And now, for something completely different: An eyewitness account at the ocularist

So, as the guest blogger here I’m happy to introduce: Another guest blogger!

He’s Chuck Gullett. He and his lovely partner Rene are friends from our little Printers Row neighborhood. Last week while I was in Urbana, Chuck was kind enough to accompany Beth to an unusual (for most people) appointment. Since he’s a great photographer and storyteller, Beth asked whether he’d be willing to blog about the experience. He did that, and got a bunch of good shots — I’ll post a couple with his blog. Oh, and besides being a terrific photographer and friend, Chuck’s also a solid, honest real estate agent. So if you’re in the market….

Finally, don’t blame Chuck for the “eyewitness account” headline — I just couldn’t resist.

That's a whole lotta eyeballs right there. (By Chuck Gullett.)

With that, I present Chuck Gullett!

A trip to the ocularist

Between Harper’s retirement and Whitney’s training, I had the great opportunity to accompany Beth as her “Seeing Eye Chuck” for a visit to the ocularist.  The ocularist, as I learned, is the place to go when you need a new glass eye or just a little glass eye maintenance. The ocularist’s office, on the 16th floor of the Garland Building in Chicago, has a spectacular view of Lake Michigan, Millennium Park and Navy Pier. Ironically, the hundreds of eyes in the office are all neatly arranged in drawers and never able to enjoy the view.

On this visit, Beth was going in for a routine cleaning. As an observer, the process is fairly straightforward…

1) Remove glass eye with a device that looks like a miniature Nerf suction cup dart.

2) Try not to make an immature sucking sound as the eye is being removed.

3) Sit back and chat until the eye returns from the onsite laboratory, which I pictured to be somewhat like Grandpa’s lab from the “Munsters.”

When the ocularist returned with the beautifully polished eye, I asked a few questions and Beth talked him into showing me the lab and explaining the cleaning process. What I got was an enthusiastic lesson in the history, making and care of the good ol’ ocular prosthesis, or what we commonly refer to as a glass eye. First off, the eye is not even made of glass. Modern glass eyes are actually made of acrylic, which is extremely durable and more cost effective to manufacture.

The guys in the lab area told me about the heroic GI’s returning from WWII having a large demand for glass eyes. The glass eyes would tend to break by accident or “accidentally” around the time a GI wanted to visit the big city. A shortage in high quality imported glass and the cost of replacement eyes prompted the government to find a better material to make artificial eyes. Now, we have the modern version in durable acrylic.

So, what's your guess? (By Chuck Gullett)

To give you an idea of how durable the eyes are, Beth has had the same peeper for 25 years and the last time she had it polished was 4 years ago. Each eye is hand crafted for its owner and is a true piece of art. I looked through the drawers of sample eyes and the level of detail is really stunning. The blood vessels are recreated with silk threads while the pupil and iris take laborious hours to hand paint so they look realistic. The ocularist had notes from Beth’s last two visits where they recommended that she get fitted for a new eye, but Beth just smiled and said, “Yeah, I kinda like this one.”  I like that one, too.  I had no idea that Beth even had a glass eye.  One eye is real and one is not.  You can try to guess which is which, but good luck.

Anyway, I also learned that the cleaning/ polishing process is much like polishing jewelry. There is a buffing wheel and several different compounds to remove build-up and leave a nice smooth surface. The ocularist works the eye until it is just right, then rinses it off and you are ready to go.  I associate the feeling of a freshly polished glass eye like the smoothness your teeth have after a visit to the dentist.

All in all, it was a great afternoon. I got to spend some quality time with a friend, feed my odd curiosity with something out of the ordinary and learn something new. Anytime Whitney needs a day off, I’ll be happy to help out.

We Warmly Welcome Whit

Hi folks, it’s me again — Mike Knezovich, aka Beth’s husband. Feels like the movie “Groundhog Day,” or “Groundhog Year.” The time since Beth left for the Seeing Eye last November seems to have flown by. And like last year, I’ll be getting dispatches from Beth —  who will be very, very busy, not to mention tired — at The Seeing Eye during training. I’ll try to fill Beth’s blog shoes while she’s gone, and pass along her news as it comes.

