Shortly after being paired with my first guide dog Corky at Guiding Eyes for the Blind I saw I was happy and that I hadn’t predicted it—and it was rich—a sweet, day long bounty. I felt it from the moment I woke. I felt it all day. It wasn’t a simple happiness. With Corky I now sensed something I began calling “love-luck”—“love-luck” in dog-company; love-luck and gaining confidence. Love-luck was simple; love-luck was the most complex thing I’d ever experienced. All day a dog was with me, a grand dog. I was somewhere between Eden and New Jerusalem.
Yes I was feeling better than I’d ever felt. Buddha said: “Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” I was giving Corky all my heart, every ounce of it.
The trainers worked us and our days were filled with tasks. I’d never felt good in traffic and now I was crossing streets with assurance, and with an additional quality, a deep calm in the heart—“love-luck” had many angles and was with me in every hour. Giving myself to Corky meant I was more aware, more awake than I’d ever been before. It was sensational to feel awake and calm amid thundering trucks and taxicabs honking agitated horns.
**
Awake all day and learning. It seemed there were a hundred techniques to this dog business. We learned how to enter and pass through revolving doors. Corky went on the outside—the larger side of the moving cubicle, and I learned to guard her tail from being pinched. We practiced this several times, my lovely dog in agreement, over and over again through the spinning wicket. We took baby steps, inching our way ahead, pushing the door slowly. “These will soon be replaced by wheelchair friendly doors because of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” said L. “But you need to know how to do this in case you find yourself someplace where this is the only type of door.” “Here’s to alternative doors,” I thought. “Who invented the revolving door?” I wondered. “Some torturer—maybe the same guy who conceived of the Iron Maiden.” Later I actually looked it up, the revolving door was invented in 1888 by Theophilus Van Kannel, a Philadelphia inventor, who is reputed to have had a phobia of opening conventional doors, especially for women. Go figure. In any case, I resolved to avoid the damned things wherever I could.
Even trips up and down escalators in a department store required careful dog handling and precise footwork. “You want to keep your dog a step behind you; turn slightly and put your knee before her—keep her from jumping ahead,” said L.
“As you near the top you’ll feel the moving hand rail become horizontal—that’s when you start should to feel with your foot for the leveling off of the steps. Now turn straight, release your dog, and tell her forward. If you do it exactly this way, she won’t pinch her toes.”
It was a classic ballroom dance: turning, feeling with hands and toes, turning again, leading my partner, all to the rhythm of whispering metal stairs. Strangers on the adjacent “down” escalator saw a Labrador riding up and smiling. For Corky this was old hat. She seemed to actually like the escalator. Personally I’d always been vaguely afraid of them. “Love-luck” happened in small ways as well as large. We now could perform a two-fold, two-creature escalator minuet.
**
I learned Corky would curl up tight on the floor of a car, right beneath the glove compartment in the front seat. We practiced the maneuver, man and dog, in and out of a sedan. I stepped part way in with my left leg and called her. She climbed in delicately and lay down. Then I sat, pulling my right leg in. “Its like being in a tank,” I said, though I’d never been in the military—it was cramped and awkward. “Clearly one needs to know some yoga,” I added. But Corky could ride this way if we had to. And I knew how to accomplish her positioning. Guide dog work was all about the accomplishment of daily techniques, all of them necessary if you’re brining a dog everywhere. “Yes there are techniques one needs to know for a lifetime of love,” I said to Corky when she got out of the car.
The techniques of love are about safety, companionship, and looking out for one another wherever you may go.
Planet of the Blind 