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.

That's Chris and the late, great Gilda.

The Seeing Eye is sending instructor Chris Mattoon out tomorrow to help Whitney and me. Blog readers might recognize his name: Chris came out to help me with Harper last fall, and my husband Mike Knezovich wrote a blog post about the visit. During that visit, Chris explained that Harper’s training at the Seeing Eye had included a trip or two to New York City, but that there is really no way to know for sure how a dog will react to city surroundings — or any surroundings, for that matter — or in the long term. From Mike’s post:

He also explained that although Harper didn’t start balking right after the near-miss with the car, the stresses on the dogs can be cumulative.
The three of us talked and imagined what swirled around in Harper’s head. In the end, Chris made it clear that city life had just become too much for Harper. Beth would have to get matched with a new partner.

Chris is the superstar who trained Whitney to become a Seeing Eye dog. The day he introduced her to me in New Jersey last November, he started receiving calls from home. His beloved 13-year-old canine companion was ill and getting worse. It might be time to put her down.

The Seeing Eye gave Chris time off to be with Gilda, and the five of us in his group worked with Jim Kessler, Senior Manager of Instruction and Training, while Chris was gone.

Gilda died in Chris’ arms, and Chris returned the very next morning, sounding understandably sad. I gave him a hug and wondered out loud if it might be especially hard being back at the Seeing Eye at that particular time, with all of us gushing over our brand new pups and all. Chris shrugged and said, “I can’t think of anywhere better to be right now than right here.” That’s when I decided to break the rules. I took Whitney’s harness off and let her jump up on Chris to give him a kiss. He didn’t object.

Chris worked with Whitney and me for three weeks. He knows us very well, and he is well-equipped to help us fine-tune our work together in Chicago. Curious about what we’ll be working on? Here’s an excerpt from a note I sent the Seeing Eye about specifics we need help with:

-we don’t always go all the way to the curb at the end of busy city streets, especially if she anticipates we’ll be making a turn there, she is reluctant to go to the curb (I am reluctant to admit that after my near miss with Harper last year I may be transferring a bit of fear through the harness, too) — sometimes when we *do* go all the way to the end and I point “right” or “left” and command the turn, she can’t find the crosswalk of the street we’ve turned to — when she knows where we’re going, she can be a bit overconfident, i.e., wanting to cross diagonally or veering in street since she knows we’ll be turning right or left once we get across anyway — all to say, we can be a bit sloppy at intersections — distractions (children and dogs) I correct her but she’s all discombobulated after that — plows through crowds of people rather than taking us around them — running me into people — misbehaving at pool (I swim laps every other day and she is a disaster while I swim, for a while she stayed behind the desk with staff while I swim but she still goes bonkers) this week I’ve left her at home and found a human being to escort me to the pool instead

That note makes it sound like Whitney and I are having a terrible time! Really, we’re doing very well. I just need some fine-tuning and reassurance, and I’m grateful that the Seeing Eye is sending Chris Mattoon to provide just that.

Chris’ father, Gary Mattoon, was also a Seeing Eye dog instructor. Gary started training there in 1965, so Chris grew up with the Seeing Eye. The father-and-son team worked together for years before Gary died. While I was in New Jersey Chris told me he misses his dad “each and every day” and hopes he is honoring his father’s memory by his work at the school and his dedication to the dogs he trains.

I’d say Gary would be proud.

Harper and his Collie-buddy Beau wait for a treat in the backyard at Chris and Larry's.

The email came from a veterinary student in England. Her name is Rachel Orritt. “I hope this isn’t too out of the blue,” she wrote. “I have been enjoying reading your ‘Safe and Sound’ blog and was wondering if you would be interested in guest posting for my blog.” Rachel’s note went on to explain that her Animal Translation blog describes “aspects of animal science in plain English.” She asked if I might “share some of the practical aspects of Hanni’s help, and any instances in which she has gone above and beyond expectations to help.”

Hanni retired from guide dog work in 2010! Harper, my third Seeing Eye dog, retired in 2011. I didn’t tell Rachel that, though. I knew I already had a post written about Hanni that would fill Rachel’s requirements, and laziness won the day. After making just a few tweaks, I sent it to Rachel, and she published my guest post on her Animal Translation blog as an intro to a week of guest posts about assistance animals.

It wasn’t until I fetched, ahem, that post I wrote years ago about Hanni that I realized how much my near miss with Hanni in 2007 parallels the one that caused Harper’s early retirement last year. An excerpt from that post I sent to Rachel:

Traffic was rushing by at our parallel, cuing me that it was safe to cross. “Forward!” I commanded. Hanni looked both ways, and judging it safe, she pulled me forward. But then all of a sudden she jumped back. I followed her lead and heard the rush of a car literally inches in front of us. Hanni had seen the car turning right off the busy street. I hadn’t. She saved my life.