And some just came: It’s a girl. Named Whitney. The trainer says she goes by just “Whit” most of the time.

She’s a Yellow Lab/Golden Retriever cross (like Hanni) who Beth guesses to be a little taller than Hanni. They met around 1 p.m. today (Monday), and Beth called with the news while sitting on the floor with Whitney nuzzling up to her. No pictures yet, but I’ll post them as soon as I get any.

Now the real work begins.

Not that Beth hasn’t been busy since she flew to New Jersey on Saturday. She’s been on training walks with instructors, sat in lectures and had her time scheduled solid. When she calls she’s typically interrupted by an intercom announcement calling students to the next activity.

Which is great, because the last three weeks — and really, the last couple months — have been a slog. We both were reminded of how independent Beth is with a Seeing Eye dog, and how much more she has to depend on me without. Plus, there has been sort of a dark cloud around this year’s trip. Last year was certainly bittersweet, what with Hanni heading off to retirement. But it was filled with the excitement of a new dog, and looking forward to another long partnership between Beth and her new dog. That didn’t turn out, and this trip has had a tinge of sadness and fatigue about it from the beginning.

So it was terrific to hear Beth and Whitney on the phone. Beth was upbeat and giggling, and I can’t wait to meet Whit. I’m confident it’ll be a good match, and that with just a bit of luck, this will prove to be a long partnership. By the time the dogs get this far, they have proven they have the right stuff. According to The Seeing Eye, 60 percent of the dogs born at the Seeing Eye make it to the training stage. Eighty percent of the dogs who make it to training stage go on to be placed with a blind person and work as a Seeing Eye dog. So about half the dogs — who are carefully bred by The Seeing Eye  – end up being placed as guides.

Beth’s first dog, Pandora, worked until the age of 12 and lived to 17. Hanni worked until 11 and we hope she matches Dora in longevity. Harper worked less than a year, but it was truly a “dog year.” Besides a harrowing near-miss with a car, he managed to run into a lot of other difficult situations that were mostly a matter of bad luck. Including walking into the elevator that happened to be occupied by two skittish Chows that lunged at and bit him.

So while it’s sad about Harper, I don’t for a second consider the time a failure. I do miss scratching his big lovable head, though. And I’ll always be grateful for the job he did for Beth, and for The Seeing Eye.

So much to be thankful for

My Friend watches over me at this corner.

Every morning my Seeing Eye dog and I pass the same homeless man in front of the 7-Eleven store. “StreetWise today!” he calls out. “Can you give a little hepp today?” StreetWise is a newspaper sold by homeless people in Chicago. The concept is that by selling StreetWise, people down on their luck might get back on their feet.

For years I’d always nodded and smiled the vendor’s way as we passed. Since I can’t see to read, though, I never bought one of his papers. Until one cold day three years ago, that is. I left Hanni at home that day to go Christmas shopping with a friend — crowds can be so fixated on shopping that they step on the unexpected dog at their feet. I cabbed home on my own afterwards, and when I fumbled with my white cane at the curb I heard a familiar voice call out to me. “Want some hepp?”

The pronunciation of the word “help” was my clue. It was the Streetwise vendor. I grabbed his arm, and from the way my hand pumped up and down as we plodded together to my doorway I could tell he had a very bad limp. When we finally arrived, I held out a bill that had one corner folded and asked for a copy of StreetWise. “They only cost two dollars,” my helper said. “You’re giving me a five.”

“I meant to give you a five,” I said, showing him how I fold money to keep track of the denominations. “Thanks for the help,” I told him. “Merry Christmas!” He gave me a heartfelt thanks, then limped back to his crate.

A story in Disability Scoop says more than 40 percent of the homeless population in the U.S. are people with disabilities. The story quotes a report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that points out that people with disabilities face additional difficulties — more than those who are poor — when it comes to accessing permanent housing. The HUD report suggests that people with disabilities “may have difficulties searching for a unit or finding a landlord willing to rent to them.”

