Safe & Sound blog

In my Law & Order: Special Dog Unit post last October, I wrote about testifying against a cab driver who refused to pick Hanni and me up. That very morning, when Mike helped me hail a cab to go to court, another cab driver refused to pick me up with my Seeing Eye dog.

A cab slowed down, the driver looked past Mike and saw me standing there with Hanni. “No dog,” he said.
“It’s a Seeing Eye dog,” Mike explained. “A service dog.”
“No dog,” the driver said.
Mike was angry. “You’re going to court!” he shouted at the driver
“I don’t care,” the driver said, then sped away.

I was somewhat reluctant to report this second cab driver. Going to court the first time was not fun, and I didn’t want to have to go back. But I filed anyway. I figured if word got around that drivers were getting fined for refusing service dogs, maybe I wouldn’t have to file any more complaints after this one.

Good news arrived in our mailbox this week. I guess this second guy pleaded guilty?

re: CSR#07-01972211
DOAH docket number: 08CS00267A

Dear Beth Finke:
This letter is the final update of the Department of Consumer Services investigation of the prosecution of the cab driver you reported for investigation. The Department of Consumer Services (the Department) investigated your complaint, and…the cab driver was found liable of violating the municipal code of Chicago. Accordingly, fines and penalties were imposed on the cab driver.
Thank you for reporting this cab driver…your participation is assisting the departmen’ts goal towards 100% clean and safe cabs and 100% courteous and safe cab drivers.

Sometimes the things you wish for really do come true. Hanni and I never did have to go to court to testify against that second driver, and we haven’t had a cab driver refuse us since I filed that second complaint.

Last Wednesday Hanni and I took a commuter train to St. Pius X — a Catholic School in the Chicago suburbs. my nephew Ben’s kids go there, their great aunt came to talk and answer questions for Riley, Haley, Colin and their schoolmates. And then yesterday Hanni and I boarded a commuter train again, this time I talked to kids at the West Suburban Montessori School in Oak Park.

The questions kids ask from school to school vary, but whether we’re at a city school, a country school, a public school, whatever, one thing they all want to know is this: how old is Hanni? The answer always gets the same response from the audience– Eight-year-olds squeal with joy to discover Hanni is the same age they are.

Sometimes the kids want to know how old she is in human years, too. Turns out the idea that every dog year equals seven human years is a myth. Hanni is not 56 in human years yet. Not according to a converter on a Flat- Coated Retriever site, at least.

“To work out the human age of a dog or other pets many people will multiply their age by seven years. This is not that accurate, as differing breeds of dogs will age at differing rates. For example, many smaller breeds of dogs such as a west highland terrier will live well into their late teens, whilst larger dogs may only live to about ten years. “

Did you catch that “whilst” word in there? That website is from Britain, and my talking computer reads it using a robotic British accent. It’s like having Michael Caine at my fingertips. Imagine.

But back to dog years. The site points out that dogs mature quickly in their early years – a medium-sized dog (Hanni weighs 63 pounds) will be 14 human years by their first birthday, a two-year-old dog her size is the equivalent of a 21-year-old human. No wonder Hanni was so goofy when I met her. She was about to turn 21!

Thereafter for every actual year, add on…5 years for a medium dog breed or 7 years for a large dog breed.

Big dogs age faster? I’ll stick with calling Hanni a medium-size dog. That means she’s 51 in human years.

Hanni and I don’t have any more school visits scheduled for this academic year — our upcoming events are more for grown-ups. At each of these, I plan to announce this new calculation of Hanni’s age in human years. We’ll see if all the 51-year-olds squeal with the same exuberance those eight-year-olds do.

The guy at Logan Airport security recognized Hanni. “Didn’t you guys come through here this afternoon already?”

We did. But shortly after our 5:15 flight left the jetway, the storms started in Chicago. So we sat on the runway. It wasn’t until I heard the landing gear come out near O’Hare that I found the courage to count the total time Hanni and I had been on board. Nine hours.

