Have Dog, Will Travel

by Stephen Kuusisto

  Within half an hour Carol said: “I was surprised to meet the mayor, but I’d rather be with Corky anytime.” And Corky had flopped on her back and was performing a horizontal hula with all four feet in the air.

  Carol wanted to know what I knew just then that I hadn’t known before meeting Corky.

  “I didn’t know what a dog could do,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I knew dogs love us and offer us opportunities to love them back,” I said, “but I didn’t know that dogs will take us in and give us the benefit of their instincts.”

  I told her how in Manhattan Corky inserted her body between my feet and the gap separating the subway platform and the train.

  “I just didn’t know this was possible,” I said. “We grew up with great pets,” I told her. “I loved those dogs, but I’d never have guessed they could extend their deepest inclinations our way.”

  * * *

  After Carol left I wrote in my journal, trying to understand my new “disability/dog” connection:

  I like myself better with Corky. Does America’s love of dogs help when it comes to being in public with a disability? Yes. Dogs are icebreakers; they’re tribal totems; they transform space.

  Am I entirely better off because I have a dog? Probably not . . .

  Note to self: be careful not to anthropomorphize your dog, not to idealize her. But do acknowledge your trust. Foolish not to.

  * * *

  We’d only two more days of training.

  We visited an agricultural college where we roamed among goats, chickens, donkeys, and sheep. Some of the paths were narrow and we passed within an arm’s length of sheep.

  Corky was so in tune with her work I finished the course without fully realizing it. We’d walked the gauntlet of critters without incident.

  * * *

  We took a night walk in the nearby town of Mount Kisco. The shopping district comprised a clean circle, and we passed the usual cluster of coffee places, delis, electronics shops. The night air was cold and everyone moved fast. I still couldn’t get over how swift guide dogs are. “No more cautious night walks for me,” I thought. We were really booking.

  Every element of guide-dog training has a purpose and the Mount Kisco walk wasn’t just a bit of fun. The town was flooded with motorists. It was surprising. Cars were everywhere. It felt like small-town America in the 1950s as drivers circled the downtown over and over. Engines revved. Tires squealed. The whole effect was energizing. I was Jumpin’ Jack Flash. It was a gas. We were flying through mist.

  * * *

  “Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength,” said Freud. As I walked around Mount Kisco I decided that I liked the guy I used to be. The indomitable will of my former self was still a part of my experience. A life of feigned sight hadn’t been wasted. I’d learned to listen while stumbling around. It took boldness to travel without help. And now, with fine-tuning, I was a quicker, more refined man of the street.

  And Corky? She liked having a partner who could let go of his anxieties.

  * * *

  The days at Guiding Eyes began to feel like a NASA countdown—three days till graduation, two, one . . .

  We had visits with the vet; our dogs were bathed; we learned from a masseuse how to give our dogs massages. We played rock and roll loudly and danced. There’s an old Swedish proverb: “Shared joy is a double joy,” and we were twelve times double joy. We took our dogs to a fenced yard and let them run. We swapped jokes.

  A snake and rabbit collided at an intersection. They immediately began arguing with one another as to who was at fault. When the snake remarked that he’d been blind since birth, and thus should be given additional leeway, the rabbit said that he, too, had been blind since birth. The two animals then forgot about the accident and began commiserating concerning the problems of being blind. The snake said that his greatest regret was the loss of his identity. He’d never been able to see his reflection in the water, and for that reason didn’t know exactly what he looked like, or even what he was. The rabbit declared he had the same problem. Seeing a way they could help each other, the rabbit proposed that one feel the other from head to toe, and then try to describe what the other animal was. The snake agreed, and started by winding himself around the rabbit. After a few moments, he announced, “You’ve got very soft, fuzzy fur, long ears, big rear feet, and a little fuzzy ball for a tail. I think that you must be a bunny rabbit!” The rabbit was much relieved to find his identity, and proceeded to return the favor to the snake. After feeling the snake’s body for a few minutes, he asserted, “Well, you’re scaly, you’re slimy, you’ve got beady little eyes, you squirm and slither all the time, and you’ve got a forked tongue. I think you’re a lawyer!”

