by Karis Walsh
Cara thought she heard a snort of derision from Lenae, but when she turned toward her, Lenae’s face showed no emotion. Des cleared his throat.
“Without a doubt. If you study animal psychology, you’ll discover that we’re meeting important needs for animals like dogs that live in packs. They’re given companionship and a family unit. Unlike most pet dogs, they’ll be with their pack, their handler, nearly twenty-four hours a day. They have work to do that is challenging but well-suited to their temperaments. It’d be a fulfilling life for any creature, I believe. A close bond with another living being and a satisfying job. Love and a sense of pride and accomplishment.”
Cara could understand the career part of Desmond’s argument. She found the same sense of pride in her work, even though her family—and people familiar with her heritage—didn’t seem to believe her show and teaching were as worthwhile as she did. As far as the bond with another creature? Cara didn’t know if it was possible for her to ever trust and love someone else so unconditionally. Maybe she could with an animal, since their motives and affections were much more innocent and clear than any human’s.
“What qualities make a good guide dog?” Cara changed the subject from the realm of anthropomorphism to more practical matters. She found it easier to switch back to her usual on-camera persona with Des than with Lenae. Why was that?
“They need to be friendly and bond easily with people, but the work they do also requires independent thinking because they can’t obey commands that will put their handler in danger. Still, the dogs we train have varied personalities, just like people. A skilled trainer, like Lenae, is able to match dogs and people so they form true partnerships.”
Des paused and looked at Lenae with an expression of admiration. Everyone, even Baxter and the other dogs, seemed to adore her, but Lenae seemed to be unaware of their regard. Cara didn’t see the appeal, aside from Lenae’s obvious physical beauty. She was clearly intelligent and passionate about the work she did—qualities Cara usually found appealing—but she had an air of aloofness Cara couldn’t read. But Cara was a professional. She didn’t need to understand Lenae as a person, or care that Lenae seemed to have the same disapproving air Cara’s parents had. She just needed to share Lenae’s story and do her part to help the center.
“Lenae, what characteristics do you use to match each pair?”
“We start with physical traits, like height and stride length.” Lenae turned away from Toby’s run and faced in Cara’s direction. “I can determine some of this by walking with the people and dogs, but Des is a great help in this area. He can see peculiar tendencies in gait that I might not notice. More important, though, are the unique emotional needs of each personality. Energy levels, daily schedules, lifestyle.” She paused and moved her right hand toward Baxter. Cara watched the dog move his head until the two connected.
“In some ways, I want the pair to be similar, and in others I want them to complement each other,” Lenae said as she stroked Baxter’s head. “I don’t have a set formula, but after I’ve examined all the variables I…I guess I go with my gut feeling.”
Lenae frowned, as if uncomfortable with the admission, and Cara wondered how difficult it was for Lenae to give up control and let her instincts take over. The sensitivity needed to match dogs and owners was something Cara hadn’t expected.
“Do you think Toby and I will be a good match for the day?” Cara asked with a smile and a wink for the camera. She was curious about Lenae’s analysis of her, although she doubted Lenae could know her beyond the careful performance she gave on film. Even Cara wasn’t sure what else was there.
Lenae considered the question. Based on the sound of Cara’s voice, she gauged her at a couple of inches shorter than her own five eight height. Cara’s natural pace seemed a bit slower than her own. Toby would be a fine choice physically. But emotionally? Mentally? Lenae didn’t have a clue. Was Cara as empty and self-serving as others Lenae had experienced in the media world? She had been abrasive during the talk about puppy walkers, but Baxter had taken to her quickly. Lenae couldn’t figure out who Cara was inside, where the lens of the camera couldn’t reach, nor did she know why she was devoting so much thought to the question. The only important things were the exposure for the center and the opportunity for Toby to have a new learning experience.
“You’ll do fine for the day as long as you’re able to trust your dog. That’s the key element in any partnership.”