The pilot gave us periodic updates on the storm while we waited. He welcomed us to listen to the air traffic controllers on our headsets. As awful as it all was, just sitting there, waiting, I must say: in a very odd way, the ordeal was uplifting, too. The passengers, and the crew, and the pilots, were all good people. No one got belligerent. No one broke into the liquor. No one squatted in the aisle to defecate in protest.

Now, Hanni might have wanted to squat in the aisle, but she held it in. Until 9:15, that is. That’s when the pilot announced that all flights in and out of O’Hare had been grounded. We went back to the jetway.

Our flight still wasn’t cancelled, the pilot told us. “Feel free to get off the plane to stretch your legs,” he announced over the loudspeaker. “But don’t go too far from the gate.”

I ignored that warning. We couldn’t stay close. Hanni had to go outside! My wonderful, loyal, brave and patient Seeing Eye dog held her own while phone calls were made to determine whether the security gate was already closed, could Hanni and I get back to our flight if we left the airport for a bit, what are FAA regulations on this, blah, blah, blah. A very kind Logan employee finally came to our rescue, accompanying Hanni and me outside the security area. Once outside, we took three quick steps to the right, and…relief! Right there on the cement sidewalk.

Hanni was much lighter on her feet when we went through security that second time. She and I were back to the gate in plenty of time to board again, the plane pulled away from the jetway, and there we sat. For two-and-a-half more hours.

By this time, the passengers were all getting to know each other. Prohibited from talking endlessly into handheld phones, or pounding away on laptop keyboards, or engaging our thumbs in text messaging, well, we entertained ourselves the old-fashioned way. Talking. To each other. Imagine. Conversations. With real people. Like I say, it was downright uplifting.

Many commented on Hanni’s stellar behavior. Eventually I had Hanni lead me to the back of the plane. I took off her harness then and encouraged anyone who wanted to pet her to come on back. I think it helped all concerned. Maybe after Hanni retires from her current job she can volunteer as an airplane therapy dog.

The Sweet Potato Queen was one of the top speakers at the Arkansas Literary Festival last weekend. The Sweet Potato Queen’s’ Book of Love came out in 1999, and two subsequent titles (The Sweet Potato Queens’ Field Guide to Men: Every Man I Love is Either Married, Gay, or Dead and The Sweet Potato Queens’ Big-Ass Cookbook) were New York Times® #1 bestsellers.

And so, you may have heard of the Sweet Potato Queen, aka, Jill Connor Brown. Chances are you have never heard of Kyle Jennings, though. Kyle is married to the Sweet Potato Queen and is known to her readers as simply the “Cutest Boy in the World.”

I may not be able to vouch for his good looks, but I can say this: that Kyle guy sure is nice.

My friend Nancy led Hanni and me to our panel Saturday morning. A festival volunteer guided us to our noontime presentation at the Arkansas Historical Museum. Nancy wasn’t all that interested in the Sweet Potato Queen, so she took off after helping me to a seat at Jill Connor Brown’s presentation later that afternoon.

When Kyle Jennings saw Hanni and me sitting alone, he stopped to ask if we needed anything. I knew he and the Sweet Potato Queen were staying in the same hotel we were, so I made a confession: I had no idea what the route back to our hotel was.
Kyle said he’d be glad to walk Hanni and me there after the presentation. “But we’ll have to wait until Jill is done signing books.”

The Sweet Potato Queen is popular. VERY popular. Women stood in line for, hmm, at least an hour to get Jill to sign copies of various Sweet Potato Queen titles.

So while Jill signed away, Hanni and I waited outside on a bench. Sunshine, birds singing…it couldn’t get better than this.

But then, it did.

Kyle Jennings saw us outside and approached our bench. “Mind if I sit with you?” he asked. I scooted over, and, of course, we got to talking. He spoke lovingly about their own dogs. One is a rescue dog who had been hit by a car and left to die. A leg had to be amputated as a result of the accident. They named the dog Sosti, Kyle said. “Sost means ‘three’ in Ethiopian.”
We traded all sorts of stories after that. Eventually I unbuckled Hanni’s harness. She needed a break.
“Can I pet her now?” Kyle asked. I thought he would jump out of his shoes when I said yes. He ended up taking Hanni for a walk, picking up after her when she emptied, finding a bottle of water and cutting off the top so she could get a drink. How they bonded.

