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.

Tattoos

Hanni is hip. You all know that. But did you know she is so hip that she has a tattoo on her right ear? That’s how she rolls, dude.

Hanni the hip dog and I just spent three nights in New Orleans. Any of you who have spent three wild nights in New Orleans might assume that she got her tattoo while we were there.

Wrong.

And if you think her tattoo is a heart with the letters b-e-t-h inscribed inside, you’re wrong again. Hanni already had the tattoo — a series of letters and numbers – when I met her. The Seeing Eye uses tattoos to keep track of their dogs. The tattoos prove useful, too, in identifying Seeing Eye dogs who get separated from their blind companions.

Separated from Hanni? Yikes. That’s too awful to even consider. Let’s think about happier things. Like…New Orleans!

Our trip was colorful right from the start. After a two-hour delay at O’Hare – ugh! — we finally got seated. In the bulkhead. Between two guys flying home to Louisiana. From Africa! “Were you there with a church group or something?” I asked.

They both laughed. “We’re not missionaries,” the guy on my right –his name was Chris – said. “We’re mercenaries!”

They were mechanics. Caterpillar had sent them to Nairobi for a month to build boat engines. “We built ten engines in four weeks,” Timmy, the guy on my left, said. “That’s a lot — they’re BIG engines.”

After the usual array of questions about Hanni, they told me about their time in Africa, how hard it was to be away from their families, how cramped the living conditions had been. But it sure beat working on oil rigs at home, they said. That’s what they’d been doing before they got the job with Caterpillar. Chris had escaped the oil rig life relatively unscathed. Timmy hadn’t been as lucky. Two back surgeries, three knee surgeries and one operation on his elbow. Pain management classes had helped him survive, he said. Martial arts helped, too. Part of the reason he had accepted the Africa job? He was able to do more supervisory work there, it wasn’t as physical. “Plus it pays $500 a day,” he said. His voice sounded sheepish, admitting such a large sum. “I have two sons; I need to make as much money as I can. You know, while I am still able to work.”

Timmy took care of Hanni when I left to go to the bathroom – she can’t fit into that small space with me. Chris jumped up to take my backpack from the overhead bin any time I needed something from it. They both told me stories of duck hunting in Louisiana, their families back home, surviving the hurricanes.

Our flight to New Orleans, well, it flew by. When we landed, Chris jumped up to get my backpack. “You go ahead,” he said. “It’s been a long flight for Hanni.”

I urged them to go first. They’d left Nairobi 36 hours ago. They weren’t home yet – they still had a three hour drive – but they were done with airplanes now, they should get off.

They wouldn’t have it. So Hanni and I said our goodbyes, headed for the exit. As we passed through first class, a passenger took me aside and asked if I was okay.

Yeah,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. I asked him what he meant.

“Well, those men they sat you with,” he said. “They looked very rough.”

I’d look rough, too, if I’d just flown from Nairobi to London, London to Chicago, and Chicago to New Orleans. I hadn’t really thought much about what Timmy and Chris looked like, though. I was too busy listening. “Did they have tattoos?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” the first class man said. “All over. Are you sure you’re okay.”

The benefits of blindness are few, but they’re powerful. “I’m sure,” I assured him, a smile spreading across my face. I gave Hanni’s right ear a scratch before picking up her harness and heading to the jetway. “Hanni, forward!”

Book People, Blind People, and Big (as in Adult-Size) People

Hanni and I gave a presentation in the BookKids department at BookPeople in Austin yesterday. I started the presentation by explaining that even though my eyes are open I can’t see. “When I was little, I went to school just like you – and then when I lost my sight I had to go to school and learn to do things all over again,” I told the kids.
Only trouble was, There were no kids in the audience — I had no idea that I was talking to a bunch of adults. Duh! It is so embarrassing now to think of how painstakingly (for the people in the audience, I’m sure!) I explained what Braille is. I encouraged the audience to try squeezing toothpaste onto a toothbrush with their eyes closed. I teased them, telling them they could borrow some of the Seeing Eye dog training methods to “train” their parents.
It wasn’t until I’d finished signing and paw-printing copies of “Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound” afterwards that it dawned on me. I’d signed 20 books or so but didn’t talk to a single kid. “There were some kids mingling around,” the BookKids event planner told me. “But the audience was all adults!”
Well, adults and dogs, that is. A couple from Austin brought their Seeing Eye dogs along to the presentation, so Hanni had a little competition. That’s good for her – her head was getting big after those designer treats at the Renaissance Hotel!
Karen Thomas was there, too – she’s the editor of Dialogue Magazine. DIALOGUE is an international news magazine for people who are experiencing vision loss or are blind. It comes out in large print and on cassette, and Karen brought a copy of both formats for me. Guess what? “Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound” is reviewed in the September/ October 2007 edition! I listened to the review — and the rest of the magazine — on my flight back to Chicago.
And now that I’m home, I’ve made a note to myself: in the future, I’ll start my presentations by asking the audience to say, hmmm, let me think. How about they say “Safe!” if they’re adults. “Sound!!” if they’re kids. Then at least I’ll know who I’m talking to!