  We laughed; sang together with a tuneless guitar; threw tennis balls for our dogs. Group relief had broken out.

  Chapter Fourteen

  My mother, Evelyn, was a saboteur of family occasions and so she arrived for graduation feeling faint. My sister and I dragged her to the kitchen for orange juice and crackers. She had diabetes, which required attention, but she also had Ménière’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear affecting balance. This meant she could fall over at any time. Added to this dire possibility was her stone-faced manner. Sometimes I thought she was just a step shy of having Munchausen by proxy—she seemed to live just to make everyone sick. She swayed and waved her arms.

  “Listen,” said my father, Allan, who invariably spoke as the ship was sinking, “we’d better take her to your room.”

  We moved through a celebratory throng of dogs and graduates, families, puppy raisers, trainers, my father and sister holding Evelyn by the arms, Corky and I in front. In the dorm room, alone, with only our clan for company, Evelyn was suddenly restored. She stopped depending to and fro.

  Carol, who always called Evelyn “Evy Jo” because her full name was Evelyn Josephine, said: “Listen, Evy, you better sit.” And Evelyn sat on the bed and stared balefully like a dowager queen. Then she said: “You go on without me. I’ll stay here.”

  “Oh no,” my father said. “Oh no, we’ve come this far . . .” He trailed off. There was too much to say. It seemed in our family there was always too much to say.

  “Listen, Evy Jo,” said Carol, “you’ve got to rouse yourself!”

  There was a mirror in the room and I blew on the glass while Carol talked. I wrote “Corky” in the breath mist with a finger.

  “You get up!” said Carol, suddenly passionate. “This is a big day! It’s Steve and Corky’s day! Fix your makeup and let’s go!”

  I wasn’t sure what I was feeling as my sister spoke.

  The poet Emily Dickinson once wrote to a friend asking if growth could be taught or, as she put it: “Is it unconveyed like melody or witchcraft?”

  I’d been through a month of unprecedented growth. It wasn’t melody or witchcraft. It had come from the lessons conveyed by Linda and Kylie and Corky.

  I saw my mother’s sadness and felt tenderness for her. I wasn’t practiced in this. It was enough, I thought, to feel a new appreciation for my life and the lives of others. Corky and Guiding Eyes had helped me become more expansive on the inside, where our undisclosed decencies draw breath.

  * * *

  Enter Bill and Reba Burkett, Corky’s puppy raisers. Seeing them, Corky performed a move known at Guiding Eyes as “the Boomer Bounce.” She jumped up and down, pushing her front paws off the floor while her hind feet remained planted. The bounce was a trait of her father, Boomer, a stud dog. All of Boomer’s progeny had the bounce. The bounce often came first thing in the morning. I’d wake to find Corky going up and down clutching one of my running shoes in her mouth.

  We were in a throng: graduates and their families and a host of puppy raisers, and it was a strange jamboree. But I had enough confidence in Corky to take her harness off and let her roam free with her first family. And Corky did exactly what I thought she’d do: she flopped on the ground, s
tuck her four feet in the air, put on a dog smile, and said, “Ah, rub my belly!” Bill and Reba rubbed her all over. They were delighted.

  Corky and the Burketts had a backstory so intense I saw the only thing to do was hand them her leash. “Please take her for a walk,” I said, “and take your time.” There was something about Bill and Reba. They believed in dogs and people. They were radiant.

  When they came back Corky had that smile you see on dogs who’ve achieved total happiness. Reba said something that knocked me off my pins: “You’re exactly the right person for Miss Corky. I don’t know why,” she said, “but we always thought Corky should be with someone who loves books—maybe a student or professor.”

  “What a kind thing to say,” I said, adding, “but Corky is the smart one in this unit.”

