Whitney and Beth (and Hanni), Safe and Sound

Beth and Whit have settled into a routine up at the Vermont Studio Center.

Hi all — it’s still Mike here. Beth’s taking this work retreat seriously, staying offline as much as she can — but the short of it is, all is well. That staph infection that put a scare into us has passed, thanks to some attentive and caring folks up in Johnson, Vt. at the Vermont Studio Center, and to the the good people at Copley Hospital.Beth spent two nights at Copley, and so did Whitney — which presented a little bit of a logistical challenge when it came to taking Whitney out for “park time.” Well, the hospital staff rose to the occasion. They took Whitney out and played with her while Beth stayed attached to IV pole. And Beth and her publisher — Francine Poppo-Rich at Blue Marlin Publications — thanked them by shipping copies of “Hanni & Beth, Safe and Sound” to all the caring people who helped Beth and Whitney.

One of them — Penny Hester — took care of Whitney for an hour and a half while Beth was in the MRI tube (they were checking to be sure the infection had not spread to muscle and joint tissue). Penny is a speech/language pathologist. After she received her copy of the book, she wrote Beth a very thoughtful note — turns out Penny has a therapy dog that helps with some of her patients:

Dear Beth,

You have no idea how much it meant to me to receive your book. I used it with a patient the next day who had no idea of what being “blind” meant. With limited words he would close his eyes and point to the book-“no see Beau.” Beau is my pet therapy dog and Hanni looks very much like my Beau, in the beautifully illustrated pictures of  your book. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to open his world to a new concept.

That Hanni. Even in retirement, she’s winning friends. So is Whitney — though she’s doing it a little differently…Penny sums up Whitney’s goofball personality pretty well:

I found your sweet, clowning companion an absolute joy. She was hysterical playing with Beau’s squeaky toys. She would push her nose against the toy until it would squeak and then jump back a bit and yip.  I loved spending time with her and I was honored to be entrusted with her. When you instructed me about not letting her off her leash — it brought chills up my spine to imagine you having to worry about that when others provide her with “park time.”

Well, Beth says that thanks to Penny and all the good folks out there, she didn’t have to worry at all.

A year with Whit

Whitney taking a break from her Nylabone on Thanksgiving day.

My husband’s giving me a holiday blog break with this guest post–here’s Mike Knezovich!

On Friday night Beth came through the apartment door sounding slightly panicked. “Mike, take a look at Whitney — I think she’s bleeding.”

A dog had lunged at Whit in our building’s elevator, and Whit was bleeding from a cut across her nose. As I cleaned it up, Beth recounted what happened. And then we both fell silent.

Of the many, many things Beth and I have felt thankful for over the past few days, one stands out: This is the first year of the past three that Beth wasn’t flying to New Jersey the weekend after Thanksgiving to spend three weeks training with a new Seeing Eye dog. Like many other couples, Beth and I appreciate our breaks from each other, but I don’t like it when she’s gone that long. And I particularly don’t like the yearlong process, after being matched with a new dog, where we figure out how and if it’s going to work.

Regular “Safe & Sound” readers know the story…in 2010, Beth’s guide dog Hanni began a well-earned retirement. Though it was sad to say goodbye to the intrepid Hanni, it all felt natural. We both looked at this next episode with positive anticipation. Sure enough, Beth returned with Harper, a gentle, loveable and handsome Yellow Lab. All was well until Beth and Harper had a terrifyingly close call with a car—and Harper was never the same.

So last November it felt more like “Groundhog Day” than Thanksgiving. For the second straight year, Beth juggled her work schedule, packed her things for a three-week stay at The Seeing Eye, and girded herself for the physical and emotional challenges of training with a new guide. I crossed my fingers that this one would take.

And it has. It’s been a year since Whit and Beth met, and Whit continues to learn and improve. She still has her moments—she’ll just sort of space out and lollygag, veering here and there to sniff around—I liken it to teenage behavior.

But those episodes are fewer and further between. More often she walks—trots, really—with a purpose, stops precisely where she should at the crosswalks, and waits for Beth’s command to go. Her head is high, and on a swivel—she’s always scoping out her environment. She’s affectionate but independent—she prefers to sleep in her luxurious bed under the piano in the living room rather than on the floor in our bedroom.