The Sweet Potato Queen sounded exhausted when she finally came out to join us. We all took off for the hotel, but after one block Jill asked if Kyle and I wouldn’t mind going on without her. “I’m going to duck in this gallery and rest,” she said. “I can’t walk that far in these heels!” She asked Kyle to pick some things up for her from their hotel room – he’d come back with the car.

And so, Hanni and I proceeded on, our heads held high. After all, we were being escorted to our fancy-schmancey Little Rock hotel by the cutest boy in the world.

Hanni and I head to the Arkansas Literary Festival this weekend – we’re doing one session for children, then sitting on a panel called Dogs and Their People.

With us on the panel? None other than Sonny Brewer.

I first met Sonny Brewer at an Arkansas Literary Festival years ago. I was in Little Rock with Mike and Hanni for the 2004 festival to promote Long Time, No See.
. The Saturday night gala that year was at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, and festival organizers were kind enough to arrange for a volunteer to drive Mike, Hanni and me to the event. An author named Sonny Brewer was supposed to come with us, too. But he was late getting to the car. It was hot in Little Rock, and Hanni, Mike and I were squished in the back seat. I was very eager to get to the Clinton Library – it was relatively new at the time. I wanted to spend as much time there as possible. But we had to wait. For some guy named Sonny Brewer. We waited. I was wearing pantyhose. It was hot. Nuff said? I was ready to blow my stack when Sonny finally showed up. The minute he opened his mouth, all was forgiven.

“Sorry, y’all,” he said with a whimsical southern drawl. “I lost track of the time.  My name is Sonny, glad to meet you.” He shook our hands. Hanni even gave him her paw.
We got stuck in traffic – of course – but I didn’t mind. It gave Sonny time to tell us his story.
Sonny had opened an independent bookstore in his hometown of Fairhope, Alabama, in 1997. “I was nearing 50 back then,” he said. “Owning a bookstore had been a lifelong dream of mine.”
After seven years in business, Over the Transom Books was still in the red.

Enter Jill Connor Brown with some queenly advice. The author of The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love met her husband Kyle Jennings in Sonny Brewer’s bookstore, and she and Sonny have been friends ever since.

“Jill told me I oughta try selling my book,” Sonny told us, explaining he had already started writing a novel back then, pounding the keyboard late at night when his wife and two young boys were asleep. “She said I had nothing to lose by sending it out, and who knows, if I got a book deal, the money might help prop up the bookstore.”

After mailing 20 pages of his manuscript to a New York agent, Sonny set up an appointment with a bankruptcy lawyer for the next Thursday. “The agent called on Wednesday,” he said with that lovely southern drawl of his. Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, wanted his book. They were offering an advance. “I cancelled the appointment with the bankruptcy lawyer.”

Poet of Tolstoy Park came out in 2006. And Over the Transom Books? It’s still up and running. In order to have more time to devote to writing, though, Sunny turned over most of the day-to-day bookstore operations to an employee.

“It has just been a magical, kind of crazy, enchanted trajectory,” Sonny told me a year later, when he picked Hanni and me up at the airport for a trip to Alabama. His second novel, also based in Fairhope, had been published by Ballantine already. He’d just returned from LA. Talking with Billy Bob Thornton. About the screenplay for Poet of Tolstoy Park. “I’m black and blue all over from pinching myself so much!” he laughed.
The book he’ll be touting on our dogs and Their People panel is his latest: Cormac, the Tale of a Dog Gone Missing. Like his first two novels, this book is also set in Fairhope, Alabama. But this one is inspired by Sonny’s dog – the book is based on a true story of how Cormac went missing for almost a month, and was found more than a thousand miles away.

I’m looking forward to sitting on a panel with Sonny this Saturday–I just hope he shows up on time!

This month two of my essays aired on WBEZ-FM. If you missed hearing them on the radio, both are available online – one is about the new governor in New York, and the other is about cab drivers refusing to pick me up with my Seeing Eye dog.