Hanni worked for three years after that near miss. Harper retired months after his brush with danger. Three major differences between the incident with Hanni in 2007 and the near miss I had with Harper last year:

• The car in Hanni’s close call didn’t brush her face, in Harper’s case he was brushed by the car.
• I didn’t fall backwards in the Hanni close call, but with Harper I ended up flat on my back in the street.
• By the time Hanni and I had our near-miss, we’d been working together for six years, three of them in the city; Harper and I had been together less than a month.

That last difference is the one I didn’t understand until I’d had a dog for awhile. I had to learn to trust each dog. And each dog had to learn to trust me. By the time Hanni and I had our scares, we’d been through a lot successfully. Not so with Harper.

The similarity: in both cases, I worried the near miss might cause my dog to develop a fear of traffic. Staff at the Seeing Eye have seen dogs react three diffrent ways to near misses:

• Some shrug it off as if to say, whew, we almost got hit by a car, but hey, let’s keep going.
• Some are slightly traumatized but with a bit of retraining can work themselves out of it.
• Some are so traumatized they can’t work again.

The only way the Seeing Eye can determine ahead of time how a dog might react to getting brushed by a car would be to do that in training. Brush them with a car, I mean. They obviously are not going to do that. They do teach the dogs to back away from vehicles heading towards them, and Harper had succeeded at that many times in my early months at home with him in Chicago. The near miss, however, was enough for him.

The other day Whitney was guiding me through our apartment lobby when a neighbor remarked, “This one’s a lot better than that other one, isn’t it?” I didn’t take the time to explain. The four Seeing Eye dogs I’ve worked with have all been great. Each one, and especially the three that I’ve had here in Chicago, have heroically saved me from cars pulling out of alleys, rushing into parking garages, ignoring red lights at intersections. Some “traffic checks” are more dramatic than others, but I am living proof that each and every one of them — Dora, Hanni, Harper and now Whitney — did their job, and I’m proud of all of them.

Which is to say, I’m a little defensive of Harper, and rightly so. The dogs aren’t robots — they’re doing something very, very difficult. And I still miss Harper.

The couple who adopted Harper are having fun with him, and they are also, slowly but surely, working with him to help him overcome the fears that cropped up after my near miss with him in Chicago. Harper has lived with Larry, Chris and their cat George in a quiet Chicago suburb for two months now, and Chris sent us an email yesterday with a subject heading, “major progress.” Harper had walked completely around the block with them two days in a row! “Most of the time it’s me walking backwards, coaxing A LOT, but we’ve gotten it done!” she wrote, the number of exclamation marks in the note accentuated her delight in Harper’s progress. “All of this has been without the leash — he still wigs out when I put it on him outside (inside, it’s not a problem at all).”

Every one of my guide dogs has been a hero. None of them better than another. Just different. And if you ask me about Harper, I’d say he’s still showing his bravery: Chris sent another email just now to say Harper went all around the block for a third day in a row. “I’m so excited!!!!!!!!!” Chris wrote. Me, too!

So, as the guest blogger here I’m happy to introduce: Another guest blogger!

He’s Chuck Gullett. He and his lovely partner Rene are friends from our little Printers Row neighborhood. Last week while I was in Urbana, Chuck was kind enough to accompany Beth to an unusual (for most people) appointment. Since he’s a great photographer and storyteller, Beth asked whether he’d be willing to blog about the experience. He did that, and got a bunch of good shots — I’ll post a couple with his blog. Oh, and besides being a terrific photographer and friend, Chuck’s also a solid, honest real estate agent. So if you’re in the market….

Finally, don’t blame Chuck for the “eyewitness account” headline — I just couldn’t resist.

That's a whole lotta eyeballs right there. (By Chuck Gullett.)

With that, I present Chuck Gullett!

A trip to the ocularist

Between Harper’s retirement and Whitney’s training, I had the great opportunity to accompany Beth as her “Seeing Eye Chuck” for a visit to the ocularist.  The ocularist, as I learned, is the place to go when you need a new glass eye or just a little glass eye maintenance. The ocularist’s office, on the 16th floor of the Garland Building in Chicago, has a spectacular view of Lake Michigan, Millennium Park and Navy Pier. Ironically, the hundreds of eyes in the office are all neatly arranged in drawers and never able to enjoy the view.

On this visit, Beth was going in for a routine cleaning. As an observer, the process is fairly straightforward…

1) Remove glass eye with a device that looks like a miniature Nerf suction cup dart.