And so, after the elevator episode, Beth and I each quietly feared the worst: Whit might get scared in the elevator, and then, who knows.

We headed out for a long city walk yesterday and she didn’t miss a beat—in the elevator or on the street. Whit seems undaunted, and boy, am I thankful. Hanni’s enjoying a splendid retirement. Harper’s got a best friend named Beau. I’ve got a new favorite in Whitney.

And Beth’s right here where she belongs.

Better than match.com

Whitney and I had a ball at the Hamilton Branch of the Madison Public Librarylast Friday, and as always, the kids in the audience had some marvelous questions. My favorite one was

Whitney are becoming a good team.

this: “Your book says your Seeing Eye dog goes with you everywhere. Does she go in the shower with you, too?”

We’re heading to Champaign this Thursday To speak to an animal sciences class at the University of Illinois, and it’ll be interesting to find out if the kids in that college class read their texts as carefully as the little girl at that library in Madison did!

I plan on telling the college class what it’s been like transitioning to a new Seeing Eye dog, then going over some of the qualifications necessary to become a guide dog instructor. Most guide dog schools require instructors to have a college degree and then do an apprenticeship, and apprenticeships can last as long as four years. If I do a decent job explaining how complicated it can be to train dogs, train people, and then make a perfect match between the human and canine, the college kids might appreciate why the apprenticeships last so long.

Once apprentices finish their training and become full-time Seeing Eye Instructors, they’re assigned a string (a group) of dogs and given four months to train that string. Throughout the training, instructors pay close attention to each dog’s pace and pull, and they make careful notes about how each dog deals with distractions, what their energy level is, and all sorts of other characteristics. And then? We blind students fly in from all over North America to be matched – and trained — with a new dog.

Seeing Eye instructors have to be as good at evaluating people as they are evaluating dogs. Our instructors review our applications before we arrive on campus and then ask us tons more questions when we get there. Instructors take us on “Juno” walks (they hold the front of the harness to guide us through all sorts of scenarios to get an idea of how fast we like to walk and how strong of a pull we’ll want from our dog) and then combine all of this information with what they know about their string of dogs, talk it over with fellow instructors and the team supervisor, mix in a little bit of gut instinct, and voila! A match is formed.

Each Seeing Eye instructor trains more dogs than they’ll need for a class. If a dog has a pace, pull, or energy level that doesn’t match with a blind person in the current class, that dog remains on campus with daily walks and care, and perhaps more training, until the next class arrives. My first dog was one of those Seeing Eye dogs who went through a second round of training before she was matched with me. Back in 1991, the Seeing Eye knew that the dog they matched me with would be landing in the home of a very unique five-year-old boy named Gus, and that the dog would be in the hands of a woman who had never had a dog before. They must have figured Pandora would need all the extra training she could get!

Hanni was the perfect dog for everything going on during her years with me, Harper took a blow to save me from getting hit by a car on State Street. My fourth dog had big paws to fill, and it’s taken me a while to warm up to Whitney. Lately, though, I’m finally finding myself falling in love again.

My two-year-old Golden/Labrador Retriever cross is a hard worker who loves to play as much as she loves to work. Her curiosity gets her in trouble sometimes, but when she guides me down busy Chicago streets, she is directed, determined, and driven. The only time she lollygags? When she realizes we’re heading back home. She wants to go, go, go

Whitney’s confidence is contagious, and she’s smart enough to know when to bend the rules without getting in trouble. Hmm. Whitney and I just might make a perfect match after all.

Seeing Eye weathering the storm in New Jersey

Reports I’m receiving from fellow Seeing Eye graduates tell me the Seeing Eye school, located in Morristown, New Jersey, was spared some of the more devastating damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Training at the Seeing Eye usually includes a trip to the Morristown train station to learn to get safely on and off trains with your dog, and with so many trains not running, that may be eliminated for a while. Same goes for trips to New York City for urban work.

Every day last month the Seeing Eye posted a picture on Facebook of a graduate with a short anecdote about how Seeing Eye dogs change our lives, and my friend Jerry Smith and I were two of the 31 grads featured there.