Lenae knelt and put her arm around Baxter while she listened to Des give Cara a crash course in handling a guide dog. Cara’s laughter sounded real as she practiced using the harness and following Des around the lawn, and Lenae had to fight her surprising urge to smile in response. Cara still didn’t seem to be taking the experience seriously—and Lenae wondered if she took anything seriously—but Lenae had experienced this part of the process many times before, first with Baxter and later as she’d trained other pairs of dogs and owners. Laughter and a pretense of indifference were often used to mask fear, anxiety, or excitement. Once the harness was attached to a live animal, and the two were on their way without guidance for the first time, the seriousness of the situation finally sank in.
Lenae scratched Baxter under his chin and felt his rough tongue on her wrist. She had been apprehensive about getting a guide dog at first. Such a physical and glaring proof of her difference—anyone who saw her walking down the street with him would know she was visually impaired and judge her as helpless. Giving up control as they sped along the sidewalk. Trusting him without reservation. She had spent her first days of training being told repeatedly to stop trying to guide him. To stop fighting for control and to let him take her places. And once she listened to the advice and gave up her need to be independent, she had discovered that relying on Baxter didn’t make her weak or helpless at all.
Lenae stood when she heard the short training session drawing to a close. Cara, unlike the future owners Lenae trained, wouldn’t experience the same depth of partnership Lenae had found with Baxter. The demonstration walk would be too short, and Cara might not be able to—or need to—deal with the struggle to let go. But maybe she would be able to understand a little of what Lenae experienced every day. The limitations, the freedoms provided by a guide dog, the indescribable bond between two beings. And then, maybe she would be able to convey the experience to her viewers.
“Find Cara,” she said to Baxter, and he led her a few yards forward and stopped. She put out her hand and brushed the sleeve of Cara’s shirt before she felt Cara’s hand close over hers. The same sense of connection Lenae had felt before. Instead of touch being a necessary—and unwanted—experience for her, the feeling of anchoring herself to Cara was similar to what Lenae felt when she petted Baxter. A physical attraction, especially to someone she was unable to read and with whom she had little in common, was at best a distraction from her goals and at worst a sure way to get hurt. She let go of Cara’s hand.
“Once you have Toby in the harness, you’ll ask him to find the Starbucks. Then say forward and he’ll take you there.”
“Wow, it’s as if you trained him specifically for me. I was running late and missed my morning caffeine fix today.” Cara laughed again, and this time Lenae let herself smile in response.
“It does seem to be one of the most popular destinations here in the Northwest. We train all our dogs to detect the scent of roasting coffee beans.”
“Hey, you told a joke,” Cara said in a quiet voice. “I wasn’t sure you were capable.”
The intimate feel of Cara’s lowered voice was discomfiting. Lenae felt a small thrill when Cara spoke just to her, not for the whole audience to hear, and she didn’t like her own response. “I can be hilarious when I’m talking to someone who isn’t challenging my career and methods.”
“Ouch. Point taken, but I was only asking questions my audience will want answered.” Cara, still blindfolded, jumped when a wet nose pressed against her hand. She had still been feeling the tingle from Le
nae’s grip, and the new contact seemed to come out of nowhere. She groped around and found Toby by her side. He was twisting around her legs and the movement was disorienting.
“Try tuning in to your other senses,” Des said. He gently took her hand and slid it over Toby’s back until she felt the handle of the harness. “Toby startled you when he came close because you were concentrating on what you couldn’t see, not what you could hear or smell or feel.”
“You can get a lot of information through the harness,” Lenae said. “What direction your dog is looking, whether he is on alert or relaxed.”
Cara nodded and smiled since she knew the camera was trained on her, whether she saw it or not, but she didn’t feel any of the things Des and Lenae wanted her to sense. She knew Toby was next to her, and she felt him shifting in the harness, unlike the steady pressure she had felt when Des had been playing the dog and showing her what to do. She wasn’t sure this was a good idea anymore, but she had no real reason to stop the filming.
“I’ll walk alongside you while we’re on the property,” Des said. “Once we go outside the gate, I’ll drop back and let Toby take over. And remember, he’ll stop at each curb, both up and down.”
