…no one. They didn’t play any song at all over the intercom to wake us up on our last day at the SeeingEye!

Speedo is already settling in at home.

A majority of the Seeing Eye graduates going home with our dogs yesterday were scheduled on early morning flights. Each of the four Seeing Eye trainers in our class was charged with driving a van full of Seeing Eye graduates and their dogs from Morristown to Newark International Airport, then arranging for special passes to accompany us through TSA, and finally seeing to it that each dog-and-human team reach the right gate for take-off.

My new dog and I were scheduled for the 4:30 a.m. van, which means my wake-up call did not come as a song. It came as an individual phone call at 2:30 in the morning. That call was followed by a knock on my dorm-room door at 3:30 a.m. My assigned trainers wanted to make absolutely sure I was awake.

My new dog and I are settling in extremely well here in Chicago so far, but I’m feeling a vague sense of jet lag. Maybe she is, too. As I write this note, she is sleeping under my desk, keeping my feet warm. Awwwww!

But back to the wake-up call contest. Just about everyone who was flying home yesterday had left for the airport before 5:30 a.m., the time the Seeing Eye wake-up call is usually played over the intercom. No trainers were there yesterday to decide which song to play, and hardly anyone was left there to hear the song if they’d played one. My guess is that the few remaining students were woken up yesterday the same way I was: each got a phone call and/or a knock on their dorm-room door (but at the much more reasonable time of 5:30 a.m.!)

During each of the four “park times” on Wednesday, the day before our departure, I regaled the trainers with new song suggestions I’d received from you blog readers. Many of your ideas got good reviews, but it’ll be ten more years before I find out if they really did add any of your suggestions to their repertoire. It’s my plan to work with this new magnificent dog of mine for at least a decade!

I was blown away by how many of you responded to that little ditty blog post I wrote. You came up with some good ones! So forget what I said about no one winning. Everyone was a winner, right? So here’s the deal: anyone who got their song suggestion to me before we took off on Thursday will soon receive an email message from me with Speedo’s real name in the message. Stay tuned, and…thank you.

Editor’s note: Mornings at the Seeing Eye start with a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call: Ttrainers blast music through the intercom system to make sure we’re out of bed feeding our dogs and taking them outside to “empty.” Here’s a list of some of the more memorable selections from the January 2020 class:

1. Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” (played the day before we were to be matched with our new dogs)
2. Michael Buble’s “I Just Haven’t Met You Yet” played the morning of January 8, the day we’d be introduced to our new dogs
3. “Found a Job” by Talking Heads
4. Carole King’s “Where You Lead”
5. ”Follow You, Follow Me” by Genesis
6. The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” played, you guessed it, Friday
7. Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend”
8. “Monday, Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas played on, you guessed it, Monday
9. Rusted Root’s “Send Me on My Way”
10. Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” played this morning in honor of graduates who live close enough to be driven home, they leave today

Wonder what they’ll play tomorrow morning, the day all of us flying home take off with our new Seeing Eye dogs. Got a guess? Leave the name of the song here, and if you come up with the correct last-day song title, who knows? I just might reward you by sending a personal email to let you in on what Speedo’s real name is!

My longtime favorite, and my new favorite. (photo by Robin Brelsford)

As I write, Beth is on her trek in New York City, the biggest training exercise she and her new Seeing Eye Dog Speedo will take before they board a plane for Thursday morning. I’ll take time off to meet them at baggage claim and we’ll head home together.

A few days after Beth left for her stint at The Seeing Eye, a friend asked, “Do you miss her?”

“Not yet,” I answered.

It was an honest question and an honest answer.

Beth and I have been married 35 years. Enough time that, despite us both being pretty distinct individuals, there is a sort of mind meld that has formed. So time away from each other can be disorienting, but also illuminating in a way. When you sign up with each other the terms of one partner’s life necessarily shape the terms of the other’s. And naturally, you start thinking we instead of I. That’s largely as it should be. But you do lose track of the I.

As in, say, “I’m hungry, what do I want to do right now?” And answering without weighing in someone else’s schedule or wants. Or “I think I’ll go out for a beer, coffee, or…” rather than “Wanna go out for a beer, coffee…”.

And when it’s time to go anywhere, just throw on your coat and head out. A minute, maybe two between the impulse and the action. No waiting.

In our relationship, the mechanical terms of Beth’s life have dictated the terms of my life more than mine have hers. In the big picture, when Beth started seeing blobs on sheep on our honeymoon in Scotland lo these many years ago, I was aimed at law school. (I count it as probably having saved me from a life of grey misery.) In the daily grind, her life’s logistics have determined many of my life’s logistics. Beth could function fine without me. But a lot of things are just more practical and faster for me to do, and we function more efficiently that way. Sometimes, frankly, that’s a drag for both of us.

So it’s refreshing to get a glimpse of what it’s like to do just what I want to do, when I want to. To not know that sometime after 8 p.m., I’ll be taking the dog out in the cold for her last constitutional. To going out without waiting for Beth to do whatever it is she does that last 10 minutes between the time I’m ready and we actually leave.

The individuals in any healthy partnership help each other in ways that are obvious and a ton more that are not obvious, that only they know. The ways that I help Beth are more obvious because I can see and she can’t. But there are millions more that are not.

And billions of ways she helps me that are invisible.

And so, yes, enough time has passed that I can answer, “Yes, I miss Beth.”

But more than that, I miss us.

There’s Speedo and Beth during a break. (Photo: Amy Einhorn)

Seeing Eye puppies are born and bred at the Seeing Eye breeding station in New Jersey. When they are six weeks old, they go to live with a volunteer for a year. Puppy raisers give the dogs affection, teach them basic obedience, and expose them to social situations they might encounter as Seeing Eye dogs.

