Kristy Thomas, Dog Trainer, Page 2

  Mary Anne and I are the other set of best friends in the BSC. Mary Anne is also short (but yes, taller than I am) with brown hair, pale skin, and brown eyes. She’s a fashion conservative, but she does not wear the same kind of clothes every day as I do.

  Like me, Mary Anne is part of a blended family. Her mother died not long after Mary Anne was born, and Mary Anne can barely remember anything about her. Mr. Spier raised Mary Anne all alone, and he was a loving but very strict parent, because he didn’t want to make any mistakes. That was okay, until Mary Anne wanted to stop wearing pigtails every day and pick out her own clothes.

  After a bit of a struggle, her father realized she was growing up and he relaxed a little. Then his old high school sweetheart, Sharon Schafer, who’d recently been divorced, moved back to Stoneybrook with her daughter and son.

  Mary Anne became best friends with Dawn Schafer, who had transferred into SMS. (At first, I had a hard time admitting that my best friend could have two best friends. But Mary Anne and I sorted that out.) Dawn joined the BSC as an alternate officer. When Dawn’s mother and Mary Anne’s father were married (with a little help from Dawn and Mary Anne), Mary Anne and her father and Mary Anne’s kitten, Tigger, moved into Sharon and Dawn’s old farmhouse.

  Mary Anne is almost painfully shy and sensitive — even touching commercials can make her cry. She’s not nearly as outgoing and outspoken as I am. Dawn is somewhere in between. She can be as stubborn as Mary Anne or me. She’s outspoken about what she believes in, such as recycling, vegetarianism, and being environmentally responsible.

  Dawn is tall and thin and very blonde, with pale blue eyes and pierced ears, two holes in each ear. She’s not the sports fanatic that I am, but she’s an avid surfer (her skin tans easily and even catches a few freckles from the sun). Surfing was probably one of the reasons she missed California so much. In fact, both she and her younger brother ultimately made the very difficult decision to move back to California to live with their father.

  That’s how Dawn became an honorary member of the BSC. She still visits often and we all stay in close touch. We’ve even been known to trade cross-country advice on baby-sitting.

  Finding an alternate officer to replace Dawn wasn’t easy, until Abby, our newest member, moved to Stoneybrook from Long Island with her mother and her twin sister, Anna. Like me, Abby is outspoken (too outspoken sometimes — she even argues with me) and a sports fan. But she takes it a step further. She’s a soccer star and is always in training for something. (That afternoon, she’d come straight to the BSC meeting from a pick-up soccer game.) I don’t think she ever walks if she can jog. As Abby would tell you, she has fast feet and a fast mouth — her idea of a joke, just proving my point that she also has a weird sense of humor.

  Abby has a soccer player’s compact build. She’s medium tall, with brown eyes and curly dark brown hair. She wears glasses or contacts, depending on her mood (and sports schedule). Like Stacey, Abby has to deal with health problems. In her case, they’re allergies and asthma. When Abby says, “Life makes me sneeze,” she’s not kidding. She has to carry a prescription inhaler with her at all times, in case she has an asthma attack. It’s sort of a little tube full of medicine that you breathe in. But Abby doesn’t let that slow her down. She lives at warp speed, which is one of the things that makes her a good baby-sitter. She hasn’t met a kid yet with whom she can’t keep pace.

  Logan Bruno, one of our associate members, is the only male member of the BSC. He shares Abby’s and my love of sports. Logan is from Kentucky. He has a soft southern accent and he’s easygoing and a good listener, a valuable trait in anyone. (I appreciate qualities in other people that I myself don’t necessarily have). He’s also connected to the BSC in another way — he’s Mary Anne’s boyfriend.

  Shannon Kilbourne is our other associate member. She doesn’t attend many BSC meetings because she’s already booked to the max. She goes to Stoneybrook Day School with her two younger sisters. She’s a member of the French Club, the Astronomy Club (where she’s the youngest member and the vice-president), the Honor Society, and the debate team. She also takes part in most of the school plays. She has blonde hair, blue eyes, and prefers a casual style of dress when she’s not in her school uniform.

