How I Came To Want A Guide Dog

I complete my Master’s, and soon begin work as a contract therapist at a local agency. My boyfriend and I are engaged and planning our wedding.

With both of us out of school, we move closer to our jobs. Our city has public transit, but we’re not on a bus line. The combination of my disability and location qualifies me for door-to-door para-transit services, my reliance on which is not conducive to maintaining an acceptable level of confidence at street crossings.

My getting a guide dog would necessitate traveling out-of-state to train remotely for a month. I’m in the midst of too many changes now to make that commitment. As a contract therapist with an active case load, taking a month off is out of the question.

We get married and start a family. I take my parental responsibilities very seriously. Remembering my grad school experience with the speeding car, I am hesitant to cross busy streets with my children. The safety of young lives has been entrusted to me, irrespective of my lack of visual acuity.

I might feel safer and more secure with a guide dog, but it’s too soon in the life of this young family to leave for a month of training.

One Christmas, Santa brings us a two-year-old Shih Tzu named Lulu. By the time our youngest is old enough for me to feel confident leaving for training, our sweet Lulu is eleven. I know the acquisition of the new dog will be an adjustment for all of us, including Lulu. She started out as the children’s pet. She’s now very much a “Mama’s dog.”

When I ask our vet the average life expectancy for a Shih Tzu, he says 12-14 years. I cannot bear the thought of dethroning this sweet, quirky, neurotic little dog during her last year or two of life.

Well-loved and cared-for, Lulu surprises us all by living to be just shy of seventeen.

I grieve the loss of my dear dog, and address some of my own health concerns.

A year goes by. It’s time to consider applying for a guide dog.

Guide dog puppies are raised in the homes of volunteers from the time they are about eight weeks of age, until about the age of fifteen months. I cannot imagine raising a dog during the most adorable stage of its life…taking it everywhere with you to socialize it, only to give it up to someone else…

I begin praying for the wellbeing of my future guide and its raisers, asking for peaceful transitions for both. I ask that my puppy knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is loved and wanted, and that the raisers can rest assured that this puppy will go to someone who will love it with all her heart and appreciate both the dog, and the love and dedication they have invested in it.

As I investigate the online application of the school I plan to attend, I discover that they want me to list starting and ending addresses for three routes, each a minimum of 1/2 mile in length, that I travel on a consistent basis. Between the accident in grad school and my current residence in the largest city in North America without public transit, I no longer walk everywhere as I once did. It’s time to get to work.