The Seeing Eye practices a sort of “closed adoption” policy: I am not told who the puppy raisers were, and they do not know who their puppy was placed with. Which, I suppose, is another good reason to stick with the pen name “Speedo” for a while longer — makes it unlikely the puppy raiser will find us via social media. When these wonderful, generous, selfless volunteers return the dog they raised to The Seeing Eye campus for formal training, they’re asked to write up a Puppy Profile to give to the blind person who is eventually matched with the sweet puppy they raised.

Yesterday morning our trainer had my new dog guide me to a busy coffee shop in Morristown. Once there, the trainer read the Puppy Profile out loud to me, and now, I’m sharing Speedo’s Puppy Profile with you, our loyal Safe & Sound blog readers. Here goes:

Puppy Profile

Speedo’s Family
Speedo was raised in a family comprised of Mom and Dad 3 boys aged 17, 13 and 11, and 1 girl who was away at college most of the time. She was the 3rd pup for this family. Speedo stayed at home during the day with mom. Very active household once school was let out and on the weekends. Lots of kids,
sports, etc.

Speedo’s Home
Speedo’s house is a large two story home on a quiet residential street. There is a pool in the back that has a fence around it but not much property in the back of the house. There are no sidewalks around their home.

Speedo’s Furry Friends
Evie was the pet of the family, a “career changed” black Lab 3 years old from The Seeing Eye. They were close during play time and at night. During the day, Evie preferred her own space away from everyone. Speedo was also friends with a mini dachshund that the family watched on occasion. She got along well with any dog she met.

Speedo’s Outings
Speedo has been to the airport, 4-H dog show, parades, Fleet Week, subways, etc. Daily walks around town, rides to school, sports, doctor visits, etc. College campus visits, dentist visits regularly, Visits to train station and local rides on the train!

Speedo’s Characteristics
Speedo likes to work hard and play hard. She has a lot of spunk. She loves accompanying our family to all activities. She loves to play with kids, fetching balls and sticks and chasing them alongside the pool as they swim. She is super attentive to all commands and eager to please.

Speedo’s Favorite Toys
She loves her Nylabone and a rubber ducky.

Cute Stories About Speedo
She would encourage our other dog to chase her…really egging her on until Evie would chase her like an enemy. 15 minutes later, they would be cuddled up together napping.

How Did Spedo Ask to Go Outside?
Speedo would stand at back door.

So there you have it. After Speedo’s trainer was done reading, she laughed and said that the puppy raisers forgot to mention one last thing about my new dog: “She’s sassy!”

Speedo’s good at traffic checks.

In addition to everyday challenges (trees, parking meters, broken sidewalks, other pedestrians) on our daily walks, we also have to learn to face the challenges of dealing with distracted drivers. Seeing Eye staff members drive vans and quiet cars around while we work our routes to provide us with traffic checks: they intentionally cut in front of us from time to time, simulating real-life challenges we’ll face at home from drivers who text and/or take other chances behind the wheel.

My new black Lab is not only adorable (local pedestrians we meet at corners have told me so!) but so far she has done exactly the right thing at traffic checks — and we’ve had many! If I had to choose one single thing for Speedo to be good at, it’s traffic checks. Back in Chicago, that skill will be key.

So what have we been up to this week? Well, Monday morning was the first solo trip for all 20 of us here with our new Seeing Eye dogs. No rest for the weary: Tuesday we went out once in the morning and once in the afternoon to learn and practice a second brand new route through Morristown, this new one significantly more complicated than the first. Four-way stoplights, uncontrolled intersections, T-intersections. Yesterday morning we did that route solo. Today at breakfast the woman who sits next to me at our dining table let us know she reads the obituaries every morning. “Didn’t see any of our names on it today,” she said. “Guess everyone made it.”

We hardly had a chance to congratulate ourselves on yesterday morning’s solo before embarking on Yesterday afternoon’s bus ride to nearby Morris Plains. Once there, our dogs guided us from the Morris Plains bus stop to the Morristown commuter train station. Then they got us on the train in Morris Plains. Then off the train in Morristown. That’s where we practiced work on train platforms (making sure our dogs didn’t get us too close to the train tracks!). Then the dogs guided us from the train station safely back to our van. This morning? Our dogs led us to town, and I learned a much better way to have Mike maneuver me, my Seeing Eye dog and a shopping cart through a grocery store.

I must have known what I was doing when I gave my new dog the pen name “Speedo.” She stops for cars, yes, but she is so spirited when guiding me that sometimes, when we get to a quiet side street with no cross traffic, she forgets to stop at all. And that requires a correction.

My first time at The Seeing Eye school lo those many years ago taught me that our weeks here are more about training the humans than training the dogs. The dogs we are matched with here have had the bulk of their training by the time we humans show up. We’re here now to review old methods — and learn new ones — to continuereinforcing the things they’ve been trained to do to keep the two of us safe.

Wait. Beth, you said this is your fifth Seeing Eye dog, right? Don’t you already know how to keep them trained?

I do. But I get lazy. And eight years with Whitney have left me a little rusty. I check in with Mike during breaks here, and every phone call includes my recounting some basic technique I’d forgotten since my last time here.

How to hold the harness, for example.

There’s a natural tendency — which can be exacerbated by a dog walking slower as she ages — to want to guide the dog, and to push. But you have to have a somewhat loose hold on the harness while pulling back on it just a bit. Not exactly intuitive, but our dogs count on that sensation of pulling and leading us, that’s how it works!

Uh-oh. There’s the intercom. Time for lunch. “Speedo, forward!”