  And that’s the BSC — every regular member of which was looking at me now, waiting to hear my dog story.

  I cleared my throat importantly.

  “Watson wants to raise a guide dog puppy,” I began.

  “A puppy,” said Mary Anne, clasping her hands together. “I love puppies.”

  “What kind?” asked Abby.

  “When?” asked Jessi.

  “Is it for someone?” asked Mallory. “I mean, aren’t guide dogs the dogs that blind people use?”

  Before I could answer any of their questions, the phone rang and we spent several minutes setting up baby-sitting appointments with clients. One of the clients was Mrs. Cooper, who wanted someone to sit for her two sons.

  “Deb will be with me,” Mrs. Cooper added. After I hung up the phone, Abby said, “Ahhhhh. I get it. Deb Cooper. Is that what this guide dog thing is about?”

  “She’s home now, isn’t she?” Claudia asked.

  “Anna said that Shannon told her Deb isn’t back in school yet, though,” Abby added. (Abby’s sister, Anna, and Shannon have become good friends.)

  “Deb’s the one who inspired Watson to think about raising a puppy,” I said. “But the puppy’s not for her, of course.” I went on to tell everyone about my conversation with Watson.

  “We’re going to be interviewed on Wednesday,” I concluded. “If we pass, I guess we get a puppy.”

  “We can help you with the puppy,” Mallory offered.

  “Just tell us what to do,” Jessi volunteered.

  Mary Anne said in a choked voice, “But it’ll be so hard to give up a puppy you’ve raised.”

  “I know,” I replied quickly. It was something I didn’t want to think about. “But we haven’t gotten the puppy yet.”

  “You will,” Stacey assured me. Then she held up her dues envelope. “Meanwhile, it’s Monday, and I think you know what that means. Payday.”

  As we handed over our dues, Stacey said thoughtfully, “You know, one of the things that blind people have to learn is how to tell coins apart by feeling them.”

  Instinctively, I closed my eyes, trying to identify the coins in my hand. The ridged edges meant it was a quarter, didn’t they? Or was that a nickel? A quarter, I guessed. Dimes are thinner and smaller than pennies, but was I holding a thin, small dime, or a penny? A dime, I guessed.

  I opened my eyes and stared down at the change. I’d been right about the quarter, wrong about the dime. It was a penny.

  And what about paper money? I would have no way to know what denomination it was. I’d have to trust others to be honest.

  Suddenly, I didn’t like this game. And it was only a game for me. It wasn’t real.

  Not like it was for Deb. I stared down at my fistful of change and realized that I couldn’t begin to imagine what Deb was going through.

  We passed the dog test. It wasn’t easy. Not that we had to fill out a real test or anything (although I know Watson had to sign forms and things like that). I also found out that raising a guide dog puppy isn’t quite the same as raising a regular puppy like Shannon.

  The test consisted of a visit from a staff member at the Guide Dog Foundation. Her title was Puppy Coordinator, and her name was Gillian, and she was really nice. I liked her the moment she walked into our house that Wednesday afternoon.

  We sat in the den for most of the interview. Gillian was very direct and straightforward and let us know from the beginning that the rules for raising a guide dog puppy were in many ways different from the rules for raising a family pet.

  “Your puppy is being trained to do an important job,” she explained. “It’s what she or he has been bred to do. If you don’t follow the rules for raising your guide dog puppy, then that puppy will have a
very hard time passing guide dog training and won’t be able to do the job she or he was bred to do.”

  I glanced at Karen. Her blue eyes were big and intent behind her glasses. She raised her hand as if she were in school.

  Gillian smiled at Karen. “You don’t have to raise your hand, Karen. Do you have a question?”

  Nodding and lowering her hand, Karen asked, “But what happens if a puppy fails its training? What happens to the puppy?”

  “That’s a good question. Sometimes the dogs go to work for the police department, or even the customs agency, to be trained to work for them. But if they haven’t got the right personalities for that kind of work, the dogs can go back to live with their puppy trainer families. That happens sometimes.”

