Remembering the guide dog rescuer

Many of us have probably read about the golden retriever, Daisy, who saved her blind owner, James Crane, from the burning tower one on September 11.  Daisy not only guided James to safety, she ran back and helped firemen find other people trapped in the snoky hallways.  Before she suffered from smoke inhalation, 4 burned paws, and a broken leg, she was credited with helping to save 967 lives.  She is the first civilian dog to receive the medal of honor of New York City.

            So often people remark that my German shepherds are so loving and attached that they must be wonderful protection for me.  Seeing Eye tries to clarify that claim and state, instead, that they are trained to guide safely, not to protect.  Guide dog schools want to breed for gentleness, not aggression.

            Some of the cats in Pittsburgh may scoff at that claim, since Flossie really sees every feline as an enemy combatant.

            But many of us who have used dogs for our mobility have experienced this same sort of “saving” instinct that wonderful Daisy exhibited on that tragic day.

            My first guide, a German shepherd named Marit, really expressed her name (pronounced merit) one windy, March day.  I had taken my kids to their bus stop and waited with them.  Afterwards, I walked home and felt captivated by the warm, gusty wind.  It was strong enough to consume my attention (never a good thing when traveling blind) and to blow lots of empty garbage cans around our street.  I pictured Marlborough Road, festooned with the cans when Marit began backing into me.  Her backside pushed me hard enough that I stumbled backwards.

            “Pfui,” I scolded.  But she kept pushing me back.

            Just as I  started to scold her again, I heard the car, charging up a driveway, right toward us.

            It was going to hit me.  I turned and ran into our empty street.

            The rear fender knocked the backs of my legs and propelled me forward.  Only then did the driver hit the brakes.

            To this day I don’t know the name of the cowboy behind the wheel.  I imagined it was our neighbor’s teenage grandson.

            My immediate reaction was of anger, and I swept my hand, gesturing for the driver to be on his way, if he were in such a bloody hurry.  I walked home.

            When I tried to put the key in the lock, I realized how close Marit and I had come to being under that car’s wheels.  Marit could easily have broken away from me and save herself.  But her first thought was to get me out of harm’s way.

            No matter how I tried, I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking.  I bent and hugged Marit.  “You’ve saved my life, Girl,” I said.

            And this isn’t uncommon among guide dogs.  What’s unusual is that this time I knew Marit had done something heroic and honorable.  So this Memorial Day I’ll remember our fallen soldiers and the guide dogs that have made my independence possible.  I owe them so much.  Often, our dogs save us, and we don’t even know it.

Travel to New Jersey

                        I just returned from a second trip to a New Jersey middle school in as many months. Over a decade ago a teacher raised the funds to invite nearly thirty speakers to spend a day at her school, telling their stories of enormous challenge.   Survivors and rescuers during the Holocaust, during 9-11, Katrina, columbine, the Oklahoma bombing all appeared to give living histories.  Young people who had been bullied spoke and offered strategies to reduce this common abuse.  Several young men who are known as “The Lost Boys” talked of their peril in war-torn Sudan. This far-seeing teacher hoped the children in the audience would feel inspired, to “respect, reflect, and remember,” and to realize that they could make a difference in improving our world.

            Since that first program in 2000, other New Jersey middle schools have offered a similar program, calling it by their own names, but always emphasizing live voices, good values, especially courage.  Since 2000 I have traveled to various New Jersey towns and participated, telling my story of coping with disability, trying to give hope that problems, if faced, can be solved.

            Yesterday I visited Watchung, New Jersey.  During one session that I was free I listened to a war correspondent who not only was Iraqi, but spent several years embedded with the U.S. soldiers in Iraq.  Asking what the kids knew of the conflict, he then showed photos and spoke to the students about the numbers of lives lost.  He spent most of his time giving a picture of life in Iraq for young people, with school and all activities interrupted for months and months, with temperatures of 135 and 150 degrees and all electricity disrupted by the bombing—hence not even an operating  fan. 

            When asked by a teacher what Iraqi children would want our youngsters to know, the correspondent hesitated.  “What most children asked me is if Americans knew what this war was doing to their lives.  So many had lost parents.  So many families lost as many as 9 relatives.  4 million Iraqis have been displaced—in a country of 25 million.  Children said to me, ‘I’d like to be a pet in America.  Americans treat their pets so much better.’” 