The StreetWise vendor and I never exchanged names, but we have been friends ever since he helped me to the door that night. . He refers to me as “Mizz Lady. I call him My Friend.” On days he’s late to his crate he’ll call out, “Hello Mizz Lady – I’s likely to miss you this mornin’!” I always respond with a laugh, and a, “Hello, My Friend!” On days my dog and I go a different way and don’t pass My Friend, he notices. “I didn’t see you earlier,” he’ll say. “I was worried.”

Over the past year My Friend especially worried about Harper. “He’s havin’ a hard time, isn’t he?” he’d say. “Is he okay?” When I finally had to tell My Friend that Harper would be retiring, My Friend told me he was sorry.

It’s been three weeks since Harper retired, and people in our neighborhood have been generously taking time away from their schedules to walk me places I need to go. I am grateful for the assistance, but I’m afraid my face betrays a sense that I’ve gone backward. I need too much help. My Friend lifts my spirits with his comments. Whenever my escort happens to be a man, for example, he assures me he won’t tell Mike. “I’m not tellin’ anyone, Mizz Lady,” he says. “It’ll be our secret.” I respond with a laugh. “Thank you, My Friend!”

Thanksgiving yesterday gave me an opportunity to reflect once again on just how fortunate I am. Friends, family members, teachers, employers, donors, volunteers, book publishers, and, especially my husband Mike Knezovich, all put their faith in me after I lost my sight. They kept me on my feet, and quite literally kept me off the street.

I also feel fortunate for the Federal disability benefits I received when I first lost my sight, and over the years countless non-profit agencies have helped me find my way. Tomorrow I leave for one of those priceless non-profit agencies. The Seeing Eye breeds and trains guide dogs. And one of those dogs will be my fourth Seeing Eye dog. I am looking forward to the independence that will come with this new match.

On Wednesday, Mike escorted me downtown to teach my final “Me, Myself and I” memoir-writing class for this year, and we stopped for a minute in front of the 7-Eleven. “I’m leaving for a few weeks,” I told My Friend, explaining that it takes a while to train with a new dog. As we walked away, he called out to Mike. “I’m glad she’ll be coming back home with a dog again,” he said. “She’ll be happier.”

I will be, but no more thankful than I am now.

The only thing I have in common with Jay Cutler

I’ve always liked Bears quarterback Jay Cutler. “That’s because you can’t see his face!” my football-loving friends at Hackney’s (our local tavern) tell me. “You can’t tell what a whiner he is.” Ever since Cutler broke his thumb in last Sunday’s game, though, it seems like it’s those Bears fans doing the whining, not my Jay.

Confession: I don’t really follow NFL football much. The reason I follow Jay Cutler? He has Type I diabetes. I have Type I diabetes, too – that’s the disease that caused my blindness.

Two very different conditions are referred to as “diabetes” – Type I, formerly known as juvenile diabetes, and Type II, the kind that is often brought on by obesity or poor nutrition. Type II involves a breakdown in the body’s ability to process the insulin it makes. So with Type II, if you watch your diet and exercise, you have a fair chance of improving the condition. With Type II, you can even reduce or even eliminate the need for insulin injections.

Type I, the kind of diabetes Jay Cutler and I have, is an autoimmune disease. With Type I, the body attacks and destroys its insulin-making cells. No matter what we do (exercise, diet, whatever) our bodies are unable to make insulin. We either have to take multiple injections of insulin throughout the day, or wear an insulin pump. There is no behavior that causes Type I. Doctors believe it is a genetic condition often triggered by an environmental stress. A virus, for example.

Type I is usually diagnosed in childhood (I was diagnosed when I was seven years old) but in recent years it has become increasingly common for people Cutler’s age or older to be diagnosed with Type I. We test our blood sugar levels regularly to know how much insulin to take. The more we test our sugar levels, the easier it is to walk the tightrope between high and low blood sugars. It’s never a walk in the park, though, and I cannot imagine what it must be like to walk that tightrope with a football in one hand while the other hand is fending off 300+-pound gorillas rushing to knock me down. It wasn’t easy to find details on how Jay Cutler handles his Type I diabetes on the football field, but finally I found an interview in Diabetes Forecast magazine where Cutler was asked how he uses a blood glucose monitor to check his blood sugar level on game days. His answer:

I check my blood sugar about four or five times before the game—try to stay around 150 to 160 [mg/dl] before kickoff. Most of the time, I prick my finger every time we come off the field, especially in the first half. There are definitely dangers out there—we try to avoid them at all costs. That’s why we check as many times as we do. I think the worst thing imaginable would be to get really low and pass out in the middle of a play, or in the huddle. That would scare a lot of people. I try to avoid it as much as possible, but it’s still a reality that could happen.

