Thunder Dog - Michael Hingson [12]
After Holland, I got another golden, named Klondike; he guided me through much of my working life. Klondike had a bit of an overactive digestive system and sometimes filled the office conference room with a—how shall I put this?—pungent aroma. It didn’t bother me; I figured it helped keep my sales force awake and alert.
Linnie was next, a light-blonde Labrador retriever. She was a wonderful dog. Whenever anyone touched her, she would stop, drop, and roll over to get her stomach scratched. We ran across actor Peter Falk once in an airport frequent-flier lounge, and he spent ten minutes on his knees on the carpet, scratching her stomach. “Linnie, I can’t sit here all night,” he groused in his gravelly voice, smiling big. Linnie had a sixth sense about people. In a crowd, she always went right to the person who needed some attention. She would have made a great therapy dog. Her guiding career ended abruptly when she contracted Lyme disease from a backyard tick bite. She retired in 1999 after only three years of guiding, and Karen and I kept her as a pet. Linnie became a beloved part of our family.
After Linnie, I went without a guide dog for six months, using a cane to get around New Jersey and New York City, including the World Trade Center. New York sidewalks are jam-packed, and I spent way too much money replacing broken white canes at forty dollars a pop because people didn’t watch where they were going.
Then, in November 1999, Roselle entered our lives. I found myself back in San Rafael at Guide Dogs for the Blind in that same office, waiting to be matched with a new guide dog. Although this was my fifth time, I was just as nervous and excited as that first time, thirty-five years earlier. The only way I can describe the feeling of waiting for your guide dog is that it is almost exactly like standing at the front of the church in your tuxedo, waiting for the organ to play the “Wedding March” and your bride-to-be to start down the aisle. Your life will never be the same, and you will no longer be alone.
When the training supervisor let Roselle into the office to meet me, she was a bit of a busybody. She sniffed me all over then left and snuffled her way around the room. “Well, call her and see if she’ll come to you,” suggested the supervisor. Roselle slowly made her way back. Then she stopped and sat down next to me and didn’t move again. I took her back to the room and chatted with her for a while. I petted her and played with her and we got to know each other. I quickly noticed she had two sides to her personality. She could be very calm and quiet when she was working. But when the harness came off, she became a little mischievous. She liked to steal my socks, carry them off in her mouth, and hide them, but she never chewed them up. I also noticed she snored. Like a grizzly bear.
Roselle’s puppy raisers were Ted and Kay Stern, a retired couple in Santa Barbara, California, who first got her as a fuzzy, yellow, four-month-old puppy with an impish twinkle in her eye. The Sterns gave Roselle her first ten months of basic in-home obedience training and acquainted her with as many different environments as possible, including a visit to New York City at Christmastime. The hectic pace of urban life didn’t seem to faze Roselle as the Sterns visited packed restaurants, clattering subways, and crowded sidewalks.
At home, Kay remembered Roselle as spunky and playful. “She used to steal my slippers from the closet and run all around the house to try to play keep-away,” Kay said. “She loved to play hide-and-seek with us, and I loved her crooked doggy smile. She sometimes tested limits and tried to pretend she didn’t remember her lessons. She was a smart pup.” They also reported her snoring, especially in church.
When we got back to New York, Roselle and Linnie became fast friends. Whenever I worked down in the basement of our house in New Jersey and I