Nine years ago exactly on this day, I took a direct flight from New York to Portland with my brand new guide dog, Marra. She shook a bit in fear on the take-off, but after that, settled right in to her floor space for the rest of the 6 hour flight. When I got off the plane, I had to maneuver my way through the airport (that I knew quite well) get my luggage from baggage claim, find the light rail stop, and take the train a few stops to then walk to a new hotel I had never been to, where I had planned to meet my husband and his guide dog, Sully. It was around midnight, which meant that I could not see at all with any of my remaining vision. We planned the hotel rendezvous where my husband had been presenting at a conference so that I wouldn’t have to go so far at night and so the dogs could meet on neutral territory.
Marra was excited, and a little distracted. She had only known me for 14 days, but it had gone pretty well. She impressed me with her skills of guiding and finding seats and doors and elevators when I had been to guide dog school with her in New York at Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind. It’s common for new guide dogs going home to a new place to be a little nutty as they adjust. So, that is why we made my first totally solo trip alone with her relatively easy. Find the same train I have found a million times before, go a short distance, walk about two blocks. If I got stuck anywhere, my husband said to text him and he would come find me and walk me in. But even though she was excited, Marra guided ok. I remember stopping a couple of times just to calm us both down and collect ourselves. I was dragging a suitcase behind me, but she was fine with that. We went a little bit slow and made a few minor wrong turns when trying to get to the train station. She had not been there before so it was expected. But she guided me there and I got there ok. When she met Sully, they were both very excited at first. We met on the street, and they completely lost it and were jumping around each other in their harnesses. But within minutes, we got them both to heel and went to the room. In the room, we let them off their harnesses and they went crazy, running around the room, rolling around with each other and making growly noises. After about maybe 10 minutes of this, Nik and I had had enough of it and were afraid it was too loud. We told them both to cut it out and they did. That was that. We all went to bed. Nothing of interest really happened the rest of the way home the next day as far as guiding. Marra just guided. I taught her a few new things during the next few weeks, and she settled down some, but that was it. We were a successful guide dog team.
Fast forward to this last weekend. I brought Mia home from a 6 hour flight from New York, where I had spent the last 2 weeks learning to work with her at Guiding Eyes for the Blind. I was nervous about the flight because I was nervous about Mia in general. It was obvious she did not have the same skills and good behavior as my other two GDF dogs. But I wanted to give it a go. My husband also got a new guide dog with me at this time, and he had some of the same reservations. But his dog was so friendly and good natured that it was hard to not fall in love with him. The flight experience with these dogs was totally different.
It started out when we got to JFK in New York. Our driver did not give us a lot of extra time for all the stuff that is required when you are blind traveling with guide dogs, so we had no time margin when we got there. I had to try to follow her and my husband to keep up. My husband was using her as a sighted guide, had his dog and his roll bag. I had my dog and my roll bag and was trying to follow them. My dog was just not guiding. She was weaving and darting all over the place. I had no hands to spare to give her food rewards, a leash correction, or anything, and no time for do overs or stops. I had to keep going or I would lose my guides. I felt like I was just walking into nothing…or chaos. Like think of walking in a super busy airport but with your hands tied behind your back, something is jerking you around and off course that you can’t control, you have very little vision and very little hearing–oh, and you have to hurry and follow people in front of you. While people are walking between you and yelling. And while your guide dog has never been taught to “follow,” one of the most useful commands out there. And then, for the best part? Your dog decides to stop in the middle of JFK and take a shit right on the floor. All I could do was stand there and yell for my husband. I couldn’t believe this is what they thought was acceptable to send a person home with a guide dog. Although our staff person cleaned up the poop for me, she said very casually, “oh all the guide dogs do this when they get here. They are just so overwhelmed! hahaha!” This made me really furious. It came from a person who probably gets complimented all the time for the wonderful work she does for the blind. It came from someone who has never had any experience being scrutinized as a blind person, and a guide dog user by people critical of dogs. I cannot have my dog pooping in the middle of an airport and get away with it. That is not how blind people are treated on average. I cannot just laugh it off.
