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.

Some el stops in Chicago make it easy to cross busy streets. I regularly use the underground blue line stop near our apartment this way — Whitney guides me down the steps on the south side, we walk underneath Congress to get to the exit that feeds out on the north side, and, bingo! We’ve safely crossed a four-lane highway!

Whit and I often use Subway stops to cross under busy streets.

When Seeing Eye trainer Chris Mattoon was here last month helping me with Whitney, I used the underground red line el stop to cross State Street. He found my subway street-crossing idea so slick that he asked if he could videotape us. “I’ve gotta show this to the apprentices!” he laughed, explaining that new trainers might regard my trick as cheating — they might insist the dogs keep their street crossings, ahem, above ground. “But really, an important part of the job is learning to trust the blind person you match with the dog. Each person is different, and you’ve gotta let them do what works best for them,” Chris told me, then started to chuckle again. “And this seems to work for you, Beth!”

The only thing that kinda doesn’t work about my underground crossings is this: the spot where we emerge from the blue line is also the spot where a gaggle of homeless men like to hang out. The men are no trouble, it’s just that Whitney needs to work us around them to get us to the next corner. We make this trip so often that one of the men recognizes us now and has decided to take us under his wing. “Three o’clock!” his baritone sandpaper voice rings out when he sees us come up the stairs. “Twelve o’clock!” he shouts as we head down the sidewalk.

I have never found the face-of-the-clock method very helpful, but I’ve come across a number of sighted people who think it’s pretty clever. Maybe they’ve all seen the movie See No Evil, Hear No Evil? That’s the one where Gene Wilder plays a deaf man who uses clock-face directions to tell his blind buddy (played by Richard Pryor) how to beat up some guy they meet in a bar.

“Nine o’clock! “Twelve o’clock!” The shouts from my Tom-Waits-sound-alike can be disconcerting. And distracting. I do my best to hide my annoyance and just smile his way as we pass. He’s only trying to help.

A few weeks ago Mike walked with Whitney and me to Union Station to catch a train to a suburban grade school. It’s been an unseasonably warm winter in Chicago — the sun was out, sidewalks were clear, and Mike escorted Whitney and me sighted-guide across the four-lane highway. I gotta admit, It was a relief to avoid the shouts from the Tom Waits soundalike at the el stop.

I kissed Mike goodbye at Union Station, assuring him he didn’t have to come and fetch us there later that afternoon — Whitney could guide me home on her own. Only problem: I hadn’t anticipated a blizzard.

The snow started falling when Whitney and I were talking to second-graders in the gymnasium at Kipling Elementary School, and it was still coming down when we got off the commuter train in Chicago. The American Federation of the Blind devotes a section on its web site to traveling in winter weather:

Winter-weather is often more time consuming, more physically and mentally tiring, and possibly more fraught with danger than traveling in good weather. The cold often brings personal discomfort, making it difficult to concentrate and learn during travel or mobility lessons. Your toes, fingers, and ears are particularly at risk. To protect your extremities, it is necessary to plan one’s clothing and equipment well beforehand.

When I was a kid, I thought it was magical, the way snowfall muffled the sound around you. I still do. But on my walk home with Whitney that afternoon, it just wasn’t the magic I was looking for. By the time we left the train station, enough snow had fallen to mask the audible cues I use to navigate the city. Commuters trudging towards the station kept their heads down to avoid the snow pelting their faces. This would have been fine if they all had dogs like mine to guide them, but they didn’t. Whitney was on her own, weaving me around the blinded commuters in our path.

Snow had accumulated between the raised, circular bumps I’ve come to rely on to tell me we’re at the edge of a curb ramp, so I wasn’t always exactly sure where we were. The further we got away from the train station, the fewer pedestrians crossed our path. And then suddenly I realized: we were alone. I stopped. Listened. No footsteps in the snow, no sounds of shovels, nobody there. Panic. Where were we? My iPhone was in my bag, and I knew I could call Mike. But what would I say? How would I tell him where to find us?

And that’s when I heard it. A voice like an angel. “Twelve o’clock!” my subway sentry shouted.

I picked up Whitney’s harness, squared my shoulders towards the foghorn, commanded, “Whitney, forward!” and Wonderdog Whitney pulled me towards the voice in the wilderness. “Twelve o’clock!” he called out. “Twelve o’clock! Twelve o’clock!” When we got close enough, Tom Waits reached out. He put his gloved hand in mine, and led Whitney and me to the subway stairs. Once there, he placed my palm ever so gently onto the banister and walked away. We got home fine from there.