That’s Jerry with his current partner Aztec.

You might recognize Jerry’s name – he lives in Ontario, and I talked about him in a post I wrote last October after his Seeing Eye dog Seymour died. Seymour and my retired dog Hanni were classmates at the Seeing Eye in 2001, and Jerry and Seymour were a particularly colorful pair. Jerry returned to the Seeing Eye earlier this year and is working with his sixth guide, a Golden Retriever named Aztec, now. He was paired with his first Seeing Eye dog, a male German shepherd named Val, in 1971, and wrote about that dog for his Facebook story:

This story happened soon after I was partnered with Val. We were hurrying to a meeting in a hotel in Toronto and I was pushing my partner to go faster and faster as I was very late. We went down some stairs and down a long hall when suddenly Val stopped. I urged him on but he stopped in front of me, blocking me from going forward. I was in such a rush I made a big rookie mistake: I ignored him, stepped around him, and went forward myself. I took a couple steps before falling down an open elevator shaft. I only fell a short distance and fortunately (for me) I landed on top of two workers at the bottom. No one was injured, and I had let go of Val’s leash when I fell so he was still up there. The workers told me he was standing at the edge, looking down at me as if to say, “You have learned the first lesson – always trust your guide.

My decision 20+ years ago to train at the Seeing Eye ended up introducing me not only to four fun, fabulous furry four-legged friends, but also to dozens of spirited blind people like Jerry who come from all over North America to train with Seeing Eye dogs. We all return home to travel safely and independently with our dogs, thanks to the hard work of hundreds of generous staff members and volunteers. Most of these people live in New Jersey, and my thoughts are with them, and the dogs in the Seeing Eye kennels, and the puppies living with volunteer puppy raisers throughout New Jersey, as they all weather the storm.

When they come out with a new American Girl pub crawl doll, it’ll be named “Beth”

The Wisconsin Book Festival runs from November 8-11 this year and features Patricia McCormick (a finalist for the National Book Award), Pulitzer Prize winners Richard Russon and David Maraniss, Peabody Award Winner Ben Sidran, Guggenhei Felowship Award Winner Jo Ann Beard, Alex Award Winner Lynda Barry, and ASPCA Henry Berg Award Winner…ME!

The theme for this year’s fest is “Lost & Found,” and what a kick it was to discover who’d paired up to sponsor our session. From the  WBF Web Site:

HOW I LOST MY SIGHT AND FOUND MY WAY
BETH FINKE, “HANNI AND BETH: SAFE & SOUND” AND “LEND ME A PAW”
Fri, Nov. 9 | 3:30PM – 4:15PM
Hawthorne Branch Library
2707 E. Washington Ave., Madison, WI
(608) 246-4548
Sponsored by the Great Dane Pub and the American Girl Fund for Children

The Great Dane Pub makes sense (in more ways than one!), but American Girl? All I can figure is that their sponsorship stems from the set of service dogs-in-training American Girl started selling last summer to go with their uber-popular dolls. From the American Girl web site:

This sweet puppy is a service dog-in-training! He has soft fur, a solid body, and a collar. When it’s training time, your girl can slip on his service vest—it has a handle My American Girl® dolls can hold. Reward this special helper with faux treats for all of his good work!

Great Dane Pub is offering a free first pitcher of beer to any Festival author who comes in with a group during the Wisconsin Book Festival, but I don’t think I’ll ask all those kids to follow Pied Piper Whitney and me from the library to the pub for happy hour. If you’re anywhere near Madison, though, I hope you’ll join us. First pitcher is on me!

Therapy dogs

Whitney met Hanni, the grand dame of Seeing Eye dogs, this week! The circumstances were not happy ones –we were in Urbana for a funeral. The meeting of the dogs helped take our minds off

There’s Whit with Hanni’s bone.

the sadness for a bit, though, and we were very grateful.