We were just in time to walk on the plane, and the plane ride was fairly ok. The dogs both did alright, although my husband’s dog was a bit needy for attention. We also had to wait an extra hour at the tarmac for an open gate in Portland, so by the time we got off the plane, the dogs had been sitting there for nearly 8 hours. Our first priority was to get them outside for break time.
If there had been an airport assistant there, I would have used them, but they weren’t there. And as every blind person knows, you can wait up to 45 minutes for an assist. Since I have gotten myself out of this airport countless times before without any trouble whatsoever, we decided to go ourselves. But our dogs were absolutely bananas. Like more bonkers than any dog I had ever had, including my guides and my childhood miniature dachshunds. They were not guiding, they weren’t even walking, really. We thought that getting them outside was maybe the thing that would just let some of their pressure off and get them back to being under control. Right away, my dog darts with all her strength over to a man playing live piano. I did a hard leash correction and in my meanest dog voice, commanded “leave it!” But my dog either does or doesn’t know “leave it” (no one at the school was sure.) So it did not do any good, for my dog. But it freaked the piano player out so much he stopped playing and darted off his piano bench. I have not done such a public and violent leash correction on a guide dog since the early 90s (more on that in another post) but I had not forgotten how embarrassing it is or how much it makes you feel like an asshole. I apologized to the piano player and assured him it was safe to get back to his piano.
We walk through the airport and I think it is going relatively ok. Since Nik’s dog does not know how to follow either, I am playing the part of yelling directions at him. But then he yells, “Lisa, Wait!” And I turn around and a woman is pulling tissues out of her purse and administering first aid to my husband’s head. Cobey, his dog, had just rammed him into a cement block wall. Blood was dripping off of his forehead. I know from experience that Nik is a bleeder. a small cut produces a large amount of blood and it takes 20 or 30 minutes to clot with pressure. I knew it probably looked way worse than the actual cut was. Still, we needed to stop the bleeding, it’s a mess, and the dogs still need to go outside. I asked him what he wanted to do, get to a bathroom? Find a paramedic? What? He said he just wanted to get the dogs outside so maybe he could get a guide dog back and maybe get a cane or something because this wasn’t working.
The woman with the tissues, who was beyond worried about our predicament and could not believe that our guide dogs were actually real, walked with us outside. The dogs both relieved themselves, and we tried to settle them down a bit. But they were still not really guiding. We decided that Nik would wait where he was with both dogs and I would go in to baggage claim to get our bags with a white cane. Then, instead of taking light rail and walking a half mile to our house like we always do, we would take an uber.
So, I went back into the airport, found a few people to help me find the right baggage carousel, and waited until there was almost no more luggage left so I could easily find mine. Since I had a cane and two roll bags, I could not walk back myself without help. So I asked another person to assist me and we walked back to where Nik was standing. Before we got there, the man exclaimed “Jesus Christ!” in alarm. And then explained to me that Nik had more blood running down his face.
Nik looked like an absolute horror show. And people were starting to balk at the sight of us and our black dogs that were busy just wrestling with each other. I can only be thankful it was Halloween season and maybe people might have thought we were doing a prank or a costume or something, but people really stopped wanting to help us. This is a dangerous place to be as a blind person, it starts the alarms of people calling the cops on you. We just wanted to get out of there. Nik had been trying to find out where to catch an uber in the airport while I was gone, and we made our way to ground transportation looking for the ride share pick up area.
But when we got where we thought we were going to be, a van pulled up and some people got out. The driver came back to the van and we asked him if we were in the right place for ride share pick up. He said this was hotel shuttle pick up. He just drove some people in from a hotel. We were asking him about directions to ride share when he said, “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I’ not sure ride share will pick you up based on how you appear right now and with these dogs.”
