by Ernest Jones

For several years, as my vision deteriorated, I resisted the plea from family and friends that I get mobility training. After all, I could still get around, so why get training that would make me admit I was going blind.  However, when at last I gave in and took mobility training, I found that new opportunities opened up to me.

The long cane is a great tool for people who are blind, but I still had trouble walking along our road, which has no sidewalk. The road’s edge is uneven, with large holes in some places and sod in others, right up to the pavement.

I got to the point where I thought I wanted a guide dog, but I used the excuse that other people needed a dog worse than I did. I kept putting it off.

One day I was checking to see how fast I could walk around a particular loop that I often did. Unknown to me, a neighbor had parked his van on the edge of the road. As I approached the van, one swing of my cane passed freely under its high front bumper. Before the next swing could hit anything, I slammed into the van with my chest and head. I decided then that it was time to see about getting a guide dog.

The usual time for guide dog training, when it is one’s first dog, is four weeks. Students live in a dormitory, maybe in a private room but often two to a room. The school served delicious meals three times a day and supplied every need except for personal belongings. 

The first three days we trained with “Juno,” a dummy dog. During this time the teacher instructed us in the most common commands needed for handling a guide dog. The real thrill came, however, when we were presented with our own dog—knowing this would be our companion for the next several years.

My first dog was a beautiful female yellow lab. I had wanted a yellow female but I had hoped the dog would be a large one. Though this dog was only 55 pounds, it proved to be the perfect guide for me.

Still, I remember nights early in the training that, in my exhaustion, I wondered why I was there. It was not physical fatigue but mental fatigue. I fretted I would never learn to use the right commands or correct my dog properly. I even wondered if I would learn to trust her. It didn’t help when, early in our training, she led me into the corner of a brick building. 

But my guide and I learned to work together. We graduated, and I was off to feel the thrill of walking on roads and sidewalks, crossing streets, and especially hiking rugged trails. This latter experience is where we really excelled. I had always enjoyed hiking back woods trails, but with fading vision I had stopped. Now I found this freedom to be mine once again. There were times my family worried, but I didn’t. My guide took me up trails only wide enough for one person, traversing rock slides, crossing streams, and climbing steep hills. 

Some family members did not think my dog and I should go out alone, but after one particular hike they began to place more trust in my dog.  I was out with family on a rugged trail, and my dog and I were leading the way. Several times, I heard one of my brothers start to say, “watch out there is (a large rock or a tree or some other problem) ahead,” and then they would say, “Oh, never mind, she is taking care of him.” 

I smiled and we just continued leading the group. We hiked  along a lake, sometimes just above the water’s edge, then climbed 300 feet to cross a rocky land slide. Several times we did this. 

The last part of the four-mile walk was the easiest, and I told my brothers I was so glad the easy part was the last and not the beginning. One of my brothers said, “I am glad we walked this way too but for a different reason. There was a long stretch where the cliff dropped straight down for couple hundred feet from the edge of the trail to the water. That wonderful dog kept you shoved up against the bank, away from the edge of the drop-off.  Had we walked the other direction you would have been on the outer edge of the trail.”

I don’t doubt, though, that my dog would have kept me from danger. It was on that day that my family came to recognize just what a guide dog can do. They, too, began to recognize and trust her abilities.

To form a successful team, trust is essential. The same is true in our relationship with God. The psalmist wrote, “I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust’” (Psalm 91:2, NIV). My guide dog has given me a new insight into that relationship.