“What Are You? Some Kind of Dog?"

  

“Oh, it’s a service dog,” says the airline woman, clearly flustered, uncertain, even a wee bit panicked. It’s possible she’s never seen a working dog. It’s also possible that disability and political correctness and unfamiliarity have collided in her head. 

 

It’s early and I’m at O’Hare airport in Chicago, catching a flight to New York. My noble guide dog is at my side, though she’s not as noble as she should be because she’s sniffing a stranger’s suitcase. I pull her gently to a heeling position. The airline lady has disappeared. Poof! This is like old Scandinavian magic–someone put a spell on her and she’s vanished to the underworld. Well alright, I put a spell on her. Or “we” did–me and guide dog Nira, a seemingly innocuous yellow Labrador Retriever from Guiding Eyes for the Blind in New York. We have the power to make people go away. Right now she’s in the back room asking a supervisor what to do. Do we have to take the dog away from the man? Do we charge extra for a service dog? Does the dog get crated like cargo? Does it get a seat in the cabin? Can the man sit anywhere or does he get a special seat? Nira and I know all the questions that are now being asked behind the curtain.  

 

**

 

The sensational creature next to me is known in English as a “guide dog” and sometimes she’s called a “Seeing-Eye” dog since the first school in the United States to train dogs for the blind is “The Seeing-Eye” in Morristown, New Jersey. Now there are a dozen guide dog schools in the US and more than 80 around the world, and their ranks are growing.  

 

The technical name is guide dog.   

 

What does a guide dog do? 

 

Why is the appearance of a guide dog in public still so surprising?

 

I ponder these things in the United Airlines ticket area while loudspeakers broadcast phrases like: “unattended luggage”; “liquids, gels, and creams”.

 

 

**

 

When the woman returns she’s all smiles. Her supervisor has assured her guide dogs fly on airplanes, that they lie at the feet of their human partners, and that no charge will be applied for the dog. Perhaps the supervisor also said it’s a good thing if you give the guide dog team a bulkhead seat–though this isn’t required. The only thing the law really says is that people with disabilities can’t sit in the exit row. 

 

One thing’s for sure: guide dogs are still relatively unfamiliar to the public, even some 80 years after their introduction in the United States. People know they exist, but they don’t know what these dogs and their people can do.