I’ve been to two funerals the past couple weeks, and Whitney came along to both. She could have easily stayed home — neighbors drove us to the first funeral, and we went with my husband Mike to the second. My friends, and of course Mike, were willing to lend an elbow to lead me through the funeral homes, but experience with previous Seeing Eye dogs taught me that having a dog there at wakes and funerals sometimes comforts fellow mourners. I am not about to claim Whitney qualifies as a “therapy dog,” but I do know she can serve as a distraction. And sometimes, when things are particularly sad, a distraction is, well, just right.

Speaking of just right, we stayed with our friends Steven and Nancy after this week’s memorial service – they are the wonderful couple who adopted Hanni. Hanni and Whitney are both Golden Retriever/Labrador crosses, but I had no trouble telling them apart. Hanni is a tail wagger –you know it’s her when you hear a thump, thump, thump on the floor. She’s taken on more and more of her Golden Retriever side in these matronly years: she wears her hair long and full now. Her coat matches her personality: fluffy.

Whitney, on the other hand, is a licker. When you lean down to pet her, she’ll give you a kiss before rolling over for a belly rub. And at two years old, Whitney is a lean mean machine, showing signs of childish jealousy around her predecessor.

Example: When Hanni walked into hour room Tuesday morning, Whitney immediately sprang up from a calm, quiet repose and grabbed one of Hanni’s bones, chewing it ferociously, trying to taunt her. Hanni nuzzled up to me, thumped her tail, and, I imagine, rolled her eyes.

Hanni ignored Whitney completely, choosing instead to watch me go through my pre-departure rituals –zipping my suitcase, finding my shoes. When she saw me pick up Whitney’s harness, she started jumping for joy. Jumping and jumping and jumping. It’d been a long time since Hanni had seen a harness, but she remembered exactly what it was. Hanni is 12 years old now, an arthritic retiree, but she was ready to go back to work if I needed her.

Aging. Aches. Illness. Disease. Dying. It all sure can seem senseless at times. As Mike puts it, “Who do we see about this?!” The past couple weeks have served to remind me just how delicate life is, and how fortunate I am to share my time here with such incredible people — and creatures. I’m off with one of those creatures now — it’s in the 90s, and while well-deserving retirees Hanni and Harper relax at home with their new people, energetic Whitney will guide me to the pool. Don’t worry, though, Whitney knows how to carpe the diem, too. She’ll be sitting behind the reception desk in air conditioning while I swim.

Happy birthday, dear Sandmeyer’s

That’s the hub of our ‘hood.

Our neighborhood independent bookstore is celebrating its 30th anniversary in style — Sandmeyer’s Bookstore is throwing a party Wednesday night at Jazz Showcase, right down the street. Ulrich and Ellen Sandmeyer wanted a few local authors to speak while Harry and the Hit Men (a terrific cover band they’re flying in from the Bay Area – their son RalphRolf plays guitar and sings vocals) sets up, and I was honored to be asked. Of course I said yes — Sandmeyer’s is one of the things that attracted us to this Printer’s Row neighborhood in the first place.

When Mike and I decided to move to Chicago back in 2003, we looked for a neighborhood that would be friendly, safe, and easy for my Seeing Eye dog Hanni and me to navigate. That’s how we found Printers Row.

Printers Row is a tiny neighborhood in Chicago just south of the Loop. The buildings in our neighborhood were originally used by printing and publishing businesses.
Before electricity, printers used natural light to check their work, so the windows in neighborhood buildings are tall and wide. You know, to let light in. The ceilings are high, too, to accommodate old printing presses. The neighborhood went the wrong way for a long time, and many of the lovely old buildings were marked for demolition in the 70s and 80s. Thanks to some stubborn preservationists, the visionary architect Harry Weese, and pioneering folks who were willing to homestead in Printers Row, the neighborhood was not lost, but found. Two of those homesteaders were the Sandmeyers, who opened their book store long before Printers Row was a sure bet. Today, most of the buildings that were in peril in Printers Row have been converted into residential lofts. There’s always a lot of activity up and down the street, so I feel safe. When I’m walking around with my new Seeing Eye dog Whitney, I feel like people are looking out for me.

Printers Row is close enough to the Loop that Whitney can walk me to my part-time job downtown at Easter Seals Headquarters and the weekly writing class I teach for senior citizens at the Chicago Cultural Center. It also turned out to be the ideal place for an author to promote a book.