            “How many of you have been personally affected by the Iraq War?” he asked.

            2 students said their   uncles had served, but were home now.  Another said her aunt had served.

            “In this country we had the luxury of not even thinking about the war.  Iraqis didn’t have that luxury.”

Maurice Sendak

            The children’s book world heaved a sad sigh on Tuesday, May 8, with the death of superhero, Maurice Sendak.  To all the good things written about Where the Wild Things Are, I add that the book said so much about conflict resolution.  Back in the 90s a friend and I put together an annotated bibliography of books about war, peace, and conflict resolution.  Wild Things was right there.  And then there’s Little Bear.  How many children cut their teeth, learning to read on that classic.  And Sendak wasn’t a sentimental writer, anything but the stereotype of a children’s author, who many think write in finger paint or peanut butter and jelly.  Maurice Sendak was a “vetch,” according to an NPR account, someone who wrote and illustrated In the Night Kitchen with little penises in full view.  Mr. Sendak dies, but his books—how they live!

The enemy

            Most of the people in my generation complain of the rapid pace of progress in technology.  On my new laptop there seems to be 13 updates in one day, and then 14 the next, for instance.  But as someone Deaf-blind, I find the effort to keep up with the racing changes daunting.

            Until this past Monday, my new laptop was the enemy in the household.  It sat on a table beside my old desktop, mocking me.  And since it has the software to speak, it taunted me, day and night.  Windows 7, Word 10, JAWS 13, Open Book 8 or 9, IE 400—they all said, “Just try to conquer me.”

            Once from downstairs I heard the thing talking and carrying on in my third floor office, when I was sure I’d turned it off the night before.  I approached it warily, hit some keys gingerly, and it fell silent. 

            “Okay,” I thought.  “My kids pulled this years ago.  Don’t think you’re so clever!”

            I’d call, “Nap time,” and they’d go into hiding.  I found my 10-month old standing in his closet, his shoulders to his ears, tensed to keep any muscle from making a sound.  My daughter used to take her shoes with bells through the laces off.

            “My guide dog even did it to avoid punishment,” I told the laptop.  “So don’t think you’re so clever.”

            It did the HP version of a hiccup.

            “Ha!  Gotcha!”  I pushed the keystrokes to shut it down.

            It rattled of in rapid fire verbiage, ridiculing me once again.

            “Don’t make me have to push your button,” I warned.

            Silence.

            I pushed.  It spouted more techie jargon.  I freaked, pushed every key I knew, and finally searched for a hammer.

            Then I heard the familiar mournful sigh of the shutting down for bed, the percussion that means it’s brushing its teeth, and then the blessed silence.  Good night.

            But on Monday I made progress, “progress” I repeat, so the laptop can hear.  “From now on, you will not rule me!  I will prevail.”

leashes can be neighborly

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            I read about a woman in Massachusetts who wants her town to pass a leash law for cats.  She’s seen one bluebird after another meet its end in the teeth of a roving feline. I’m reminded of Jonathan Francens’ protagonist, Walter, and his hilarious efforts on behalf of the birds.  When Francens spoke in Pittsburgh last fall, he, actually, donated his considerable fee to a bird sanctuary.  Frankly, I sympathize.

            Despite leash laws for dogs, however, many owners feel as I did in my pre-blind life, that a dog’s nature demands that it run free.  Since, I’ve become an advocate of leash laws, even a real ideologue about it.  You can imagine that my exertions are about as ineffectual as porr Walter’s, and probably much less funny.

            My daughter told me of a high school friend who took her 3 dogs to the park and put leashes on them.  She never held the other end, however. They just might have been the killer dogs I met as I meandered harmlessly along a trail with my “leashed” guide dog, which loses all guiding decorum when confronted with dogs after her throat.

            But worst are the punt kick dogs on Marlborough Road.  They run free on the street and, of course, into our yard for purposes of defecation.  How innocent these little darlings are—so small, like accessories to their owners’ fashion statements.

            Two of them bark endlessly from their owners’ front porch.  Elderly neighbors complain to no avail.  I, in fact, asked once if the owner would plunk the pooches on the back porch so they might not bark so steadily or uproariously. 

            As a Deaf-blind person, I hear nothing while they yap—no car motors coming up or down the street, or out of driveways, no telephone poles that echo my footsteps.  With my hearing loss, two sounds colliding means that I hear neither. 