  “Oh,” said Karen. She looked relieved.

  Gillian met all the pets in our family. She laughed when Boo-Boo hissed at her. “Your puppy will learn to respect cats, I see that.” She nodded in approval at our yard, which is surrounded by an invisible electronic fence. “That’s something that every responsible dog owner should have. It’s criminal, in my opinion, to tie up a dog in the backyard, or worse, let it roam loose.” Gillian told us then that our puppy couldn’t just be let out into the backyard to relieve herself. Instead, the puppy would have to be taught to go on the pavement, on leash, on the command “Get busy,” because that is the command that would be given by the blind person with whom the puppy would one day work.

  Gillian squatted down to pet Shannon. “What a good girl,” she said, laughing, as Shannon licked Gillian’s chin and wagged her tail furiously.

  As she petted Shannon, Gillian reminded us that our puppy couldn’t sleep in the same place as Shannon, or play too much with her, or become too attached to her. “Your puppy has to be people-oriented, because that is who she is going to spend her life with. She can’t see another dog and think of it as an opportunity to play. That could be disastrous for her person.”

  Watson explained that he would be the person primarily responsible for the puppy. “I’ll keep a crate in my home office,” he said. “As well as by my side of the bed.” (When our puppy became a guide dog, she — or he — would sleep next to her person’s bed.

  There were other rules too. The puppy could chew on balls, but she could never learn to chase them, for the same reason that she couldn’t think of every other dog she met as a playmate. She couldn’t be fed from the table either, which wasn’t a problem. Watson and Mom have been strict about not feeding pets from the table. Mom says it isn’t right to teach a dog bad manners and then blame the dog for behaving badly.

  And, of course, when a guide dog goes into a restaurant, it can’t expect to get a handout from the table!

  Those were just a few of the rules. Raising a guide dog puppy was going to be even harder than I had realized. But the more I learned about it, the more I wanted to do it.

  But would we pass the test?

  At the end of the interview, Gillian shook hands with everybody, even Emily Michelle. “I can see a guide dog puppy will get lots of good experience living with your family,” she said to Watson.

  “Does that mean we get the job?” Watson asked with a slow smile.

  Gillian nodded. “I think you do.”

  “Hooray!” David Michael shouted, which made Shannon bark.

  “When do we get the puppy?” Karen asked eagerly.

  Gillian’s answer took me by surprise. “We have a puppy ready right now. The couple who was going to raise her moved unexpectedly to another country. So the puppy came back to us. She’s just turned four months old and her name is Scout. You can come get her this Saturday morning.”

  This weekend! Good grief! That was soon!

  In a matter of days, we were going to have a new puppy in the house.

  * * *

  The Guide Dog Foundation is in Smithtown, Long Island, in New York, not far from where Abby used to live. From the front we saw what looked like a small, neat, square building behind a low white fence. I don’t know what I expected, but I liked how friendly it looked.

  We saw six new Labrador retriever puppies in the glassed-in puppy nursery area. We also saw about a hundred dogs, black and yellow Labradors, golden retrievers, and a few Shiloh shepherds, which looked like German shepherds to me. Some were in training. Some were being boarded for their owners or puppy walker families.

  All of them greeted us by barking loudly and wagging their tails.

  Behind the foundation are dorms, where people stay when they come to get their guide dogs and learn how to work with them. I wondered if they could hear the barking in their dorms, and if they could tell the sound of one dog’s bark from another.

  The dogs’ name plates were on their kennel-run doors, along with the names of their sponsors. I loved Scout’s name, in part because the narrator of one of my favorite books, To Kill a Mockingbird, is named Scout.

  I couldn’t help but think, the moment I saw Scout, that she was extra-special. She was a beautiful chocolate-colored Labrador retriever. I fell in love with her instantly.

  We went through a training session and saw a video about guide dogs and how to be a good puppy walker. Then Gillian gave us the foundation handbook with all the basic information on raising Scout. She went over it with us, patiently answering all our questions. Both Mom and Watson took careful notes.