Sandmeyer’s displayed copies of my memoir Long Time, No See in the window the day we moved into Printer’s Row, and I have a feeling that half my royalties stem from Ulrich and Ellen Sandmeyer handselling it to the customers who wandered in. Four years later, Ulrich Sandmeyer called me at home the minute copies of “Hanni and Beth: Safe and Sound” landed at the bookstore’s doorstep.

Mike and I ran right down to admire the box load. One book had already sold by the time we got there – a neighbor had seen Ulrich pulling a copy out of the box and insisted on buying it right away.

“There’s not another book like it,” Ulrich said, marveling at the illustrations inside. “It’s going to sell very, very well.” To that end, Ulrich immediately placed one copy of Safe & Sound in the front display window.

As excellent as Ulrich and Ellen are when it comes to promoting local authors, they are even better when it comes to promoting literacy. We have two wise owners cutting through all the hundreds of thousands of titles out there, and thanks to their intelligent ordering, and good reading, we can easily find books at Sandmeyer’s that we really want to read. Happy birthday, dear Sandmeyer’s. And now…let’s dance!

Stay tuned

Seems like anytime an employer goes out of the way to thank you, you can bet on it: you’re being let go. Last week I got an email from WBEZ thanking me for the essays I’ve recorded for them over the years. The note went on to say WBEZ is reorganizing their local programming to emphasize live shows. They hope their new formatting will encourage listeners to comment on social media or phone in live and in person. Translation: they will no longer be airing pre-recorded essays like the ones I used to write for them.

Let’s be honest. I’m pretty lucky that WBEZ took me on to write essays in the first place. It sure felt cool to jump into a cab with Hanni or Harper and ask the driver to take me to Chicago Public Radio. So many times the driver was listening to WBEZ as we drove — one of them even asked for my autograph!

And what a kick it was to have someone call or stop me on the street after one of my essays aired. “I heard you on NPR!” they’d say. Or, “I thought the voice sounded familiar, and when I, like, waited until the end, they said it was. It was, like, you!” It was a very, very good run, and I’m sorry to seehear it come to an end.

The WBEZ arts editor did write to ask me to come and meet with her personally to see what this shift might mean for me, so I’m heading over to the WBEZ studio with Whitney tomorrow. Will it be my very last trip there? I hope not. Gee, guess we’ll all have to, ahem, stay tuned to find out.

My old favorites: an update

Here’s guest blogger Mike Knezovich with a status report on some old friends:

Whit is right at home in the city, including on the subway.

So, in case there was any doubt, Whitney’s definitely my new favorite. Though she has brain cramps (children and certain other dogs make her forget herself momentarily), she’s game for the city buzz, she responds to Beth’s corrections, and she will play — infinitely — catch and fetch for as long as a human can. Gotta’ watch her teeth, though — she’s actually shredded a couple Kong toys and even destroyed a Lacrosse ball.

Meanwhile, my old favorites are thriving. Hanni, the eternal star, enjoys a rich life in Urbana with Nancy and Steven. She’s slowed down, for sure — she doesn’t always leap up to greet you every time you enter the room. But she still thumps her tail on the floor at the first hint that you might give her a pet, a scratch, or even just a look. And at 12 years old, she still gets around. Nancy and Steven regularly take her for long walks at Urbana’s Meadowbrook Park or at Homer Lake, which is a forest preserve just outside town.

On one such walk, Hanni showed she’s still got spunk, too. Nancy reports that on a recent walk, a couple dogs got off leash and started a mad dash

Hanni, in retirement repose.

toward her and Hanni. Hanni is typically the most submissive dog I’ve ever seen. If even a tiny dog approaches, she rolls on her back and goes into the “how low can you go” routine to signal her un-aggressive intentions. Which is what she did as the dogs approached, according to Nancy. This time, though, when one of the approaching dogs bared its teeth, Hanni sprung to her feet and let out an authoritative WOOF that sent the would-be bullies packing in the other direction. I always knew she had it in her, and am happy she never really had to use it.