“Um, okay.” Cara stood quietly, feeling the soft brush of Toby’s wagging tail against her hand where it rested on the harness.
“You need to give him some direction,” Lenae said. “He’ll stay there all day if he thinks that’s what you want.”
“Oh, right. Toby, find Starbucks.” Cara’s voice sounded uncertain even to her own ears. Would Toby bother to follow her commands? She cleared her throat and injected more enthusiasm into her tone. “Forward.”
Apparently Toby didn’t mind whether or not she gave her commands in a confident manner. Before she got the syllable ward out, he was walking briskly and pulling her along. She struggled to lengthen her stride and keep up even though every instinct in her was demanding she walk slowly and cautiously through the unfamiliar darkness from the blindfold.
“I’m right here,” Des touched her right shoulder. “Relax your left arm and let him take up the slack in the harness. He’s supposed to pull against you slightly.”
Cara tried to loosen the taut muscles in the hand holding the harness, but she didn’t want Toby to pull her anywhere. She wanted to pull him to a stop and catch her breath, take off the blindfold, go home. Great. She was having a meltdown.
“Relax, Cara. He won’t let you get hurt.”
Cara wanted to scream at Des that simply repeating the suggestion to relax wasn’t doing her any good. She had lost all sense of judgment about speed and direction. She wasn’t sure if she and Toby were race walking or going at what would have been her normal pace. Were they moving in circles or in a straight line? Cara’s disorientation grew with each step until Lenae’s calm voice broke through her increasing panic.
“Tell him to stop, Cara.”
“Toby, stop.” She winced at the desperate note in her voice and almost fell over when Toby came to an abrupt halt.
She felt Lenae’s hand softly touch her forearm, sliding down until her fingers covered Cara’s on the harness.
“Let go for a moment,” Lenae said.
Cara opened her stiff fingers and felt Lenae’s touch on the palm of her hand, where Cara was sure she had indentations from her nails. Lenae kneaded her hand for a moment, and then replaced it on the harness. Even in her distracted condition, Cara couldn’t help her sharp inhale at the feel of Lenae’s hand, at once soothing and electrifying.
“For now, hold the harness in an underhand grip. It’ll keep you from hanging on so tightly. We need our dogs to pull out, but we don’t pull back against them. Think of what you’d do if a little child grabbed your hand and wanted to take you somewhere. You’d hold her hand, but not pull.”
Cara dropped the harness again. “I really shouldn’t do this. I’m messing up all your training and—”
“Toby’s new owner will be just as scared the first time they’re together. Uncertain, unable to give control over to the dog. This is part of his training, and we often use blindfolded, sighted volunteers for this. You won’t ruin him.”
Cara wanted to protest and claim she wasn’t afraid of this simple walk with a dog, but she couldn’t lie. She wasn’t afraid of getting hurt or looking foolish, but there was some unnamed anxiety associated with the feeling of flying through the world without any idea of what was beyond the wood-and-leather harness in her hand. She couldn’t feel their presence, but she knew Sheryl and George were watching and waiting for her to perform for the camera. Toby gave a small whine as if he didn’t know why they were just standing there and not romping through the streets of Olympia.
If Cara knew anything for certain, it was how to put on the right face for the occasion. “All right, let’s try this again,” she said with a grin. She had to assume George would adapt to her blindfolded state and move the camera so she was facing it. “It’s an interesting, and admittedly scary, feeling to be guided without having any sense of where I am or what’s around me. I’ll put my trust in this dog that Lenae and Des have trained so well and work on expanding my awareness beyond what I can’t see.”
“That’s how a true partnership develops,” Lenae said. “Baxter doesn’t just pull me around like a completely passive passenger. I’m doing my part by remaining aware of my environment with my other senses. We work together.”