And now, when my pal by the subway entrance croaks out a clock direction, I don’t just smile his way. I thank him.

Check this out: Mrs. Walsh’s first-graders made a book to thank me for visiting their school with Whitney last month.

That

When the book arrived in the mail I knew right away who I’d enlist to read it out loud to me.

A number of the seniors in the Wednesday memoir-writing class I lead are retired Chicago public school teachers; others worked as aides or substitutes. When I pulled the book out of my backpack last Wednesday, these senior writers gathered around as if it were a precious piece of art – which is exactly what it is. They took turns and read every page out loud to me, ooing and ahhing over each drawing and complimenting the kids’ writing skills.

I asked them to choose a favorite page to publish with this blog post, and they were hard-pressed to pick just one. “Oh, I like this one!” one would gush. Others would chime in with their opinions, and when the page was turned to the next masterpiece, the raves would start anew. “Ooo, but I like this one, too!”

During school presentations, I show school kids how Seeing Eye dogs safely lead people like me, who are blind, where we want to go. I talk about Braille, too, and read a bit from the Braille version of my children’s book, Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound aloud. I tell them how I listen to audio books. I explain how a talking computer works and describe the way I use a screen-reader to read email messages and check out newspaper articles online.

The kids learn I can’t read print. So when teachers ask them to write thank-you notes afterwards, some of them reason they shouldn’t bother – Beth can’t read print, and neither can Whitney!

Truth is, Whitney and I honestly and sincerely do not need to be thanked for visiting classrooms. If anything, we should be thanking the kids — their enthusiasm and curiosity buoys us for days and weeks after each school visit.

But all that said, I gotta admit: I do enjoy hearing what the kids have to say about Whitney and me after we’ve been at their school. Mike has developed a knack for describing crayoned illustrations, and although it is entertaining to hear him read the handmade thank-you notes out loud, I thought I’d give him a break this time. Hearing my senior writers read this book from Warren G. Harding Elementary School in Kenilworth, NJ out loud last week was a special treat.

After much hemming and hawing, the “Me, Myself and I” memoir-writing seniors finally chose, drumroll, please…)

Note to blind blog readers: the picture shows a very long Whitney dog smiling at the camera. She is wearing a harness, and all you see of me is a very, very long arm holding on. The first-grader’s writing reads like this : “I like when the dog was woking the prsin.”

That’s Tracey and Emerald.

While Whitney and I were training at the Seeing Eye last month, the PR people interviewed a few of us for a short one-minute promotional video. You can link to the video on YouTube, but get out your Kleenex first – it’s downright heartwarming. And be sure to watch from beginning to the very end, otherwise you’ll miss a quick snippet of fellow Seeing Eye graduate Tracey Melchiorre, who more or less bookends the video. Tracey is a feisty gal with a Texas accent, and she’s alive and well today thanks to a young man who believed in organ donation.

Tracey was diagnosed with Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, when she was eight years old. She lost her sight in 1991, when she was 24. A year later, she met Mike Melchiorre at a Houston Rockets game — they fell in love, got married, took classes to become certified as foster parents, and adopted Elijah, who they had fostered as an infant. Elijah is seven years old now, but he was still a toddler when diabetes started damaging Tracey’s kidneys. She was on dialysis for a year and a half before receiving a kidney and pancreas transplant. “It was on July 27, 2008, not that I remember the exact date or anything!” she says with a happy laugh.

Like Tracey, I was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when I was a kid, and over the years, friends have asked if I might consider a pancreas transplant. It’s true a pancreas transplant might offer a “cure” for type 1 diabetes, but many physicians are reluctant to transplant a pancreas alone for diabetes without renal failure. The reason? Side effects of the immunosuppressant drugs required after transplantation are more detrimental than the complications of diabetes.

When someone like Tracey (who had severe kidney damage due to type 1 diabetes) is experiencing renal failure, doctors reason they may as well combine a pancreas transplant with

There’s Elijah the Rockets fan with a Yao Ming bobblehead. Thanks to a young man who donated his organs, Elijah’s mom is living a healthy life.

a kidney transplant. That way you end up with a healthy kidney, plus a pancreas that won’t damage it anymore.

Being a transplant recipient is great, Tracey would tell me. “No more diabetes or kidney problems!” At the same time, she readily acknowledged that she’d exchanged one set of challenges with another. I’d hear her alarm go off twice a day to remind her to take her anti-rejection medication, and she still has regular doctor visits and blood tests and a compromised immune system to deal with.

