Sunday, November 30, 2008

Max the wonder dog


Max (short for Maxine) and I first met about a year ago when my friends, Kathy and Marc, asked me to let her out during the day. I lived and worked around the corner and was happy to have the break during the day. Max has been blind since she was young (she's now about 8) and she was a recent "only dog". Her partner in crime and fellow Airedale, Jacey, had been ill and passed away. I asked Kathy if I could take her for a walk when I stopped in. This began an interesting learning experience for both Max and me. 

Max was initially very tentative about walking with me. We could barely get to the corner before she wanted to go home. I quickly realized I was the "seeing eye human" for her and had a new responsibility. The language of a dog walk would be very different than that of sighted dogs. Max picked up the slightest things from me and used them to interpret what was ahead.  I had to be very aware of what I was projecting and what I was letting her know was around us. 

Max has always been good on our walks but she does have one issue. She lunges and barks at any dog who barks at her or passes us. The added difficulty with this issue is that her sense of smell is extremely heightened without sight, and she can smell another dog a block away. Her reaction is to intimidate what she can't see by barking. I use the "Dog Whisperer" approach to correct this—to snap her out of the focus when she fixates—but I'm no dog whisperer, so it only works some of the time. And there are a couple of dogs that get to her no matter what.

Her next door neighbor, Blanche is one such dog. She is very sweet and quite a character. Blanche is a mix of Chihuahua and Beagle and would qualify as an ugly-beautiful, but cute as hell dog. Blanche has the run of her yard via an electric fence. When she sees Max walking by on the sidewalk, she sneaks up like a little ninja, and startles Max with a quick shot of barks when she is a few feet from her. Of course Max goes ballistic and then there is no return from that state of mind until I wrangle her past. 

These days, when I go over to take Max for a walk, she greets me at the door with unbridled excitement. I always touch her on her right shoulder to let her know it's me. At one time I had to coax her out the door. Now she bounds out the door and pulls me with her. I have always stuck to the same route so she knows where we are going. I barely have to guide her anymore. 

I've grown to love Max and our walks together. She always makes me laugh when she flops on the floor for a belly rub and gets a KoolAid smile on her face. She has taught me a lot about trust. She has also reminded me to live in the moment and enjoy the simple things in life. Dogs do that so well. They don't fret about what happened last week, yesterday, or even an hour ago. They only care about what is happening in the moment. We would all probably be a lot more content if we could do the same.