The interviewer also asked Cutler if he worried whether his teammates, the media, or fans might blame his Type I diabetes as a reason for poor performance. His answer:

I hope not. I don’t want sympathy—I want to be judged like every other quarterback. But living with diabetes in the public eye does make it harder. If I go out and my numbers are off and I have a bad game, I know I’ll be criticized for it. I just try not to worry about it and go out and play my game.

I dunno. This guy just doesn’t sound like a whiner to me. I sure wish the diabetic magazine had asked him about that Packers game last year, though. You know, the one where so many Bears fans accused Cutler of not being a “team player.” Who knows? Maybe he needed a blood test.

Update on Harper

Dude has a new toy.

A few weeks ago I recorded an essay about Harper’s early retirement for Chicago Public Radio, and the piece aired last Tuesday onWBEZ.

Harper didn’t retire until a few days after I recorded the essay, so he was there in the studio sitting quietly at my feet while I sat at the microphone. I don’t cry during the recording, but if you listen closely you’ll hear me get a little choked up. I had assumed my terrific producer Joe DeCeault would cover up my stammers with music, but I guess he decided my verbal stumbles help tell Harper’s story. It’s all me. No sound effects.

Harper’s new family heard the piece, and Chris e-mailed Mike to send a review:

I heard Beth on the radio the other day – her and Harper’s story is always so moving and when I share it with others, they also seem touched by the two of them.

You know what? I find Harper’s new chapter with Larry and Chris very moving, too. I am touched by the three of them.

Chris updates Mike on Harper regularly, and they’ve found that taking him off leash and just walking alongside Harper makes him feel at ease. Soon as the leash goes back on, though, Harper shows anxiety again. Handsome Harper is charming all the neighbors, Chris says, and even George the cat comes out of his hiding place from time to time to say hello to Harper. The biggest news of all, as far as harper is concerned: Larry and Chris bought him a new squeak toy.

If you missed hearing the Harper essay on the radio last Tuesday, you can still check it out online. Listen closely, and maybe you’ll hear the little charmer jiggling at my feet!

What it takes to be a Seeing Eye dog instructor

I figured that once I told the animal sciences department at University of Illinois that Harper wouldn’t be coming with me, they’d cancel my guest lecture to their animal sciences class tomorrow. But I was wrong. Professor Amy Fisher wants me to come anyway, and I think the talk will be interesting. My plan is to use Harper’s early retirement as an example of just how difficult it is to prepare Seeing Eye dogs for the hard, hard work required of them.

From the Seeing Eye Web site:

Staff instructors are full-time employees who hold college degrees from various fields of study and have successfully completed three years of specialized on-the-job training. They relate well to dogs and people and are physically fit, since their jobs are physically demanding and involve working outdoors in all weather. Some of our current instructors came from teaching, business consulting and rehabilitation fields. Some were in the military and worked with dogs before, and many started out as kennel assistants here at The Seeing Eye.

A Seeing Eye trainer demonstrates how dogs learn to negotiate obstacles.

When people express interest in pursuing a job training guide dogs, I always remind them that they won’t just be working with dogs. They’ll be working with people, too. We blind folks are all different ages, and we have all sorts of different backgrounds and experiences behind us. Some of us are newly blind and still adjusting, others have been blind our entire lives. Although some of us might be easy to work with, a lot of us are brats. We test our teacher’s patience.