  Proving I was at least partially daft I demonstrated my “Swedish Chef” belly-rub technique—massaging Corky’s chest while gibbering in fake Swedish like the famous character from Sesame Street.

  Bill Burkett was a high school teacher—the one you always wanted but probably didn’t have—smart, affirming, and steady. Reba was big-hearted and optimistic and in the course of conversation I learned that she and Bill and their kids, Ann and Bill Jr., had raised three other GEB dogs. Puppy raising was a family affair. It was an affair filled with conversations, walks, play-time, dog obedience, trips in the car, high school football games with puppies in tow. I couldn’t resist making a silent comparison with my own family. Next to the Burketts my mother and father were like hermits—in our house we each lived in a separate cave and seldom talked to one another. Somehow, among a dozen puppy-raising families and with Corky and the Burketts standing beside me I thought of Karl Jaspers—the German psychoanalyst and philosopher who believed that decisions made today project backwards and change our past. It was a gentle thought. My blindness, my dog, my heart, would now become simple. Things had always been simple had I only known it.

  Then we were all going home. The students left Guiding Eyes in a van with Linda at the wheel. We set out for LaGuardia airport some forty miles distant with our suitcases and laughter and dogs. Along with Corky and myself, there were three additional homebound teams on the early morning airline run. “From now on,” I thought, “it’s all real . . .” Then I thought, “Real, what kind of word is that?” “Okay,” I thought, “we’re headed to the streets without training wheels—man and dog—crisp and new, togetherness the premise of life.”

  “Here we come,” I thought. “Here we come, man and dog taking on the commercial shabbiness of LaGuardia.”

  Aaron, Tina, and Sally were with me. Aaron was headed to Jackson, Mississippi. Sally was flying to Denver. Tina lived in Houston. I was the only freshman. The others had been flying with dogs for years.

  “Listen,” said Linda, “at LaGuardia all your flights are departing from the same terminal. Aaron, Tina, and Sally—you guys wait at McDonald’s while I show Steve how to get through the metal detector.”

  “Oh you’re in for some fun now!” said Sally, who’d said almost nothing during class.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  “It’s always an encounter,” said Aaron. “Sometimes the security officers know what they’re doing, sometimes they don’t.”

  “I’ve had security cops try to take my dog away from me,” said Tina. “And they’re not supposed to do that.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I told him I’d trade my dog for his car.”

  “How’d that work out for you?” asked Linda.

  “Sometimes they laugh, sometimes they don’t,” said Tina. “You should never let them take your dog for any reason,” she added.

  “That’s right,” said Linda. “Don’t let anyone take your dog.”

  “So what’s the big deal?” I asked.

  “It’s not a big deal,” said Linda. “You have your dog sit and stay. Then you walk through the metal detector. Then you call her. She comes through. Because of the harness and collar she sets off the alarm. The guard must pat down your dog to make sure she’s not a safety risk. All guide dogs are allowed on airplanes. No ifs, ands, or buts . . .

  “Whatever you do, don’t let someone walk away with your dog or remove her equipment,” Linda added.

  “Yeah,” said Sally, “but some security people act like you’re trying to walk through with an enormous fucking spider!”

  “I’d pay to see that,” said Aaron. “Or pay to have Linda describe it . . .”

  “It’s really not a big deal,” said Linda. “Just be calm and cool.”

  * * *

  Once we were all inside LaGuardia and my classmates were installed at McDonald’s, and we’d said tearful and funny good-byes, Linda walked me to the security station.

  “Okay,” said Linda. “Have her sit.”

  Corky sat.

  “Walk on through,” said Linda.

  I walked through the metal detector. No beep.

  “Now call her,” Linda said.

  I called Corky. She scampered through the little archway and stopped beside me. The machine beeped.

  “Does the dog bite?” asked the security man.

  No one had prepared me for this question.

  I was indignant on Corky’s behalf like a mother whose child is accused of stealing candy.

  “Of course she doesn’t bite,” I said. “She’s a guide dog!”

