay down in her tent-style dog crate. It was a roomy space with extra padding on the floor. She would walk into the crate, turn around, lie down and then curl her front legs toward her chest while her hind legs stretched out as far as they could. Her nose was always touching the floor just outside the front of the crate. It was the perfect position to both relax and keep an eye on me. Sometimes I lay down on the floor in front of her and tried to give her kisses. Once in a while she tolerated my affection, but more often she just got up and left her crate until I got bored and found something else to do.

Sometimes, when I relaxed on the couch at night, Maggie lay down on the floor next to me. She curled up into a little ball and used her tail to cover her nose. As her eyes closed, her face softened. I knew she was happy when she let out that last final groan before she drifted off to sleep.

Of course, I’d often annoy her by dropping to the floor and putting my nose up against hers. Half-asleep, she’d moan when I made contact with her and then quickly return to her dreams. Sometimes, as I watched her sleep, I’d try to imagine what she really looked like. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a big, soft, furry blur. With my mind I could see the details of her eyes, ears, lips, nostrils, paws and a heart of gold.

I was relieved Maggie never wanted to sleep with me. I loved my dog but I only had a double bed. It was perfect for me but not for me and a dog. She had her own bed and sprawled out across the two-foot by three-foot pillow, using every inch of cushion available to her. And she liked to hang her head off the edge. When she snored at night, I knew she’d had a good day.

In the morning she got up and immediately stretched her hind legs as she walked across the bedroom. Not once, not twice, but at least three or four times as she woke up. Then she dropped to her belly and spent a minute or two rubbing her chin on the bedroom rug. When she found her way into the kitchen looking for her breakfast, I knew she was ready to face the day.

When Maggie came to me, I had already mentally steeled myself for the day she would no longer be able to guide for me. When Jason placed the dog with me I asked him,” How long will the dog guide for?”

“Typically, dogs guide for between six to eight years.”

“How will I know it’s time to retire her?”

“Oh, believe me, you’ll know.” Those words stayed in the back of my head until I got the first sign Maggie was ready to stop guiding. One day, on a walk to the university, I realized something might be happening with her. The university was about a mile from my place, and we had to walk up a steep hill about a quarter mile long. As we started up the hill, Maggie saw a bus go by. She stopped, sat down in the middle of the sidewalk, stared longingly at the bus and then back at me.

I had to coax her into moving on.

“Come one Maggie, let’s go.”

Taking her time, she eventually stood up and started what felt like a death march forward. About ten minutes later another bus passed us, and while she did not sit, she again stared long and hard at the bus and then back at me. Her message was loud and clear, “How come we’re not on that bus?”

Jason’s words popped into my head, “You’ll know. Believe me, you’ll know.”

After that incident Maggie started walking sideways when she was supposed to be guiding for me. Then she started sitting in the middle of the sidewalk whenever she saw a dog, because she didn’t want to make the effort to take a wide berth around it.

Even though Maggie was giving me indications that she did not want to guide anymore, words from her vet struck the loudest chord with me. When I noticed that Maggie was slowing down I asked the vet if something might be wrong with her.

“I think she’s just going through the normal aging process. I know this is probably tough for you, but you really want to leave the dog with something in the tank, so she can enjoy her retirement years.”

I knew right then and there I needed to retire Maggie sooner rather than later. She’d given everything of herself to me, and I needed to make sure I did the right thing for her. Even though I loved Maggie, I knew I wanted to get another guide dog and keeping her as a pet was just not feasible. In fact, I had long ago made arrangements for who would get Maggie when she retired. I wanted her to stay within my extended family so I could be at least an ancillary part of the rest of her life. But I did not necessarily want her close by. I thought it would kill me to know she was nearby and not see her every day. Ultimately, I asked a friend who lives about three hours away, and was known as a “dog whisperer” by anyone who knew her, if she would take Maggie when the time came. My friend eagerly agreed. It was two years between securing Maggie’s retirement home and her obvious reluctance to want to continue guiding for me.

Once I realized what was going on with Maggie, it took me another couple of weeks before I finally emailed my friend to let her know retirement was imminent. Then I contacted the guide dog agency that placed her with me and one of the dog trainers came to assess Maggie. After a short walk around the block the dog trainer agreed that Maggie’s guiding days were over. Together we went through the paperwork to formally retire her.

Once Maggie was officially relieved of her duties, we spent two more weeks together so we could say our good-byes. Then I watched her drive off in the back of my friend’s SUV to live the rest of her life as an unburdened dog. It was gut-wrenching.

Minutes before Maggie was about to leave, I took a picture of her and sent it to my sister-in-law to let her know the transfer was underway. Later that day, my sister-in-law sent me yellow orchids with a note saying the orchids were a lasting symbol of the love between Maggie and me. I put the orchids on the desk in my home office, just above the spot where Maggie used to lie while I worked. Now, every night before I go to bed, I find my way into my office and kiss the orchids good night.

“Sweet dreams my beautiful little girl. Sweet dreams.”

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