The Puppy Place (a Web site created by a group of volunteers who raise puppies for guide dog schools) says it well:

Guide Dog trainers must work with a variety of dogs within a given size range. A great deal of walking and upper body strength is required to mold hyper young dogs into responsible workers. In the beginning, when working with dogs alone, this may not seem bad, but soon the apprentice must team dog training with people training. You can’t leash correct your blind student, or give him/her a dirty look and expect the undesired behavior or wrong actions to stop. You must verbally communicate while physically managing to keep up with the dog. Coming out of yourself to work with both dogs and people is a special skill and not one to be taken lightly.

Schools receive literally hundreds of applications a year from people who want to train guide dogs, so even opportunities to become an apprentice are rare. Most guide dog schools do require instructors to do an apprenticeship, and some apprenticeships last as long as four years. From my observation, apprentices work very hard. And from what I hear, salaries are not that high. Considering that guide dog schools are non-profit organizations, I would guess the pay is far below what a lot of today’s college educated people expect to earn.

If you’re looking for job satisfaction, though, this kind of work must be pretty dang rewarding! For general information about working for The Seeing Eye, contact:

Human Resources
The Seeing Eye
P.O. Box 375
Morristown, NJ 07963
or email jobs@seeingeye.org.

Quit looking in the mirror!

Last Thursday I gave a presentation to a class at Carnegie Mellon University. Harper couldn’t make the trip to Pittsburgh, and I am

A few of the beautiful women in one of my memoir writing classes.

very grateful to my gracious husband Mike for stepping in as Seeing Eye Human and making this visit possible.

The class I spoke to was History 79-311: “Body Politics: Women and Health in America.” To prepare for my talk, I went to the experts. I asked the women in the memoir-writing classes I teach to write about “body image.” Their essays did not disappoint.

Myrna’s essay taught us that anorexia existed long before pop singer Karen Carpenter succumbed to it in the 1980s. Myrna wrote about growing up pudgy in a home where eating was “considered one of the great pleasures in life.” When she was sent away to camp at age 12, she saw it as a chance to lose some of the pudge and look more like the girls in magazines. The magazine girls were not as skinny then as now, Myrna acknowledged, but definitely trimmer than in life. This little 12-year-old girl starved herself at camp, devising ways to pick at her food to make it look like she’d eaten more than she had, always leaving the table early to dump what was left on her plate into the trash. It was weeks before the camp counselors finally noticed. Myrna’s parents were summoned and took her home. From her essay:

A picture of me taken not long after I returned home shows me scrawny, for the first and last time in my life. I stopped menstruating for several months. Perhaps I thought that, too, was an accomplishment.

Myrna’s fellow memoir-writer Kathy had the opposite problem. Her essay described one of the long-lasting effects of growing up a late bloomer.

I waited, waited, waited! Friend and after friend smiled knowingly as she joined the ranks of women, no longer a girl. I was still my mother’s thin child with a chest flatter than flat. (Her body type had been all the rage in the flapper era!) Furtively, I began to stoop to conceal the absence of a Marilyn Monroe bosom. My posture, once erect and confident, became the rounded shoulders I have today…

One of the most intriguing essays came from Sheila. She wrote about life as an identical twin, describing her body as a carbon copy of her sister Clare’s — up to a point. “A slightly distorted mirror image is a better description.” At birth Sheila weighed in at 5 pounds, Clare at four pounds, some-odd ounces.

Weight has been a comparison point for our entire lives. Clare was always a size smaller than me. I resented weighing more than her. No one, even strangers would let me forget the difference. “She’s bigger than the other one. Otherwise, they look exactly alike.”

The twins are in their 60s now, and Clare put on weight after being immobilized by foot surgery.

Finally, she’s as big as me. It doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would. All my life I wanted to be the same size or smaller than Clare. How come I don’t feel like celebrating?

There is not much to celebrate about becoming blind, but one thing I appreciate about not being able to see is that I can no longer judge people by how they look. I am left to judge others on more important things: what they say, and what they do.

In my scholarly research for Thursday’s talk at Carnegie Mellon I came across one study that found that blind women have lower body dissatisfaction scores and more positive eating attitudes than women who can see. From the study:

The high levels of body dissatisfaction and abnormal eating attitudes currently prevalent in Western societies have been attributed by many authors to the promotion of an unrealistically thin ideal for women. We investigated the role of the visual media by examining the relationship between body image dissatisfaction and eating attitudes in visually impaired women.

