Kuusisto - Have dog, will travel: a poets journey

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Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 2018 by Stephen Kuusisto

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

Several names and identifying characteristics have been changed, some individuals are composites, and certain events have been reordered.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition March 2018

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Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design and illustration by Thomas Colligan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4516-8979-2

ISBN 978-1-4516-8981-5 (ebook)

In memory of Theodore Ted Zubrycki, pioneering guide-dog trainer and consummate friend of the blind. Be good to yourselves, you deserve it.

In an effort to safeguard the privacy of several individuals, the author has changed some names and, in some cases, disguised identifying characteristics or created composite characters.

The ultimate definition of bravery is not being afraid of who you are.

Chgyam Trungpa

People ask: Whats it like? Whats it like walking with a guide dog? How does a dog keep you from harm? Or they say, I dont think I could do that, I mean, whats it really like to trust a dog that way?

Truthfully its not like anything else. Theres no true equivalent for the experience.

My wife is an equestrian. Years ago she was a guide-dog trainer. On a horse, she says, youre hypervigilant, aiming to avoid accidents by controlling your animal. Sometimes you and your horse will find a meditative rhythm. But you cant count on horses to look out for you.

A guide dog is not like a horse. She looks out for you. All the time.

Whats it like? I can only help you imagine what a guide dog feels like.

Say youre in Italy in a swirl of motorbikes. Its Milan with thin sidewalks, confusing street crossings, and barbaric drivers. Montenapoleone Street is crowded with what seems like all the people in the world.

Lets say youre walking at night to the Duomo with Guiding Eyes Corky #3cc92. Corky does her thing and relishes her job. She pulls you along but the pull is steady and you feel like youre floating. Her mind and body transmit through a harness an omnidirectional confidence.

Why are you going to Milans famous cathedral with a dog? One of your favorite books is Mark Twains The Innocents Abroad , which contains passages so beautiful you sometimes recite them aloud. Of the Duomo Twain says it has a delusion of frostwork that might vanish with a breath!... The central one of its five great doors is bordered with a bas-relief of birds and fruits and beasts and insects, which have been so ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living creaturesand the figures are so numerous and the design so complex, that one might study it a week without exhausting its interest...

Now its just you and your dog. Youre going there to touch the birds and fruits and beasts and insects carved from marble.

Not only are the streets teeming with people, there are skateboarders. Now your Labrador eases left. You hear a clatter of wheels. You think how Milan must be dangerous for skateboarding with its jagged paving bricks, broken sidewalks, and Vespas like runaway donkeys. Motorbikes plunge through crowds. Someone does a dance with death every twenty feet. The city is a fantastic, ghastly place. In the midst of this your dog is unflappable. Trained to estimate your combined width, she looks for advantages in the throng and pulls ahead because the way is clear or she slows suddenly because an elderly woman has drifted sideways into your path. Sometimes she stops on a dime, refusing to move. Which she does now.

Theres a hole in the pavement. Its unmarkedthere are no pylons or signs. A stranger says its remarkable there arent a dozen people at the bottom of the thing. Corky has saved you from breaking your neck. She backs away, turns, then pushes ahead.

It doesnt feel like driving a car. Its not like running. Sometimes I think its a bit like swimming. A really long swim when youre buoyant and fast. Theres no one else in the pool.

Yes, this is sort of what its like, but theres something elsea keen affection between you and your dog, a mutual discernment. Together youve got the others back.

I was late to the race, the opera, the promwhatever you want to call it. I was terribly late. At thirty-eight, verging on middle age, having been blind since birth, I was not much of a disabled person. I was a second-rate traveler who didnt know how to go places independently. But late or not there I was, alertly hugging a yellow Labrador named Corky. We were brand spanking new to each other. We were an arranged marriage. Wed been together all of fifteen minutes.

Youre exactly what a dog should be, I said to her. Your heads bigger than mine! We were at a guide-dog school, a training center north of Manhattan. Yes, I repeated, youre what a dog should be.

It wasnt just Corkys size, though her largeness had merityou want the dog wholl guide you through traffic to be sturdy. No, the thingthe ineffable it, the shouldwas something like a welcome word. Maybe the word came from a distant room; the word had traveled a long way. So what if Id been an unsuccessful disabled traveler? The dog before me, this Labrador, this superb creature didnt give a damn who Id been or what I thought about myself. She was radiant.

* * *

Disability has numerous implications. One can live a long while recognizing only some of them. In the 1950s my parents couldnt imagine a future for me if I presented as blind. They forcefully encouraged me to do absolutely everything sighted children did, minus any acknowledgment of my difference. In the spring of 1961 my mother signed me up for the Durham, New Hampshire, Cub Scout troop and bought me a uniform and a flag. I marched in the Memorial Day parade, stepping in time to Boy Scout drummers. I held that flag straight before me and walked in a gorgeous gold mist, which was how my brand of blindness transmitted the world. I was legally blind. I saw colors and shapes.