It's almost been a year now since I met Karl, my Golden Retriever guide dog. They told us at school that it would take six months to a year for the bond between guide dog and handler to solidify and for the two of us to work together completely as a team. The past year has certainly been an adventure, with its ups and downs, with its trials and triumphs. Karl and I continue to work together, and we continue to learn about each other, and our bond grows ever stronger. It is a bond built on love, mutual respect, and complete interdependence on each other; he depends on me for his food, shelter, care, and for love and affection, and I depend on him for my safe travel, for some measure of companionship, and for his love and affection in return. It is then no wonder that the relationship between a blind person and his guide dog partner is as close as it is; working so closely each day, it could hardly be otherwise.

I could write the same paragraph today, taking out the time references of course, and it would still hold as true now as it did when I did actually write it. There are certainly changes; the bond between me and Karl has matured, and he is, without a doubt, my dog. Karl can read me like a book, but I'm afraid that I can still be pretty dense when it comes to reading him! Whoever says dogs are simple creatures doesn't know dogs very well; they're as complicated as any human being, but their needs and motivations seem to be much simpler. Karl's a fun-loving fellow who wants to please me and do the best job he can do. Sure, we don't always see eye to eye, and we don't always understand each other, but I'd challenge any of you to find a relationship that doesn't run into a snag now and again. I think anyone would also be hard pressed to find a closer relationship than that of a guide dog team.

Karl and I have been through several changes since we left San Rafael. I left college shortly after I posted my journal on the Web because I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. (I still don't.) So we moved to a new town, got a desk job, (actually, two of them in the past couple years), and now, Karl has to share me, not only with Zoe the cat, but Samantha the other cat, B.J., yet another cat, and my girlfriend Melanie.

In these past few years, I've had to make lifestyle adjustments, too, for having a guide dog. I've had to get used to a lot of attention--most of it unwanted and intrusive. Karl knows he's beautiful. Some of the articles in that infamous Braille Monitor I mentioned talked about the guide dog as a "social icebreaker". I suppose it is, given the right circumstances. I'm usually not in the right circumstances, and it's not always easy to be polite when you're trying to go about your daily business with people making a huge fuss over your guide dog, while ignoring you completely. Certainly I knew that guide dog users were plagued withthis kind of thing, but knowing it and dealing with it are very different, and I'm afraid I don't always handle these kinds of things well. I guess you sort of lose your sense of humor when you hear the probably billionth "Oh what a pretty dog" or "I see that dog on the train every day" or "What's your dog's name" (without even an introduction, hello, or anything else.)

One incident that happened right around when I started working on this update in November is sort of extreme, but it illustrates the sort of thing that I'm talking about with unwanted attention from the general public. A friend of mine, also a guide dog user, was at lunch with me one day, and we were just talking about the sort of things coworkers talk about. You know, mostly griping about how frustrating our jobs are and that sort of thing. Well, right as we're sitting down to lunch, and shortly after our lunch showed up, a woman ran up and plopped herself into our booth, nattering on about how she knew my friend's guide dog and had seen my friend and her dog absolutely everywhere, and how, well, she worked in the kitchen and her mother worked here, and she had just told her mother that she knew us and wanted to come over and say hello. During this time, she started to pet my friend's guide dog. I was stunned by this intrusion--not just because it was so sudden, but because it was so unbelievably rude and the person seemed to be clueless about that. My friend, very politely, informed the young lady that she shouldn't be messing with her dog--and she left us again. We enjoyed the rest of our lunch afterwards, but I think we were both pretty taken aback by the encounter.

I've also had to learn to use different kinds of landmarks to travel with a guide dog than I'd use with a cane. You can't use things that your guide dog will think are obstacles as landmarks very easily, so you have to rely on the texture of sidewalks for instance, or sound, more than you would using a cane. You get more information about the environment with a cane, certainly, but crossing open spaces, and finding familiar places, can be a lot easier with a guide dog. Of course, I've learned that good things, like finding familiar places, can also cause problems when you really want to do something else. Karl definitely keys into familiar places, and if we need to do something different than he expects, it can be very difficult to convince him that I do know what I'm talking about!

These are things that they can't really tell you about in school, because they're hard to pin down. And I bet everyone's dog will have slightly different things that it does and different reactions to things. It's just like any other relationship. Learning how to communicate with someone else takes time, and there are no shortcuts.

I know that it might look like I've focused on things that are negative about working with a guide dog, but it really isn't like that. I think we really need a bit of balance to the picture. There's a lot of great stuff that I can tell you, too. So much of it though is so much a part of life that it's mundane. Karl blocks me from obstacles, and sometimes I'm so dense that I think he's distracted by something. He's pretty patient with my shortcomings though. Several times, he's taken me right across an open space with no landmarks to a building we were going to without a hitch and only a suggestion to go inside. You couldn't do that with a cane, but it happens all the time with me and Karl.

Karl and I have done a lot in the past few years. We've been to concerts, family reunions, and even Niagara Falls--we even have pictures of Karl wearing the Maid Of the Mist "commemorative raincoat" (which is really just a modified garbage bag). He takes it all in stride. I know that someday, I won't have Karln anymore, but I really can't imagine life without him now, he's such a part of me and of my life. As he lies here asleep by my chair, I can't really comprehend him not being here. So instead, I'll wish now for many more years of travel and of friendship with this fun-loving, loyal golden friend.

