Dogs are heroic only insofar as we are heroic. We take journeys together. We refuse to sit still. Canine heroism lies in accompaniment—which is trust. The duality of heroism is inter-species mutual trust. They leave this out of dog stories most of the time. We don’t like ourselves. Maybe the dog will save us. But we save our own kind with fully equal dog friends who have decided they like the challenge.
Few non-disabled dog owners think of their relationship with dogs as a true journey. They want dogs to obey them, as if their own meagre habits are enough to achieve in life. Dog obedience is a good thing, necessary, but if the lessons stop there the owner doesn’t grow. Therefore, no journey. As a blind person who travels with a dog I know that we never swim out into the same water; never travel the same worldly path. Darkness brushes both my own cheek and my dog’s.
Journeys, every hour.
I see newspaper articles, books, even movies where people who’ve suffered trauma are represented as having been miraculously healed by the intervention of dogs. This is powerful. But its a Disney story, incomplete, sentimental. When a dog signs on with us, gives her or his doggish heart to us; when a dog looks you in the eyes, there’s a transmission, subtle as first light seen above the forest—people have no vocabulary for it—but the dog says you are worth my days and nights. I’ve seen blind people experience this moment. Its as large and yet delicate as poetry itself. Poetry. Dogs. Journeys. Mutual forgiveness of each vice. And then you walk.
Planet of the Blind 