            This neighbor’s dogs occasionally break free from their porch confinement. 

            “They really wouldn’t hurt a flea,” the wife says, after my dog jumped and prepared to meet the attackers, making me trip and fall into a flowerbed. “They just want to play.”

            “Gr-r-r-r.”  I sent a mental message to the mutts that I’ll daintily remove their vocal cords and possibly a few legs next time they come after my dog. 

            And to my request that sweet-ums 1 and 2 bark from the back porch, Mommy answers, “Oh, they just love sitting on the front porch.  But tell you what—just give me a call every time you go out, and I’ll bring them inside.”

            I was tempted to call her every half hour for about a week, but just sighed and still seethe.

            And then there’s another dog with a Napoleonic complex.  My German shepherds always seem to be great targets for him.  He likes to charge from his porch, too.  And I love his owners.

            But as I hurry off to teach my classes and Napoleon strikes, my dog whirls. Napoleon snarls and thunders, and I think Flossie knows it’s bluster.  But she has turned, and I’m way out of alignment on our quiet street and have no clue where east, west, north, or south are.

            Part of the problem is that people have the notion, as I did, that dogs deserve to roam freely.  Another part is that owners think small dogs aren’t biters or attackers or, in any way, menaces.

            But the largest part of the problem is people’s notions of guide dogs.  Through their training, people think they’ve lost all canine instincts.  But, ah, folks, they are all dog, all the time.  They certainly are better-behaved in harness, but they will still break away to chase a cat, squirrel, rabbit or other dog.  Their nature is still that of domesticated wolf.  My latest dog, Flossie, barks and tries to intimidate other dogs, though we restrain her and stop the barking ASAP.

            Most of the time people spy guide dogs riding quietly on buses, sitting perfectly under a restaurant table. But they have all the desires of regular dogs—to steal food, get into garbage, fight with other animals, and mostly to play like the goofballs they are. When another beast, however down-sized charges after them, they want to fight or flee.  Since I grip the harness and leash firmly, fleeing isn’t usually an option, so they prepare to defend themselves.

            So like Walter in Freedom, I ask for leashes.  Many years ago my German shepherd, Ursula, was attacked by two unleashed hounds just before the intersection of Forbes and Murray.  And these dogs were biting her.  She lay on the ground screaming like a smoke detector.  Guide dogs are trained to be gentle—they are bred for that personality.

            I, however, was bred otherwise, and I punched and swung at those dogs.  The man came slinking up and grabbed their collars, and I swung at him.  I never connected which is the tragedy of blindness, but every pedestrian in Squirrel Hill gave him a tongue-lashing that he’ll never forget.  Ursula wasn’t physically hurt, but emotionally, she was battle -weary.  She had PTSD for nine months.  If she even saw a dachshund ahead, she turned 180 degrees to come home.

            Therefore, leashes can be neighborly.  Please.

            Finally, I’m remembering my blog from earlier this week. I hope I’m not setting a theme for abuse to the disabled.  I don’t want to give that impression.  In my circle of friends there are many blind people with wicked canes!  Beware.

Abuse

            I’d like to report abuse.  Abuse of the blind, in fact, and more specifically, of me.  At the city theater of all places, a theater that is so accessible and sensitive to the needs of blind patrons that they have 1 audio-described performance a run of every show in their season.  Today was just such a show.

            Those in the audience blind are given a receiver with an over-the-ear piece.  A describer sits in a back room where she can see and hear the show and supplies the visual details, all the nonverbal bits in the play that the blind person can’t see.

            City Theater also gives us Braille programs and an hour-long workshop where the director of this outreach program gives costume details and describes the set.  Then the actors come onstage and introduce themselves, then recite their opening lines to help us with voice recognition.  What could be better?  It’s an amazing service that I can’t say enough good about.

            Until today.  Halfway into the play, Grumpy, behind me, shoved me in the left shoulder.  Immediately, I worried that my receiver was on too loudly, so I reduced the volume.  No more shoves.  But I’d hardly reduced it, because it was on very low to begin with.    Maybe the guy simply bumped me with his bony knee.

            Three-quarters of the way through, however, Grump struck again.  He shoved harder.  This was no knee.  I no fingers when they jab and bruise my skin.

            I couldn’t mistake his meaning.  I couldn’t turn around and confront Grumps, because I was in the second row, three feet from center stage.  We were in the very small theater today.