We knew he was probably right. One dog is iffy with ride share, two are worse. two that are not behaving well is a catastrophe, and add a blind man who looks like he has been ax murdered and you are not getting in anyone’s car. I was so done, though and this man had been pretty nice to us and listened as we explained our crazy situation. I asked him if his airport hotel would take us there and then we could regroup. “You mean you want to get a room?” He asked. The thought of a room with a bathroom and a nice warm bed just a few minutes away was more than I could resist. “yes,” I decided. “We will rent a room.”
“Ok, I am going to run you over there but only you (he points at me) can go into the lobby, ok?” Deal. Anything. Fine. Just please get me out of this airport. So we loaded up and he drove us there, He opened a little side door to a stair well and we put all of our stuff there with Nik and the dogs, then he put me back in the van and drove me around to the front lobby. It was all very clandestine and by that time, I was even laughing a little. I got us a room and the key and then took about three trips to get us and our stuff and our dogs to the room.
Nik washed up and changed his clothes while the dogs went nuts in the room. Mia started barking a lot, so we had to tie them down on separate ends of a couch, both of us sitting with our respective dogs on the floor and talking in soothing tones while petting them gently. They did finally calm down and were quiet. We laugh/cried about the last time I brought a brand new guide dog to a hotel and how different this was and how basically excruciating and confusing this whole guide dog trip had been. Then I slept for almost 17 hours, except for a couple of breaks to take those dogs outside and eat.
And that is the story. It really happened. It’s here so that someday I will look back and laugh at it.
Someday.
But for now, I have FEELINGS and THINGS TO SAY about what is going on with guide dogs and guide dog schools. It’s always a little scary to say anything at all negative about guide dogs, especially when you are at the mercy of the schools and don’t officially own your dog yet. So, I am also going to document my journey with Ms. Mia on instagram (@guidedogmia) so that there is no doubt that she is being well cared for and loved and I am working with her to improve her adjustment and get her skills up.
I am mostly confused by it all, so I don’t claim to have the answers as to “what’s wrong.” I just know something is and I can only speculate on the what and the why. I can only share my own experiences and thoughts and am quite familiar with Nik’s experiences and a bit familiar with many other blind guide dog user’s experience. I don’t know if it is just certain programs or if it has more to do with the passing of time and younger guide dog trainers not having the same skills as the older ones did. I do think that they don’t know a lot about blind folks and how we travel, live and use guide dogs and other navigational and mobility aids. I don’t think there is one “villain” in this story. I think there are many trainers, volunteers, and staff who are nice people who mean well and do the best they can, but are not getting what they need to do a good job. I think the problem is something overarching. Some has always been around and others are new. I don’t even know that I can find the answers.
But I do know that I am not the only one who has had these experiences and I do know that it is incredibly hard for blind guide dog users to speak up. We are almost powerless in this equation of guide dog staff, donors and sponsors and users. We are not the consumer, we are beneficiaries of charity. We are the product and the poster children that are used to raise funds to keep people employed and schools open and dogs produced. We don’t have a lot of say in any sort of accountability for these largely unregulated nonprofits that we depend on to provide guide dogs. Guide dogs that, if not trained correctly, can get us kicked out of housing or public accommodations, get us excluded from getting a job opportunity, and literally get us injured or killed.
I am going to take a few posts in the next few weeks to share my experiences with all my guides and the schools they came from. I invite anyone who has anything they would like to share to feel free to share in the comments or write me privately if you’d rather. I don’t know if any grand conclusions or solutions will come of this, but I do think that people need to start talking about it or it’s only going to get worse. Our airport story is a little dramatic, but we were put in a situation that no blind person should ever be. I will talk about why I think it happened, including what we could have done differently or better as well. But the two experiences I have had getting home from New York (I’ve actually had 3 in total) show the stark differences between the initial training of my guides over the years.
As for Mia, I am still Team Mia and still committed to working with her. I will talk more specifically about her later and what I theorize has made her like she currently is, but she is a nice, sweet and smart dog who I believe has a lot of potential. Although I would have never believed in a million years that our first lessons home would be “house breaking” as she has already had more accidents than any guide dog I’ve ever had in the past *combined.* But we are going to try to work through her adjustment first and then see how far we can take her guiding. She will be loved and cared for no matter what.
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