Читать книгу Parisian Tails - Stephen Hayes - Страница 5

As a teenager, I never thought I would get a seeing-eye dog. I always believed that I could get around quite fine with a white-cane, and that having a dog would be too much upkeep. It wasn't until the age of eighteen, while I was doing orientation and mobility (O&M) training at a TAFE institution where I would be studying the following year (so that I could get around the place independently), that I was enlightened regarding the benefits of having a seeing-eye dog.

Of those, the two main ones were the increased mobility, and the companionship. With a seeing-eye dog, it wouldn't be necessary to run my cane along walls or surfaces with edges to find my way, not if the dog knew where we were going. It wouldn't be a big issue at TAFE, but it may become one the following year, in 2007 when I would start university. As for the companionship, I took it on face-value that there may be some, but I under-estimated just how attached I would become to my first seeing-eye dog.

There was also the extra perk that guys with dogs get a little extra attention from girls, and I won't tell a lie in this story. Over the following months, as I considered whether or not to get a dog, that thought was a factor in my decision-making. I can't recall that ever happening, though, if anyone might have given me more attention because of my seeing-eye dog they inevitably were more interested in the dog than the person beside it.

I sat on it for perhaps seven or eight months before deciding that I would take the plunge and apply for a seeing-eye dog, even going as far as making notes for things to ask when I made the phone call, in case I got tongue-tied. It turned out to be very easy, though; I just had to answer some questions, sign a couple of documents, and I was immediately put on the waiting list.

A few months later, in July 2006 it would have been, I received a visit from one of the dog trainers at Seeing-Eye Dogs Australia (SEDA). For the sake of this book, let's call him Trajan; he was the same person who introduced me to the idea of getting a dog in the first place. (Trajan was the O&M instructor when I was learning my way around the TAFE the previous year.) We went over the ground rules, what I could expect, what I shouldn't expect, and what I would need to be able to do.

We then went for one of the strangest walks I have ever experienced in my life. Trajan walked in front of me and slightly to the side, and he was holding one end of a bar while I held the other end. In this manner, he guided me around the neighbourhood, all the while measuring my typical walking pace and analysing my gate and walking style. He then put me back on the waiting list where I would remain for another seven months.

In February 2007, by which time I had resigned myself to what could be a seemingly interminable wait, I received a call from another SEDA trainer (let's call her Hadrian), saying that they had found a potential dog for me — a ‘lovely yellow Labrador', as she described it on my voicemail (she called me while I was in a university lecture). Two days later, I met Paris for the first time.