And then there’s Harper, the retired gentle hero. We still miss him, his giant head, his soft ears, and his generally sweet and peaceful disposition. Well, mostly peaceful, it seems. Chris and Larry, who took Harper in when it was clear he couldn’t work any more, have patiently helped him build his confidence and nerve. You may recall that after his and Beth’s traffic near-miss, he refused to venture more than a block or so from our apartment. He was the same in the suburbs, too. But gradually, walking backward while coaxing him to keep walking, Chris and Larry have gotten Harper to walk all the way around the block — and beyond! He regularly plays with the Collie across the street, and he’s even gotten cocky enough to…chase a squirrel into the neighbor’s yard and tree it.

Harper hangin' with his Collie buddy Beau.

OK, OK, we don’t want him terrorizing squirrels. But my heart swells at the thought that Harper is shaking off the trauma that used to freeze him in his tracks. And I’ll admit it — I’m kinda’ proud of the guy.

And grateful to our friends Steven and Nancy and Chris and Larry and before them Randy Cox — who took in Pandora (who lived to 17), Beth’s first guide dog. All-time favorites, all of them.

A dog called Vondra

My friend Stephanie is a librarian in New Jersey, and she came to the Seeing Eye to visit while I was training with Whitney in December. Sometime after that she noticed a very calm, beautiful, healthy Golden Lab mix sitting in the back of the Well Read Bookstore in Hawthorne, NJ and thought the dog had a striking resemblance to the dogs she’d seen at the Seeing Eye.

Another shopper entered the store and asked the shop owner what the dog’s name was. Her reply: Vondra. “That’s when I knew for sure!” Stephanie laughed. “With a name like that, this had to be a dog from the Seeing Eye!”

Puppies born in each litter at the Seeing Eye are given names that start with the same letter of the alphabet. To avoid repeating names too often, the Seeing Eye finds itself getting a little creative at times. They must have already used Vicki, Veronica, Valerie and Venus by the time Vondra was born.

Vondra is nine years old now, and the bookstore owner’s family adopted her from the Seeing Eye when she was 18 months. Vondra had been deemed unfit to be matched with a blind person during puppy training because she was too much of a people person. From the Seeing Eye web site:

When a dog is removed from consideration as a guide, it is offered to the volunteer who raised it as a puppy. If the puppy raiser does not adopt the dog, it becomes available to other homes. If the dog has potential to work in law enforcement, those organizations are given priority in selecting dogs. If the dog does not go to one of these agencies, we place the dog with a family in the community.

The Seeing Eye asks a standard adoption fee of $500, but that is reduced if you are willing to take an older, retired dog. Whatever you do, if you adopt a dog from the Seeing Eye, don’t assume you’ll get a dog with a normal name — we Seeing Eye grads sometimes feel at the mercy of the staff member who names the pups!

Veterinary Pet Insurance Co (VPI). Has published its list of the most popular names for cats and dogs in 2011, and I’ve never met a Seeing Eye dog with any name on this list:

Top female dog names for 2011:
1. Bella
2. Lucy
3. Molly
4. Daisy
5. Maggie
6. Sophie
7. ChloeTop male dog names for 2011:
1. Max
2. Buddy
3. Charlie
4. Rocky
5. Bailey
6. Jake
7. Cooper

That's Hanni, on the morning of her 12th birthday (Mike was in Urbana visiting). Even at 12, her tail's a blur.

What?! The name Hanni didn’t make that list?! Hanni is my retired Seeing Eye dog — she was born in the “h” litter. Her name sounds like Bonnie, I used to tell people, but it starts with an ‘h’.

”What does it mean?” people would ask.

“Hmmm,” I take my time, act like I was thinking of an answer. “It means…it means they ran out of all the normal female names that start with ‘H’.”

In the end, of course, the dog’s name doesn’t really matter. And believe me, the name Hanni grew on me when she started guiding me safely through busy city intersections. It’s Hanni’s 12th birthdaytoday (happy birthday, dear Hanni!) and I can’t imagine her having any other

That's Hanni right after she moved in with Steven and Nancy in 2010. In a less dignified pose.

name — she’s a perfect Hanni.

For more information on adopting a dog from the Seeing Eye, email the adoption office at dogadoptions@seeingeye.org or call (973) 539-4425, ext. 1877.