Both of these essays were inspired by blog posts I wrote, and for that I must thank friends from my Chicago writers group. I was very skeptical about starting this blog last year – I thought blogs were self-indulgent wastes of time. Au contraire, said my fellow writers. A blog can encourage a writer to keep at her craft, they told me. “Kinda like a journal, but since it’s out there in public, there’s a chance people might read it,” they explained. “So you work at it a bit harder.” Who knows, my writer friends said, maybe some blog posts could become story ideas.

I may never have written a word about the NY governor or those cab drivers if I wasn’t keeping a blog. So my writer’s group pals were right: keeping a blog isn’t necessarily a waste of time. I’m convinced I’m right about my other claim, though: It’s pretty dang self-indulgent!

This Saturday Hanni will be honored at a Champaign Public Library program called “Get Inspired! Meet a Hero at Your Library.” The Champaign library will be recommending favorite books about heroes for the next couple months, and “Hanni and Beth: Safe & sound” is one of their three picks for march:
1. Officer Buckle & Gloria
Recommended for preschoolers
by Peggy Rathman

The funny on-stage performances of a police dog, teamed with her new partner, teach kids how to be safe at home, in school, and around town.

2. Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound,
Recommended for grades K to 2
by Beth Finke

How will Beth, who is blind, travel safely to work, to the park, or to a concert? Her good friend and guide dog, Hanni, helps her every day!

3. Charlotte’s Web
Recommended for grades 3 to 5
by E.B. White

A clever spider named Charlotte hatches a plan to save her dearest friend, Wilbur the pig

Hanni has been recognized for her heroism before, but being listed right up there with Charlotte the spider? Now, that’s an honor.

The Champaign Public Library’s calendar is full of hero-themed events for the next couple of months – Hanni is looking forward to her time in the spotlight this Saturday at 2 pm.

Winters were hard in the college town where we used to live. Urbana’s sidewalks were brick, and difficult to shovel. When it snowed, people walked in the street. Not a good option for a Seeing Eye dog. On days it snowed, Hanni and I were trapped inside.
Winter is easier on us here in the city. Our Chicago apartment is surrounded by other big buildings. Most ground floor units are retail, and shop owners don’t like their customers falling on ice. So they shovel their sidewalks.
Trouble is, they put salt on their sidewalks, too. LOTS of salt.
The American Dog Trainers Network website warns that Ice-melting chemicals and salt on sidewalks and roads can cause severe burning to a dog’s footpads. “Whenever possible, avoid walking your dog through these substances…”
Trust me, I’d avoid walking Hanni through those “substances” if I could. But for one, I can’t see the dang stuff. And for two, if we avoided the salt, we’d never get anywhere. We’d be trapped, just like we were when it snowed in Urbana.
Musher’s Secret to the rescue! Musher’s Secret is this waxy stuff you can get online from pet suppliers. I rub this goop on Hanni’s paws every time we leave home.
It smells a bit like Vicks Vaporub, and it hardens on her paw after I rub it in – the salt can’t get through to her pads.
Hanni loves having her paws rubbed, but she could do without the waxy stuff. And really, we could both do without the ice and snow for a while.
And so, we’re treating ourselves to a Valentine’s Day gift. We leave this Thursday to visit my sister Bobbie and her husband…in South Carolina! I’m doing a presentation for Bobbie’s Book Club on Friday and hoping to get a few good long walks in, too.
Hanni and I are both looking forward to a few days away from snow, away from ice, away from road salt, and away from Musher’s Secret. I promise I’ll still rub her paws, but maybe while we’re sitting outside. In the warm sun.