Well, we've had even more changes! I got married last year. I also got unemployed last year. We've moved from Dallas to Erie, PA, and I will likely as not end up working for Verizon at yet another awful phone job. But it'll pay the bills, for now.

Karl and I hit our six-year anniversary! Here's what I wrote upon that occasion, on several guide dog related Email lists.

Hi everyone (multiple times, in some cases...probably a lot of cases...so sorry about the spam....LOL)

Well, it's hard to believe. In mere minutes, it will be May the 29th, my time. And at something like 5 PM Eastern (2PM Pacific), give or take a half-hour, it will have been six years exactly since I've met Karl. Six years! It seems longer. And shorter. We've been through a lot of changes and life upheavals, and Karl has been steady as a rock through all of them, one constant in a changing world. We went to college. When I finally came to the conclusion that I didn't have any idea what the hell I wanted to do with my life and left college, and at the same time moved to Dallas, Karl was there. When I got my first real live growed-up job and second apartment, when I met Melanie, then Samantha the kitty joined Zoe the spherical kitty in my household, then Melanie and B.J. and Bo (her two cats), another job, a couple of nice vacations (Disneyland before I left Austin, Niagara Falls a couple years later with Melanie), new friends made, old friends fading into history, (some of them, anyway), marriage, and now a move across the country that's been anything but smooth and trouble-free, Karl has been here, solid, steady, reliable, and unflinchingly loyal. He seems to have absolutely no inclination to kick me to the curb, or trade me in for a bag of Milkbones. Sometimes I thought he just plain didn't like me...can you believe it? Because he loves to play and gets so excited around just about everyone, and graces most people with his three-dogs-long schlobbery tongue. ... Except me, that is. But as Melanie says... "Who wans to kiss the boss?!" Well, besides that, he already knows me and already knows he's got me won over anyway, and knows I'm not going anywhere. After all, when we first met, he greeted me about like he greets most people: he ran up, gave me a great big old schlurp across the face, accepted the attention that he is absolutely due because, well, because he's Karl and the absolutely most beautiful creature in the whole entire world (not to mention the most intelligent, friendly, oh and modest...you just ask him, he'll tell you)...well, after that, he walked around, investigated the rest of the room, then I took his leash and started to walk out with him. He looked back at Dan the trainer as if to ask, "Hey, you coming, too?", but then with a slight tug on the leash, fell right into step with me. It took more than that to win him though, but it did start happening fairly quickly. He'd heel and do obedience for me, and he accepted the attention..uh, worship...he was due, of course. But he wouldn't do more than pee on leash for several days for me, and we really had a hard time getting started on routes for days. Once we did get started though, he worked brilliantly. And the difficult bits got shorter by the day, until we had none. And during that time, I won his loyalty, and he was my dog. (I'm sure a lot of you already know the whole story.) But the thing is, I started to see how he acted around other people, and how he acted with me, and how different these two were. And I thought, well, he works...but I wonder if he really likes me? Well, I'm pretty hard-headed. Finally after enough people told me about how Karl looks at me, or waits by the door until I get back if I leave him to take out the garbage, or a lot of things like that, I figured that he's just used to me and comfortable with me. He doesn't have to flirt with me! He already knows I think he's the most wonderrful thing out. So I've finally figured out that he loves everyone, but he'll always be my dog, no matter what. And that's a really great feeling, isn't it? It's funny. I have friends who get really offended because I call Karl a mutt. Or a freak. (Well, if you saw some of the stuff he can do, you'd say he's a freak, too!) Or (my personal favorite) the Attention Slut. But anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely love this dog, and he knows I don't mean anything mean at all, so screw the rest of em who don't understand!

Anyway, the clock's just turned over to midnight, so now it is the day. Unless you want to be technical about the thing, then I'd have to wait about three more hours until it's midnight in California. Six years...I can hardly believe it. I hope for six more. Realistically, I know I can't expect more than a couple more, and I can't bear to think on that too long. Whatever the future brings, I'm grateful for the past six, for Karl's friendship, love, and steadying influence. (Believe me...between Melanie and Karl, I can't possibly have more steady and grounded folks in my life to keep me from losing my head too much.) All joking aside, yes, even the 145 more years thing, I couldn't have met a better friend or had a better match. Not to say we've always had an easy time, and always agreed, and have had no problems. We haven't. We've had plenty of disagreements, and problems, and have had some hard times. But we've come out the other side of all of it together.

So, thanks for everything, Karl. I hope you know how much I do love and appreciate you. I may not be the best at showing it all the time, but I hope you know anyway. ... And you really are easy people.

Thanks for reading (if you still are reading, that is). Sorry I've gone on so long.

Wanna read about my trip to New York? Well...you can!

Copyright 1996-2002. Feel free to distribute this thing as much as you like so long as it's freely distributed, unaltered, (although excerpting is OK), and my name is attached. You wanna do something else with it? Send me Email. But keep your spam to yourself (as if I believe you spammers will.)