It is hard for most of us to imagine depending on a guide dog to see us through our days. Susan Krieger, a sociologist and writer who teaches at Stanford University, knows this way of life firsthand and has given us a poetic and poignant glimpse into the experience.
Three months after coming home with her guide dog, Teela, a spirited Golden Retriever-Yellow Labrador cross, she began writing Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision with a Guide Dog by My Side. The book was recently published by Purdue University Press. The following excerpt is from Chapter 9, “Airport Stories,” and is reprinted here by permission of the publisher and author.
The book is available from www.amazon.com or www.thepress.purdue.edu. To get better acquainted with Susan Krieger visit http://susankrieger.stanford.edu/travelingblind.
I have an image of myself walking with Teela down the many corridors we have, by now, traversed in airports. She guides me quickly, so we stride by the other passengers walking to their planes. As she leads me, I am always trying to keep my balance and not look foolish in the face of her exuberance, increased now with the excitement of the airport. I am watchful because it often is not clear to me whether Teela will bump me into other passengers as she weaves me through them. She is supposed to leave enough space for both of us to pass people, but sometimes she doesn’t calculate for me on her right side. Then I’ll bump into someone with my right shoulder. I keep trying to teach her not to bump me into people, but our working together is an imperfect art. She doesn’t see people as unyielding obstacles.
In airports, too, I am especially aware that I have only one hand free when I am holding her harness, and it is not really free, for at any minute I might have to use it to take up the leash and give Teela g uidance. I have to be very careful if I am carrying a cup of coffee or a sandwich so that I don’t spill or drop it. I am constantly self-conscious about looking like I can’t manage this process with style, about appearing discombobulated to people. This concern follows me as I follow Teela, as I try to move as if I know what I am doing, that I can navigate without tripping or spilling. At the same time, there is the signaling power of doing so-letting others know that I am blind.
People do not realize how much work goes into being attached to a guide dog. I try to make it look easy, and it’s not that it is so hard, but it is time-consuming and attention-requiring. I am two people all the time. I can’t forget Teela, except for sometimes when we are outdoors walking alone, without obstacles or impediments, and I am looking up into the sky at the big shapes of clouds, and taking in the fresh air. But inside places like airports, it is more like a hothouse. There are usually no other dogs, and people notice Teela, and they notice me, at least from the knees down. Fortunately, I can’t see them looking at me most of the time. I can’t see their eyes or expressions, and I am usually focused on my own navigation, so I am spared the specificity of being watched. But still I feel it.
Hannah tells me that when we travel together, she has noticed that people burst into smiles in the airport when Teela and I walk past them. They are happy to see a dog. That’s been reassuring to me.
Once when Teela was leading me through a baggage claim area, she pulled me sideways and would not lead me to the door as I instructed. She was taking me to a small dog in a carrying case. Since then, I think she always looks for other dogs in baggage claim areas….
Airports-they are so very public and I am so very private, and so obvious with Teela. I feel odd being guided by a dog, trying to do it in good form yet looking like I’m blind. I am unsure of what others see, unsure of what I see myself, doubtful inside of who I am, and of what I should be doing all the while as I am doing it, as Teela pulls me forward and I follow her.
She weaves me through the other passengers, the world whizzes by me out of focus and I wonder, am I doing it right, am I blind enough? Do I need this dog? But if I let go of Teela’s harness for even a moment, if I lose her, she then turns back and looks strangely at me, as if to say, “Where are you? You’re supposed to be on the other end of this.” I pick up the harness handle and start again the rolling walk we share, feeling it is worth it. If not for Teela, I would need a cane. People have to know I won’t see them. Or they will think I am rude when I bump into them or don’t give them the right of way. I don’t want to be hit by something I do not see coming, or trip and fall, or collide with a person or object not in my direct line of sight. I now feel unsafe without a probe or guide in front of me, Teela far preferable to a cane….
When I first began to lose my eyesight, I knew that having impaired vision would be a difficulty. What I did not know was that this experience would turn me inward to such a great extent and simultaneously make me sensitive to public gaze and judgment. The sense of being watched externally causes within me a parallel inner watchfulness and self-judgment. Yet I hope that my instinct for my own movement forward will, in the end, be freeing-like a bursting from a shell, like a walk one early morning when things are still and the air is crisp and I am with my dog, her tail high, her nose forward, her fur glowing golden. I am glad to be out with her, taking in the air, not in an airport, not being looked at and commented upon by people, but, for the moment, caught up in an appreciation for the day, taking pleasure in our movement.
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