Crista Earl

A few weeks before my class began, a friend who is a dog guide user was telling me some of her experiences. She described some of the early frustrations of taking over the ownership of a well-trained dog. I said it must be like trying to do things with someone else's dog. I remembered a Will Rogers quote I had heard sometime in the distant past, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. "If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around." Well,…

Crista and Paige Her name is Paige! She's a black Golden Retriever/Labrador Retriever cross. She looks exactly like a lab to me. Her coat is short like a lab's and she's as black as black can be. She's a very high-energy dog. Ralph called me to the lounge just down from the women's dorm, and I went down to meet her. She pushed close, then laid down on the floor and asked me to scratch her tummy. She got up and scooted under my chair for a moment, then wanted to sniff all around the room. We…

Yesterday was full of exciting new experiences! Everything is leading up to preparations to match us with our dogs this afternoon. (In case you're just tuning in, I'm at the Seeing Eye, getting my first dog guide.) We had breakfast at 8:00, then went into a Morristown neighborhood for Juno walks. According to Ralph, one major purpose of these walks is to help the trainers determine which dog is best for each student. All the trainers took their small groups to the same area, so we saw our…