Thunder Dog - Michael Hingson [8]
Our sky lobby seems safe for now, although a fire is raging somewhere above us. The copious amounts of thick, black smoke are evidence of a fire fed by ample fuel, with flames burning at temperatures somewhere in the range of 1,300 to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. We still don’t know what has caused the fire or even the initial impact and explosion, but the adrenaline-charged voices around us speed up my steps. The closest stairwell to us is Stairwell B. It’s right in the center of the lobby, between the local elevators, the smaller ones that access the upper floors. Roselle stops at the door to the stairwell, just as she always does. She positions her body to the left of the door so I can reach out and open it. Six or seven people surround us in a loose group, and taking turns, David, Roselle, and I enter the stairwell. Roselle pauses at the top of the stairs. Through the harness I can feel her look up at me for direction. She is calm, standing quietly. I wonder what she’s thinking.
“Forward,” I say with confidence. But my mind immediately begins to wander. What are we getting ourselves into? How many people are already in this stairwell trying to leave at the same time? How long is it going to take us to get out?
My right hand clutches the rail attached to the wall while my left hand grips Roselle’s leather leash and the leather-covered handle on her guide dog harness. She can relax a bit now; her job at this point is to watch the people around us and alert me to any hazards both below and above.
Dogs usually do not worry too much about what might be located above their heads. Because of their strong sense of smell, they tend to travel nose to the ground, decoding the world through scents both fresh and stale. Guide dog training is designed to prompt dogs to look up and watch for anything that might hit a blind person in the upper body, including tree branches, scaffolding, mailboxes, signs, and protrusions from vehicles and buildings.
But dogs, just like people, tend to lapse into old habits and instincts, so when my guide dog occasionally runs me into a bush or a mailbox, I pause, loop back around, and politely ask her to try it again. The dog usually guides perfectly the second time around and understands when we do a repeat that she needs to pay attention to something missed the first time.
I did have one guide dog, a golden retriever named Holland, who was a bit of a goof. He once ran me into the same mailbox several times. I was walking down a sidewalk with my parents and a mailbox jutted out over the sidewalk. Holland walked under the mailbox and my hand crashed into it. We turned around and did it again. Then again. By the fourth time, I knew Holland was running me into it deliberately. Maybe he was having an off day. That last time, just as I was about to hit the mailbox again, I dropped the harness and jerked the leash, pulling him over toward me. He banged his head on the mailbox. I could almost feel him thinking, This isn’t working anymore. The next time around, he nudged me over to the right so he could clear the mailbox. Problem solved.
Roselle had never done anything like that, though. As much as she likes to have fun, the harness creates a transformation. Her brow furrows a bit as her face takes on a look of intense concentration. She stands up straighter, tail erect, and her muscles tense as her movements become controlled and purposeful. Her senses go on high alert, and if she had antennae, they would be up. Roselle is ready to go wherever I command her to go. She is ready to work.
My life with dogs began long before I received my first guide dog. We always had dogs at my house growing up. Skeets was my aunt and uncle’s collie in Chicago. Since they lived right next door to us in the same apartment building it seemed as though we shared him. In Palmdale