            I turned the receiver off.  But I didn’t know what was happening.  More and more, plays are multi-media-ish, and words and pictures were being flashed on the screen, and much was happening silently because the audience, including Grumpy, was howling. 

            Why had I turned my receiver off?  I paid for my seat the same as Grumpy.  I put it back on.  The heck with him.

            At the end of the performance, I stood and reached for my cane, intending to swing at Grumpy—just kidding. 

            “Oh,” he said to my sighted husband, “Is your wife blind?  I didn’t realize she was one of the blind people in the audience.  Sorry.”

            Another faux pas—he spoke to my sighted husband because he couldn’t make eye contact with me, me of the fashionable sunglasses, I have to admit.

            Now I’ve been abused before.  Probably a year or two after becoming blind, I went to “La Boheme” with a friend.   I leaned to my left and asked her a question—in a very soft whisper.  “What’s going on?”

            She explained in a less quiet whisper.

            Suddenly, the man in front of me hauled off and slapped my leg hard enough to propel it into the orchestra pit.

            I wouldn’t let my friend translate for the rest of the opera.  I just enjoyed the beautiful music.

            But my friend is one of those 4’10” wonders.  She caught the guy’s arm and explained, “She’s blind.  I was simply explaining what was happening.”

            “If she knew the music, she wouldn’t need an explanation,” he said.

            So there.  No opera aficionado me.  And again, “she,” speaking to my sighted companion, not to me.

            From then on, I tried diligently to be a quiet audience member.  My husband practically crawls into my ear in plays and movies to narrate the silent parts.

            But today his aid was unnecessary.  I had the receiver.  My husband of the perfect hearing—his doctor recently complimented him—said that the receivers do emit a bit of sound, but no one can hear the words.  Probably a dozen blind people were in the audience sitting beside sensitive sighted people.  I was the only one who got belted.  Two blind patrons had their guide dogs with them.  I’ll bring Flossie next time and turn to Grumpy and pleasantly say, “Please, don’t make me have to tell my dog to K-I-L-L.”

 

A stand on poetry

            My husband is still hooked on Samuel Johnson, so over coffee this week, I heard about Johnson’s take on “modern” (18^th century) poetry.  Johnson felt that “versification,” as in Milton’s sonnets with perfect rhythms, iambic pentameter, was out.  “They also serve who only stand and wait.”  (Or as I would have said when I waitressed during 3 college summers, if I’d known my husband or Samuel Johnson, “They also stand who only serve and wait.” Fortunately, all 3 summer settings provided a beautiful ocean for soothing my tired waitressing legs and feet).

 

            Our 20^{th and 21st century poems also seem predominantly to lack versification of the Milton manner.  Yet, they do have form and rhythm.}

                ^{In children’s lit, versification still seems fashionable.  Over and over again in writing critique sessions, we talk about syllabics and accents and meter and perfect rhyme.  The mark of a beginning writer is to write a picture book in verse, without consistent meter, without precise rhyme (to go from bad to “verse,” as local writer Fred Bortz quipped.)} 

                ^{So although we push writing group members for the versification, I find myself wanting the children’s poets to write occasionally without rhyme and without the known forms.  Most resist.}

 

                ^{And speaking of standing—I spent most of two days standing on a stage in front of delightful kids in the Fox Chapel elementary schools.  I always talk for a few minutes about blindness, because I have this hairy visual aid beside me, and because she tends to steal the show, rolling onto her back and spreading her front and back legs as if to say, “Here I am, World.  Behold.  Aren’t I adorable?”}

                ^{Especially kindergarteners in the audience struggle to figure out that I’m standing up there, looking similar to a “regular” person in sunglasses, and yet, my eyes don’t work.}

                ^{“How can you drive?” is the most common question, and that from students in high school, too.  It’s unimaginable that a mother doesn’t play the part of chauffeur.}

                ^{But in one Fox Chapel school, the kindergarteners, continued the same pattern, “How can you take a shower?”}

                ^{When I laughed and said, “pretty much the same way you take a shower, I think.  It’s all about touch.”}

                ^{The finale that morning was the question, “How do you go to the bathroom?”}

                ^{At that point, the librarian mercifully stepped in to stay that we’d run out of time. I  headed home and stepped into a very steaming shower, not an ocean, to soothe my tired legs and feet, pretty much the same way you able-bodied types do.}