2) Try not to make an immature sucking sound as the eye is being removed.

3) Sit back and chat until the eye returns from the onsite laboratory, which I pictured to be somewhat like Grandpa’s lab from the “Munsters.”

When the ocularist returned with the beautifully polished eye, I asked a few questions and Beth talked him into showing me the lab and explaining the cleaning process. What I got was an enthusiastic lesson in the history, making and care of the good ol’ ocular prosthesis, or what we commonly refer to as a glass eye. First off, the eye is not even made of glass. Modern glass eyes are actually made of acrylic, which is extremely durable and more cost effective to manufacture.

The guys in the lab area told me about the heroic GI’s returning from WWII having a large demand for glass eyes. The glass eyes would tend to break by accident or “accidentally” around the time a GI wanted to visit the big city. A shortage in high quality imported glass and the cost of replacement eyes prompted the government to find a better material to make artificial eyes. Now, we have the modern version in durable acrylic.

So, what's your guess? (By Chuck Gullett)

To give you an idea of how durable the eyes are, Beth has had the same peeper for 25 years and the last time she had it polished was 4 years ago. Each eye is hand crafted for its owner and is a true piece of art. I looked through the drawers of sample eyes and the level of detail is really stunning. The blood vessels are recreated with silk threads while the pupil and iris take laborious hours to hand paint so they look realistic. The ocularist had notes from Beth’s last two visits where they recommended that she get fitted for a new eye, but Beth just smiled and said, “Yeah, I kinda like this one.”  I like that one, too.  I had no idea that Beth even had a glass eye.  One eye is real and one is not.  You can try to guess which is which, but good luck.

Anyway, I also learned that the cleaning/ polishing process is much like polishing jewelry. There is a buffing wheel and several different compounds to remove build-up and leave a nice smooth surface. The ocularist works the eye until it is just right, then rinses it off and you are ready to go.  I associate the feeling of a freshly polished glass eye like the smoothness your teeth have after a visit to the dentist.

All in all, it was a great afternoon. I got to spend some quality time with a friend, feed my odd curiosity with something out of the ordinary and learn something new. Anytime Whitney needs a day off, I’ll be happy to help out.

Hi folks, it’s me again — Mike Knezovich, aka Beth’s husband. Feels like the movie “Groundhog Day,” or “Groundhog Year.” The time since Beth left for the Seeing Eye last November seems to have flown by. And like last year, I’ll be getting dispatches from Beth —  who will be very, very busy, not to mention tired — at The Seeing Eye during training. I’ll try to fill Beth’s blog shoes while she’s gone, and pass along her news as it comes.

And some just came: It’s a girl. Named Whitney. The trainer says she goes by just “Whit” most of the time.

Not that Beth hasn’t been busy since she flew to New Jersey on Saturday. She’s been on training walks with instructors, sat in lectures and had her time scheduled solid. When she calls she’s typically interrupted by an intercom announcement calling students to the next activity.

Which is great, because the last three weeks — and really, the last couple months — have been a slog. We both were reminded of how independent Beth is with a Seeing Eye dog, and how much more she has to depend on me without. Plus, there has been sort of a dark cloud around this year’s trip. Last year was certainly bittersweet, what with Hanni heading off to retirement. But it was filled with the excitement of a new dog, and looking forward to another long partnership between Beth and her new dog. That didn’t turn out, and this trip has had a tinge of sadness and fatigue about it from the beginning.

So it was terrific to hear Beth and Whitney on the phone. Beth was upbeat and giggling, and I can’t wait to meet Whit. I’m confident it’ll be a good match, and that with just a bit of luck, this will prove to be a long partnership. By the time the dogs get this far, they have proven they have the right stuff. According to The Seeing Eye, 60 percent of the dogs born at the Seeing Eye make it to the training stage. Eighty percent of the dogs who make it to training stage go on to be placed with a blind person and work as a Seeing Eye dog. So about half the dogs — who are carefully bred by The Seeing Eye  — end up being placed as guides.

Beth’s first dog, Pandora, worked until the age of 12 and lived to 17. Hanni worked until 11 and we hope she matches Dora in longevity. Harper worked less than a year, but it was truly a “dog year.” Besides a harrowing near-miss with a car, he managed to run into a lot of other difficult situations that were mostly a matter of bad luck. Including walking into the elevator that happened to be occupied by two skittish Chows that lunged at and bit him.

So while it’s sad about Harper, I don’t for a second consider the time a failure. I do miss scratching his big lovable head, though. And I’ll always be grateful for the job he did for Beth, and for The Seeing Eye.