“I hadn’t realized how much I relied on my sight until I didn’t have it. Now I know what to expect.” Cara took a deep breath. The break had given her time to catch her breath, but the only thing her senses were aware of was Lenae’s closeness. The scent of Chanel, the throaty timbre of her voice. Sophisticated smells and sounds, but the softness of Lenae’s touch was something grounded and down-to-earth.
“Toby, find Starbucks. Forward.”
Cara did her best to focus on the parts of the world around her that she still could access. The moment when her shoes hit pavement instead of grass—making her thankful she hadn’t worn heels for this frantic stroll—and the uncomfortably loud sounds of cars rushing by. Logically, she knew they weren’t going fast on these suburban streets, but without her eyes to pull everything together into a cohesive whole, her surroundings seemed a chaotic mix of half-heard, half-understood noises and sensations.
“You’re coming to a curb,” Des said from somewhere behind her right shoulder. Cara prepared herself for a step down, exaggerating every footfall, before she remembered Toby would halt at curbs. Actually, she didn’t remember until he stopped and she stumbled over the cement and into the street.
She was attempting to straighten up with some shred of dignity intact when she felt Toby move in front of her and push against her legs. She obeyed his subtle nudge, stepping back onto the sidewalk, when she felt the slight breeze and heard the vibration of a car passing in front of her.
“Ask him to go forward again, but wait for him to move,” Des said, his voice sounding unaffected by what Toby had just done.
Cara asked Toby to move again. Every muscle in her body had felt tight with the need to have some control, some preparation for disaster, but the realization that the dog had stepped in and moved her out of danger distracted her enough so she was able to follow his lead more easily. They came to the next curb, and he paused again before stepping up. Cara followed numbly.
She had looked longingly at the neighborhood Starbucks when the van had driven past it earlier, but she still had no sense of where she was. She and Toby seemed to be taking the most circuitous route to get to the café, but all of a sudden he halted again.
“Forward, Toby,” she said. When he didn’t move, she felt with her toe for a curb or obstacle blocking her path.
“May I help you?”
Cara reached out and her hand bumped into a hard surface. Slowly, the noises and smells around her separated from the jumbled mass of sensations. The background buzz of conversations, the smell of brewing coffee and scalding milk. Toby had gotten
her to Starbucks. She had been so closed to everything outside her own small and sightless world that she had failed to notice they had entered a building. Someone must have held the door for them, or she’d have probably smacked right into it.
“Grande pumpkin spice latte.” Cara startled again when George spoke his order from right behind her. She had forgotten the small entourage traveling with her and Toby. “That was great footage, Cara. Can’t wait for you to see it.”
“Toby was looking out for you the whole time, even when you tried to get him to go forward into a garbage can,” Sheryl added. “The audience will be able to see how he was thinking and making decisions for you.”
The demonstration seemed over, so Cara pulled off her blindfold and looked around for Lenae. She was standing off to one side and talking to Des, with Baxter by her side. Cara let Toby’s harness drop—remembering Des had said it was his signal that he was off duty—and she walked over to them.
“Thank you for the chance to film one of your dogs at work,” she said, her voice sounding formal and detached even though her feelings were anything but. She couldn’t voice what she wanted to say. That she now understood a tiny fraction of what Lenae experienced every day. Even though she was grateful to Toby and amazed at what he had done, at the same time she disliked the way George and Sheryl had made her sound like less of a person when they praised Toby for leading her so successfully. By taking her sight away temporarily, Lenae had given her a glimpse into a new world.
“You did a great job,” Des said. He took Toby’s lead from her. “It was a very successful trial for Toby.”
“He’s going to make a wonderful partner for someone.” Cara rubbed Toby’s head. “He stopped me before I fell into traffic at the first street we crossed.”
Lenae laughed for the first time since Cara had met her. “Baxter had to rescue me several times during our first weeks together. I wanted to go my own way and had a hard time following his lead. At least you didn’t fall down. I ended up on my ass in a mud puddle the first time he stopped at a curb and I didn’t. My trainer, Angie, told me he just sat there and stared at me reproachfully until I untangled myself from the harness and got up.”