The results suggest the importance of the visual media in promoting unrealistic images of thinness and beauty.

All pretty interesting stuff, and I thank my friends in Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University for inviting me to present on the topic – I ended up learning a lot!

Man’s best friends

Gonna' miss him, but he's in great hands.

Here’s another post from my husband Mike Knezovich. I’ll be back later this week.

Sunday, for the second time in the last 12 months, I carried the dog bed, toys, and other canine accoutrement to the car to drive Beth’s retired Seeing Eye dog to new digs. Last year it was Hanni headed to Urbana and Steven and Nancy’s. This year it was Harper to Wheaton and Chris and Larry’s.

We had one last shindig with Harper the day before. Steven and Nancy—who are Hanni’s current humans—were kind enough to drive up with her for the retirement party. We made one attempt at a walk together—thinking that Harper might forget his invisible force field and follow Hanni down the block to the park. No luck. Harper has his boundaries and that’s that.

Hanni, however, was in full glory. While Steven, Nancy, and I waited for Beth to meet us with Harper, a CTA bus came to a stop for a red light. The driver opened his window, stuck out his head, and said, “That’s a beautiful dog. Is it a Lab?” We shouted back that it was a Lab-Golden mix. “She’s beautiful,” he said, and then the bus roared north on Dearborn.

We had a great time Saturday and so did the dogs. And the Sunday transition was eased a bit this year because I had company for the trip: Beth. The Seeing Eye encouraged us to take the pressure off Harper as soon as we could; Beth’s not headed to New Jersey to get matched with a new dog until later this month.

Party!

As difficult as letting Hanni go was—after nine years of her being part of our household—this time has been harder, for me at least. With Hanni, things had run their natural course. She’d had a great career, she was slowing down, it was time.

With Harper, if you follow this blog, you know this is different. For one, there’s just the disappointment that we’re going through this again so soon, and that Beth’s going to be gone for nearly three weeks—working like a dog with a dog—in New Jersey. For another, it’s just sad to see Harper go. Things didn’t go as planned, but somehow, in a relatively short time, I grew more attached to Harper than I did Beth’s other dogs.

First, it’s not an exaggeration to say that he saved Beth’s life. Second, when we and the The Seeing Eye concluded that it really was not going to work with Harper, I was free to treat Harper like he was our dog, not Beth’s service animal.

So I was caught by surprise by how sad I was yesterday. A blithering mess. I mean, it’s a DOG right?

But it’s pretty easy to empathize with Harper. Harper was different right from the start. He’s strong as an ox but gentle as a lamb. He’s composed, deliberate, and almost regal. He even walks around the house quietly. As Beth noted, if you hung out with Hanni and Harper off-harness for a while you’d swear he must be the better guide dog. While Harper will gently take a treat from your fingertips, Hanni will just about take your hand off. And she rolls over on her back for a belly rub at the drop of a hat.

Harper’s serious. He’s a worrier—to an extreme I think, and this I absolutely empathize with.

Apart from that, we asked Harper to do very difficult things—he did them—but it ultimately was beyond his limit. The trauma of the near miss with the car aggregated with the daily stress of downtown Chicago got the better of him.

We humans can certainly understand this. And how it takes its toll—we see it in war veterans as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We see it in other folks as crippling anxiety, depression, and other mental disorders. Some of it is probably inevitable—life is a struggle. But it seems like we make it harder for each other than maybe we need to. I don’t know.

What I do know is that Harper now lives on a quiet, leafy street in the suburbs, in a lovely brick home decorated in arts & crafts style, with a beautifully tended, fenced back yard. He shares this home with a cat named George and two humans named Chris and Larry.

That's Larry, Chris, and Harper--with his equivalent of a security blanket: a squeak-toy snowman

We met Chris and Larry through our mutual friend Greg (that’s a story in itself for another day). We don’t have a long history with Chris and Larry—when Greg comes to town, we all get together and very much enjoy our time. That’s been about once a year for the last few. The last time was at our place, and that’s when Chris and Larry met Harper.