  “Everyone bites,” said the security guard.

  “Okay,” I said. “But she’s safe.”

  “I have to pat her down,” he said.

  “She’ll really like that,” I said.

  He ran his hands over her back, touched the harness gingerly. Corky liked it. Wagged her tail.

  “She’s clean,” he said.

  I turned and waved to Linda. Our flight was boarding. We entered the Jetway.

  Damn! I thought. I’m getting on an airplane with a dog. And from now on I’ll be going every place with her. I supposed my composite feeling of wonder mixed with folly would be familiar to new parents leaving the hospital with their first child. Suddenly the world and everything in it was both vivid and strange.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Home. How to convey it? Corky entered and my apartment, with its high windows and long rooms, and the ambient space, was utterly different. It was simple—I was beaming and my dog was eager and I turned her loose so she could explore every inch of her home and this she obediently did in the manner of all dogs by alertly sniffing every corner, walking from room to room. Her happiness swelled in the air. I sat on the sofa where the former me had been so damned sad. It struck me it was just six months since I’d faced the plastic-lemon man and been told that life ahead would be next to impossible. On the day of the lemon man I’d walked Ithaca’s streets and nearly been killed. Now we were home, man and canine companion. That things were better was true, entirely true. Corky returned to me with a running shoe in her mouth.

  Our life together began. I thought we should go outside and wander around.

  “We will go walking with no purpose,” I thought. “This is the first day of our team. It’s the first time we’ll travel without a guide-dog trainer.”

  I had no idea where to go. Ambling seemed the best plan.

  “Let the world sort things out,” I thought.

  Straightaway we went downtown. It was a bright day and a new life so I thought I should go someplace I’d never been. On the first block I decided to enter a hat shop; a boutique; a store filled with crescent hats on mannequin heads. To me they were splotches of color; weird as a Kandinsky painting, lovely. And there I was, a man in a hat shop with a dog. I felt giddy, fantastically alive. “Life is better with a Labrador,” I thought. “Blindness is behind me,” I thought—that is, I’d imagined I would never feel inferior again. But the next few minutes would unfold like a painted Chinese fan with a tightly scripted story about culture and disability. I was too happy to guess Corky and her
poet were about to be a complication.

  The shopkeeper wanted to know what I was doing there. She landed directly in front of me like a jumping spider.

  I saw a burgundy thing, a wide-brimmed felt fedora the color of cranberries. I caressed it. Corky sat and admired me touching the thing. It was a moment of small, contained aesthetic pleasure.

  “What are you doing?” asked the shopkeeper. Her tone of voice was reproving. It was a tone that said, “Why on earth are you here?” She’d fumbled her opening gambit—hadn’t said “Can I help you?” or “What are you looking for?” (I imagined she didn’t know if blind people “look” for anything . . . Was it okay to say “look?”—maybe it wasn’t—so she said “What are you doing?”)

  “A fedora,” I said. “A mauve fedora!”

  “Well, yes,” said the shopkeeper, who was backing away from us.

  (She wanted to know how I “knew” it was a rose-purple fedora but couldn’t ask. She imagined all blind people see nothing. This is a common presumption.)

  “A mauve fedora,” I said again because I liked saying it.

  “Mmmm,” said the shopkeeper. Then she said, “Maybe you can take the dog outside?”

  “No,” I said. “The dog stays. It’s the law.

  “Indifférence violet,” I said then with a bad French accent.

  The shopkeeper stared.

  “Je veux acheter un chapeau pour mon chien,” I said.

  “You want to buy a hat for your dog?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I want to buy her the mauve fedora.”

  “Oh dear!” she said.

  “I might decide to buy two,” I said.

  “One for my sister, one for my dog,” I said.

  In the end I didn’t buy any hats . . . but I walked away knowing for the first time that the freedom to go places with a guide dog didn’t mean I’d be treated warmly. I’d have to do the work of being pleased with myself—which meant being pleased with ourselves . . . We were just a man and dog prowling for fashion.