It’s Hanni’s Golden Birthday today — she’s 8 years old on the 8th of February. We are celebrating Hanni’s birth, of course. But I gotta admit: while Hanni spends the day playing around and giving me paws, she’s giving me that other sort of pause, too.
In the “frequently asked questions” section of the Seeing Eye website you’ll see that The average Seeing Eye dog works, well, you guessed it. Eight years.
Of course, we all know Hanni is wayyyyyy above average. She’ll be working far past her birthday. But this magic number “8” does stress– double meaning definitely intended here – the fact that retirement looms on the horizon.
Different guide dog schools have different policies about retirement. Some schools “rent” the dogs to their users. Those schools have more say as to when the dog should retire. At the Seeing eye, the dog belongs to the guide dog user. That means we are the ones who decide when it’s time for our dogs to quit working. We judge this by their health, and by their willingness to work.
Gee, kinda like human retirement, huh?
When retirement time comes, I can bring Hanni back to The Seeing Eye so they can find someone to adopt her, I can keep Hanni at home while I work with my new dog, or I can give her to a friend.
A dog lover in northern Wisconsin has already offered to take Hanni when she retires. Northern Wisconsin is lovely, but a very long distance from Chicago. It’s hard to imagine traveling more than a couple of feet to hug Hanni. Or trusting a dog other than Hanni to lead me around and keep me safe.
I don’t like thinking about what will happen to my beloved golden retriever/Labrador cross when I go to Morristown for a new dog. But heck, why waste time thinking about that now, anyway? It’s time to celebrate. With good ol’ Hanni.

Hanni and I are doing a book signing at Women and Children First Bookstore on Wednesday morning, December 5. The store is in a terrific north-side Chicago neighborhood called Andersonville.
Mike, Hanni and I live on the south side of Chicago. The last time I went to Women and Children First, I took a cab. The beautiful thing about cabs: if they pick you up (see my blog post about a cab driver who refused Hanni) they let you off right in front of where you need to go. The ugly thing about cabs: they can cost an arm and a leg. It cost me over $20 to get to Women and Children First, for example.
This time, I figure, I’ll take a bus.
Truth is, Hanni and I rarely take Chicago buses by ourselves. I’m not afraid of much, but the fears I have are strong. One of my fears: falling into the laps of strangers. If a bus takes off before I find a seat, we’re doomed,
I can’t see the handles to grab onto for balance.
Knowing this fear of mine, Mike agreed to help us on a dry run yesterday. It went swimmingly.
First off, the bus was empty. Nary a lap to fall into. Even better: the bus driver waited for us to find a seat before he took off. Heaven.
A recorded voice called out the streets as we passed. To those of you who wonder whether blind people have a heightened sense of hearing, I’ll admit that after one announcement I told Mike I had no idea Chicago had a street called Killer.
“It’s Schiller,” he said.
I laughed. The ride was fun, really. I mean, once you’re seated, what’s to worry about? Chicagoans climbed on and off, a lot were chatting to each other, most of them seemed happy.
And no one fell into my lap.
After 45 minutes – Chicago is a BIG city — the recorded voice called out “Foster!” I grabbed Hanni’s harness, pointed to the front door, and commanded “Forward!” She led me perfectly, stopping at the top of the step down so I wouldn’t fall.
Women and Children First is two blocks north of Foster, Mike said. I turned north, commanded “Forward! and Hanni and I were off. When we got close to the door to Women and Children First, Mike stepped ahead. “It’s right here!” he said. Hanni went to him, sticking her nose under the doorknob. “Good girl!” I exclaimed, repeating that over and over while leaning down to pet the bejeezus out of her. Her tail was wagging with such enthusiasm that it brushed my face. We went inside, warmed up for a bit, then headed out again to circle back to the bus stop.
The second time, we let Hanni lead completely. When we got close to Women and Children First I started calmly and quietly repeating the direction she should be looking. “Right,” I said, pointing ever so slightly in that direction. “Right. Right. Right.” Sure enough, she walked right to the correct doorknob. Again the effusive exclamations, again the tail wagging. “Good girl, Hanni!” I know we’ll find our way on December 5.
It was a great afternoon. To reward ourselves, we ducked into a tavern/restaurant called Hop Leaf. Everyone we know who has ever gone to Hop Leaf gushes about it; finally it was our turn to give it a try. It did not disappoint. Mike and I enjoyed Belgian beer as we shared steamed mussels –Hot Leaf’s specialty.
The bus ride home was a cinch. No strange laps were disturbed.
Hanni’s bedtime treat that night was bigger than usual. We made it, I told her. Safe & sound.