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!

Just got back from Champaign, Illinois — I gave a presentation to an Animal Sciences class at the University of Illinois yesterday. I speak to this class once a semester, and this time I spent a fair amount of the hour going over some of the qualifications necessary to become a guide dog instructor.

Most guide dog schools require instructors to have a college degree and then do an apprenticeship, and apprenticeships can last as long as four years. I hope I did a decent job explaining how complicated it can be to train dogs, train people, and then make a perfect match between the human and canine. That way the college kids might appreciate why the apprenticeships last so long.

Once apprentices finish their training and become full-time Seeing Eye Instructors, they’re assigned a string (a group) of dogs and given four months to train that string. Throughout the training, instructors pay close attention to each dog’s pace and pull, and they make careful notes about how each dog deals with distractions, what their energy level is, and all sorts of other characteristics. And then? We blind students fly in from all over North America to be matched — and trained — with a new dog.

Whitney and Hanni have an aloof tolerance for one another, but not much more. Whit wants to roughhouse. Hanna the doyenne is so over that. (Photo: Nancy Bolero.)

Seeing Eye instructors have to be as good at evaluating people as they are evaluating dogs. Our instructors review our applications before we arrive on the campus in Morristown and then ask us tons more questions when we get there. Instructors take us on “Juno” walks (they hold the front of the harness to guide us through all sorts of scenarios to get an idea of how fast we like to walk and how strong of a pull we’ll want from our dog). After that they combine all of this information with what they know about their string of dogs, talk it over with fellow instructors and the team supervisor, mix in a little bit of gut instinct, and voila! A match is formed.

Each Seeing Eye instructor trains more dogs than they’ll need for a class. If a dog has a pace, pull, or energy level that doesn’t match with a blind person in the current class, that dog remains on campus with daily walks and care, and perhaps more training, until the next class arrives. My first dog was one of those Seeing Eye dogs who went through a second round of training before she was matched with me. Back in 1991, the Seeing Eye knew that the dog they matched me with would be landing in the home of a very unique five-year-old boy named Gus, and that the dog would be in the hands of a woman who had never had a dog before. They must have figured Pandora would need all the extra training she could get!

Hanni was the perfect dog for everything going on during her years with me. We stayed overnight with this 17-year-old wonder and her people Nancy and Steven while we were there in Urbana, and I can assure you, that girl is enjoying her retirement. Yellow Lab Harper saved me from getting hit by a car on State Street and retired early. The most dangerous encounter he’s had since was with a skunk in the leafy suburb he lives in with his people Larry and Chris now. My fourth dog Whitney had big paws to fill, and she’s managed beautifully.

My seven-year-old Golden/Labrador Retriever cross is a hard worker who loves to play as much as she loves to work. Her curiosity gets her in trouble sometimes, but when she guides me down busy Chicago streets, she is directed, determined, and driven. The only time she lollygags? When she realizes we’re heading back home. She wants to go, go, go! Whitney’s confidence is contagious, and she’s smart enough to know when to bend the rules without getting in trouble. So Whitney and I make a good match — we see eye to eye.

My upcoming book Writing Out Loud will include stories of all these dogs and more, and you can get a sneak peek of a short chapter online now by signing up for my newsletter here.

Some members of the memoir-writing class I lead at the Chicago Cultural Center. Wanda is to my left in the photo (the far right as you look at it).

Wanda Bridgeforth is 92 years old and has been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for seven years. She grew up in Chicago and her mother worked “in private family,” which means Mama lived at the houses she took care of. Wanda lived with one relative one week, a friend the next, and sometimes, with complete strangers.

When I asked writers to describe their favorite plaything as a child, Wanda came back with an essay about her doll, Geneva. Wanda is compiling some of her essays to self-publish as a gift for friends and family this Christmas. I have a feeling this one about Geneva will be included in that collection.

My Favorite Toy

by Wanda Bridgeforth

I must have been a really good girl in 1927 because Santa left an ironing board, electric iron, sewing machine and the Effanbee “Rosemary Doll” all of my friends and I had asked for that year.

Her curls and eyelashes were natural hair. Every time I sat her up or laid her down she opened and closed her eyes and said, “MA-MA!!!” That was enough to melt a little girl’s heart. Without hesitating I named her Geneva, after my Mama.

In late spring 1928, Dad’s company closed their chemistry lab and he was laid off. Mama and I moved into a bedroom with Aunt Gert and Uncle Larry on 51st Street and Dad went to live with Uncle A.S. and his wife at 42nd and Vincennes. Mama showed me how to wash and iron Geneva’s dress, panties and bonnet.

Mid summer, Mama went to work “in private family.” I abandoned all of my toys except Geneva. She became my confidant and bedfellow. I guess you could say she was my security blanket. I took her everywhere. The kids began to tease me and called me a “big baby,” so, when I left home I hid her under the pillow on my bed.

Every Tuesday after school I washed her clothes so she would be nice and clean when Mama came home on Wednesday, her day off. The three of us would sit at the kitchen table and exchange the events of the week. Geneva’s clothes were almost faded white.

Christmas 1931, “Cousin Sugar” the lady I was staying with made Geneva a new outfit. Mama and Cousin Sugar assured me the new clothes did not need weekly washing.

Some of my friends boasted about their dolls made of rubber that could drink milk or water from a tiny bottle with a tiny nipple on it. I looked at Geneva, her mouth was open and she had a space between her lips. I bought a tiny bottle with a tiny nipple on it from Woolworth’s 5 & 10 cents store and fed Geneva.

After a while Geneva developed a horrible odor and her body became damp. Cousin Sugar and Mama cut a slit in her body. The straw stuffing had mildew and mold and her plaster body had melted. Only her head was intact. I didn’t realize her straw insides absorbed the liquid instead of passing it through like the rubber dolls did.

I was inconsolable. Geneva was DEAD!!!

I decided she must have a funeral. Mr. Brunow, the janitor, dug a grave in the far corner of the back yard. Dressed in our parents black clothes, my friends and I marched behind the Radio Flyer Wagon lined with black crepe paper.

We sang a hymn and sent Geneva, My Favorite Toy, dressed in her Christmas Outfit to live with the Angels.

Dude has a new toy.

A few weeks ago I recorded an essay about Harper’s early retirement for Chicago Public Radio, and the piece aired last Tuesday onWBEZ.

Harper didn’t retire until a few days after I recorded the essay, so he was there in the studio sitting quietly at my feet while I sat at the microphone. I don’t cry during the recording, but if you listen closely you’ll hear me get a little choked up. I had assumed my terrific producer Joe DeCeault would cover up my stammers with music, but I guess he decided my verbal stumbles help tell Harper’s story. It’s all me. No sound effects.

Harper’s new family heard the piece, and Chris e-mailed Mike to send a review:

I heard Beth on the radio the other day – her and Harper’s story is always so moving and when I share it with others, they also seem touched by the two of them.

You know what? I find Harper’s new chapter with Larry and Chris very moving, too. I am touched by the three of them.

Chris updates Mike on Harper regularly, and they’ve found that taking him off leash and just walking alongside Harper makes him feel at ease. Soon as the leash goes back on, though, Harper shows anxiety again. Handsome Harper is charming all the neighbors, Chris says, and even George the cat comes out of his hiding place from time to time to say hello to Harper. The biggest news of all, as far as harper is concerned: Larry and Chris bought him a new squeak toy.

If you missed hearing the Harper essay on the radio last Tuesday, you can still check it out online. Listen closely, and maybe you’ll hear the little charmer jiggling at my feet!