So while I envied the way she could eat desserts at dinner without worrying how much extra insulin to inject to “cover” the extra carbs, or how she’d scurry out to the Seeing Eye shuttle bus without pricking her finger to check her blood sugar level first, or never had to pat her pockets to confirm she had a glucose tablet along, you know, in case of a low blood sugar en route, I am hopeful my kidneys stay healthy and I never need a transplant.

I have a brother-in-law who has been on dialysis for over a year. He’s still waiting for a kidney donor. He is not a complainer, but I know dialysis is tedious and tiring. When I asked Tracey what got her through all those months and months on dialysis, she said, “God brought Elijah into our lives at just the right time to keep us going and smiling.” She also credits her church family, who provided prayers and food, and her parents, who helped almost daily. My brother-in-law seems buoyed when he’s with his family, but he tires easily and is not able to travel as much as he used to. We are all hopeful he gets news of a donor match soon.

Tracey’s pancreas and kidney came from a 23-year-old man in the Carolinas, and she is grateful that young man believed in organ donation. She told me she doesn’t know much about his background, or his family. “I only know about his mother, and that she loved him.” In a thank you note to this young man’s mother, Tracey said that the transplant will add an indefinite number of years to her life, and healthy years at that. “I told her about Elijah, and how my son will grow up having a healthy mommy who can go to his games, cook his meals and take care of him.”

Signing up to be an organ donor is much easier than you might think. A web site called Donate Life America provides a list of where to register in your state, and United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) provides an easy-to-read fact sheet dispelling common myths about organ donation.

One thing I learned from that list: a history of medical illness does not prevent you from donating organs, and neither does old age. With recent advances in transplantation, many more people than ever before can be donors, and while it’s good to sign up to be an organ and tissue donor on your driver’s license, it’s best to sign an official donor document, too.

Tracey says the most important thing to do if you want to be a donor is to tell your family your wishes. She doesn’t have information on how many other lives were changed by this young man’s decision to become a donor, but she did tell me this: a single donor can save up to nine lives, and improve the lives of as many as 50 people.

Sometimes she's a little too smart for her own good, not to mention mine.

Today Bark Magazine published a blog post I wrote about my first weeks at home in Chicago with Whitney. I start out the post describing how the Seeing Eye-dog thing is supposed to work. The blind person memorizes or finds the route, the pair gets themselves situated on the sidewalk, the blind person commands “Forward!” and the dog guides them safely to the curb. When the dog stops, the person stops. That’s how a blind person using a guide dog knows they have arrived at an intersection. If the person wants to turn right or left at that corner, the person commands the direction, and the dog turns. If the person wants to cross the street, the dog waits while the human being listens to traffic, and when it sounds safe to cross, the person says the dog’s name and commands, “Forward!” After confirming it is indeed safe to cross, the Seeing Eye dog leads the human to the other side of the street.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyways. Unfortunately, The near miss I had with my Seeing Eye dog Harper last year had left me more anxious than I wanted to admit. I wasn’t letting Whitney lead me right to the edge at intersections. She was already beginning to know our routes –- why make her go all the way to the curb, just to wait there before I told her which way to turn? From the Bark Magazine blog post:

Whitney’s decision to keep us away from the edge of the intersections, to just go ahead and make turns on her own, well, it meant I didn’t have to face the rush of traffic in front of us. I felt safe.

Until Whitney started crossing intersections diagonally, that is. Dang that smart bump! The girl is so clever that when she knew we’d be turning right or left once we crossed the street, she figured hey, why not save time? We’ll just go kitty-corner.

For those unenlightened ones out there, a “smart bump” is the occipital bone on the top of a dog’s head. All retrievers have this bump, and when it really sticks out the way Whitney’s does, we call them “smart bumps” and convince ourselves our dogs are smarter than others. And so, my two-year-old genius was not only crossing intersections diagonally, she was also anticipating a turn at every corner, veering as we approached intersections and leaving us all discombobulated. And if there is one place you especially don’t want to feel discombobulated with a Seeing Eye dog, it’s when you’re approaching a city intersection.

So are you wondering what Seeing Eye trainer Chris Mattoon suggested when he visited last week, and whether his advice is working for Whitney and me? Well, I guess you’ll have to link to my post on the Bark Magazine blog to find out!