Eleven Years ago
I’m writing this at about 9:20 AM on Saturday, January 18, 2014.
Eleven years ago today, at this exact time, and a Saturday too, Bianca came wagging into my life. I can remember that first meeting as if it just happened last year. I’d been waiting and waiting to begin training with a new guide dog, and on that day, at last, my in-home training was to begin. What would she be like? How quickly would we bond? Would she love me? Would I be able to be all she needed? Would we become one hell of a great team, kicking the world’s ass as we went through life together? Well, the time was at hand, and soon I’d know.
January 18, 2003
The phone rings. The trainer is at my door with my dog. Finally! How many miles have I paced in my rug this morning anyway? How many times have I played the Beatles song, Because, thinking how suitable the words seem to be on this momentous occasion?
“Because the wind is high, it makes me cry.”
A song of joy, a song of happiness. Idly, I wonder if I could play it on the guitar, though it’s not that kind of song and I don’t even have a guitar.
I grab the phone. Am I shaking? Seriously?
“Hello?” I sound breathless I notice.
It’s got to be them! It’s just gotta be them!
“We’re here. Let us in.” the instructor said through the tinny sound of the intercom.
Quickly pressing the button and hanging up, I tossed the handset on the counter and raced to the door. Well, the apartment is small, so there isn’t far to race, but still, I race. I open the door, turning my ear to the hall, listening, listening. Where is that damn elevator? Why is it taking so long? Wait! Is that it? Yes! Ding, the bell rings, indicating the elevator has arrived on my floor. Freezing, I strain my hearing, as if being completely still, motionless, will make me hear better and make them arrive sooner.
I feel that my smile will split my face in two as I hear quiet footsteps heading down my hall, accompanied by the unmistakable jingle of a collar and leash. Holding my breath, I continue to wait, standing perfectly still, not blinking, not even reaching out my hand. They turn the corner, and the instructor begins to chuckle.
“Well, good morning to you,” he says. “You’re not excited or anything, are you?”
If possible I smile even wider.
“Oh, maybe just a little excited.”
He stops a few paces from me, and the sound of the dog collar and leash is silent. Damn, I want to leap into that hall and grab that dog!
“Go on in and sit on your couch,” he says, “I’ll bring her to you.”
Pretending a calm I don’t feel, I walk to my couch and sit. And now, the anxiety falls over me. My stomach goes into knots, and the questions and pleas begin again to churn in my mind.
Please let her like me. Please let us get along. Please, oh please, let this work out! In the few seconds it takes him to cross the floor with my dog, the desperate prayers leave my heart. Did I say them aloud?
“Here she is.” He puts a smooth leather leash into my hand. The leash is new, still hard from the lack of constant handling. “Sherry, this is Bianca.”
Suddenly, my lap and my arms are full of wiggling dancing Labrador, and my heart is lost to this creature forever.
“Bianca, Bianca,” I murmur softly to her, as I run my hands over her. “Why, you’re just like a real live beanie baby, aren’t you? And you’re all mine, my very own Beanie Baby. Such a pretty girl.”
She’s wagging so hard that her whole body is wiggling; only her head is still as she burrows into me. Then she begins to kiss me all over my face. I laugh, and she wags, and the bond between us is locked, cemented forever. I can almost hear it snap into place.
She’s small, something like twenty or twenty-one inches and not even sixty pounds. She snorts and looks back at the trainer, then begins kissing me again. I continue to run my hands over her, feeling the movement of the air from her wildly wagging tail. I bend and kiss her head. I can’t help it, and I bend and kiss her head again. I love her. I love her!
“Oh, she’s adorable,” I say to our trainer. The joy and delight are ringing in my voice. “I love her. I love her already!”
He laughs too.
“I’m so glad. I knew you two would be a perfect match. Sit there and get to know your girl while I go get her stuff from my van. We’ll talk a bit and then we’ll go for the first walk.”
This is the beginning. From the first moment we met, and then from our first walk as guide and handler, Bianca is my soul mate dog. She makes me laugh every day we’ve been together. She lets me cry on her when I’m down. During the years she was my guide dog, she gave me confident and safe travel and a companion who is sweet as well as highly mischievous. There are times I think I’ll wring her neck, when she steals something from the counter or shreds another paper towel or unrolls a whole roll of toilet paper! There are the moments I weep at the idea that her time is limited. I would not change a day. I would not change her for anything, mischief and all.
Eleven years later, though she is retired and is now nothing but a pampered much loved pet, Bianca, Beanie Baby is still a joy to my heart and life. She will be thirteen next month, and I know that I have little time left with her. Her breed doesn’t normally live beyond thirteen or fourteen. She’s still in good health, a little arthritis, a little blind, maybe a little deaf. But she still runs to the door. She still wiggles and wags, dancing through life.
Thank you for the years and the laughter and the joy you have brought into my life. I’ll never regret any of the moments we’ve walked through life together, and when you’re gone, the memory of eleven years ago will bring tears, both happy and sad. My guide, my companion, my friend, thank you for it all, for giving all you had to me, and bringing me to depths of love, even at the worst of your times, that I never reached with any of my other guides. When you’re gone, I’ll remember and know how very much I was blessed on that morning eleven years ago when you came dancing into my life and changed it forever.
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