  Scout came with her own collar, special ID tags, and leash. We also got two bowls, a starter bag of the kind of dog food we were supposed to feed her, a crate for her to sleep in, and two Nylabones for her to chew. We were also given a yellow coat for her to wear that identified her as a guide dog puppy in training so that she could be taken everywhere (just as she would be when she became a working guide dog). Oh yes, we got her medical records too, and forms we were supposed to fill out in order to keep track of her progress for the Guide Dog Foundation, with which we would be in touch at least once a month.

  After Watson filled out some more forms, we put Scout in her crate (which was basically a big cage) and put the crate in the car. Scout looked a little anxious, but mostly calm. Karen and David Michael sat on either side of her.

  Karen petted the kennel. “Don’t worry, Scout,” she said. “We’re going to do everything just right. You’re going to have the best puppy walker family in the whole wide world.”

  I hoped she was right.

  Abby just happened to be jogging by when we got home with Scout. Claudia and Shannon weren’t even subtle about it. The moment we pulled up to the house, they walked out Shannon’s front door and across the street.

  Although Scout was a calm puppy, she was still wiggly and adorable and irresistible. Claudia melted instantly, falling on her knees and saying, “Oh, you are so-o-o-o-o cute.” Shannon, meanwhile, was also kneeling next to Scout, talking baby talk.

  Abby sneezed and said in a slightly thickened voice, “So you’re Scout. Hello, girl.” (I’d naturally kept the BSC members posted on every detail).

  Scout wriggled her body enthusiastically.

  Mom smiled. “I’ll go get Shannon,” she said. She was referring to Shannon our puppy. It was time for Shannon and Scout to meet. Even though Scout wouldn’t be able to play with Shannon, it was important to make them comfortable around each other. Thanks to Shannon and Mallory, I’d read many books, including two by dog trainers at a monastery, the Monks of New Skete, which Shannon had lent me, plus another one supplied by Mallory, written by a dog trainer named Carol Lea Benjamin, who was also a children’s book writer. In all the books we’d read, we’d been told that this was the best way for a dog to meet a new dog coming into its house — on neutral territory.

  According to the books, dogs are pack animals and every one of them behaves according to certain universal rules. The families the dogs live with become their packs. Just like in a real pack, dogs don’t want newcomers in their packs without their permission.

  Shannon came bounding out of the house and stopped when she saw Scout. Shannon’s ears went up. Then she mov
ed toward Scout. Shannon’s tail was wagging a little (which is sometimes a sign of being uncertain about how to react to a situation, according to the dog books).

  The moment Shannon got close to Scout, Scout said, “You’re the boss! I’m friendly! Don’t hurt me!”

  How did she say that? In dog language, of course. Dogs use a lot of body language. Dog language for “You’re the boss” is this: Scout rolled over on her back and put her paws in the air. Shannon sniffed Scout all over. Then she backed up slightly, put her front paws out in front of her in a dog bow, and said, “Woof!”

  That’s dog language for “Let’s play!”

  In an instant, Scout had rolled over, leaped up, and accepted the invitation. We let them spend time together for a few minutes and then we took them into the house.

  “When do you start training her?” Abby asked.

  “Right away,” I said.

  Claudia looked doubtful. “Isn’t that awfully young? I mean, if puppies are like really little kids, they have about a two-second attention span.”

  “You’re right about that, Claudia,” Watson agreed. “We won’t start out trying to teach her anything except how to be house-trained and how to get used to a leash and collar.”

  “But we’re going to take her to puppy obedience classes right away,” I said. “It helps her to get used to other dogs and new situations and teaches us how to start training her.”

  “Special classes for guide dogs?” Shannon asked. She was on the floor, scratching Scout’s soft ears.

  “They have classes we can go to at the foundation,” I said. “But it’s a long drive, so we’ll probably go around here. We’re only supposed to teach Scout basic obedience commands like ‘sit’ and ‘stay.’ You know, good manners for dogs. She’ll learn the special guide dog stuff when she goes back to the foundation.”

  “This is so cool,” said Abby. Then she sneezed again and added hastily, “Well, nice to meet you, Scout. I’d better get going.”