When it became clear that bringing Harper to France with us in September was just not going to work (he won’t walk a block south from our apartment, so France seemed like a bridge too far), it was Chris and Larry to the rescue. They came and picked up our boy and had a nice time with him.

They also witnessed his behavior—he would not walk more than a block or so from their house before turning around and high-tailing it for home. But they enjoyed Harper, and he enjoyed hanging out in their back yard, discovering squirrels and life outside the city.

Beth and I both thought they’d be great for Harper because it would get him out of the city chaos. Plus, they’d witnessed his behavior, which you sort of have to see to really believe. They’d know what they were taking on.

When Beth asked them whether they’d be interested in adopting him, they asked to think about it for a day. And then said yes.

When we arrived Sunday Harper bolted the car and ran up to Larry and Chris and then headed for the front door. Inside he seemed completely at home.

So did we. Over a bowl of chili we learned a lot about our new friends. Larry joined the army after high school and went to Viet Nam. He eventually re-enlisted in the reserves. That’s where he and Chris met—she’d joined the reserves to help pay for college. Mostly, we learned these are people who have lived full, sometimes challenging lives, and they have a depth of understanding and kindness that makes you feel good when you’re around it.

As our visit wound down, and I woofed a really good piece of pumpkin cheesecake Chris had made, I speculated that Harper, after some time just being a dog, would go on normal walks again. Everyone seconded that hope.

Larry added, “And if he doesn’t, this guy never has to leave the back yard if he doesn’t want to.”

We certainly can make life unnecessarily hard for ourselves and others. But Chris and Larry reminded me of how caring folks can be, how they can ease our way, and how remarkably lucky Beth and I are to have the friends we do. Thank you all.

Guess who we asked to Harper’s retirement party?

Note to my blind blog readers: Today is Harper’s last day on the job, and Hanni came to town with our friends Steven and Nancy to wish him a happy retirement. It was a small party, just four humans and two loveable loyal dogs. This post is a series of photos of the two of them Partying together at our apartment.

Whole lotta dogs going on. Hanni is still an affection hound.

That's Nancy of Nancy and Steven, who were kind enough to bring Hanni up from Urbana for the party.

Smiling dogs

Here's another of Mary Ivory's shots, from the jacket flap of our award-winning children's book.

While preparing my essay for Chicago Public Radio this week I decided to send something about Harper’s early retirement to Bark magazine, too. They liked what I wrote and published When a Seeing Eye Dog Gets Off-Track as a guest post on the Bark blog last Tuesday.

The post I wrote for Bark is similar to what I’ve been writing here, but you might want to link to it anyway just to admire the photograph they published along with it –it’s another photo taken by my friend Mary Ivory. Mary is a licensed clinical professional counselor, social worker, life coach, and from all accounts, a very talented photographer. She took the photograph on the book jacket flap of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound, and when I phoned her earlier this week to ask if she could take a last-minute photo of Harper and me for the Bark blog, she came in, ahem, a flash.

Having work published in Bark puts Mary and me in some darned good company: the magazine’s impeccable pedigree includes publishing many of today’s most acclaimed authors including Ann Patchett, Augusten Burroughs, Rick Bass, Amy Hempel, and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver. Bark has been honored with an Award of Merit from The Society of Publication Designers, and their photo book DogJoy features the magazine’s popular “Smiling Dogs” submissions. from their web site:

Bark is the magazine of modern dog culture—it speaks to the serious dog enthusiast. Bark is the indispensable guide to life with dogs, showing readers how to live smartly and rewardingly with their canine companions. Founded in 1997, as a newsletter to advocate for off-leash dog parks in Berkeley, California, the magazine quickly grew into a glossy, award-winning publication acclaimed for its timely commentary and rich literary offerings. Today, Bark has a nationwide readership of over 250,000.

In addition to regular guest Bark blog posts,I’ve had a few stories published in the four-color “glossy, award-winning” version of Bark, too. It’s always a thrill to be contacted by their staff — it gives me the opportunity to brag that I write for the same magazine Ann Patchett writes for. And now Mary Ivory can brag, too. Her photography has been published by the same folks who honor photographs of “Smiling Dogs” in every issue.