Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Guide Dog & Her Poet


Steve Kuusisto's memoir Have Dog, Will Travel includes scenes from 38 years of "creeping" through life to hide his inability to see more than light and a few colors; a history of reforms empowering the blind that reach apotheosis in the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) of 1990; and anecdotes that show the barriers that persist, due to prejudice and misunderstanding.  But more than anything else, he wants to immortalize in words Corky, the guide dog who brought him out into the world of crosswalks, airplanes, trust, and love.

We who read the book will remember seeing Corky "run full steam" into his arms at their first meeting: "She placed her large front paws on my shoulders and washed my face, and then, as if she fully understood her job would require comedy, she nibbled my nose" (50).  He reflects, "She was happy but she had something else, a quality of absorption.  She looked me over like a tailor," beginning for both of them "a lifelong process of learning to read each other."  We'll remember Corky temporarily non-plussed by aromas inside her first supermarket.  One time, a couple of young men inside a convenience store call her "hero dog" and tell Kuusisto a story from the Koran about a hero dog in heaven.  Another time, a policeman, seeing Corky pull Kuusisto up just short of a hole in the sidewalk out of sight around a corner, asks permission to rub her belly to express his admiration, and all the witnesses around join in. We'll remember how Corky falls in love at first sight with Roscoe, a black lab, and how they tug their owners into friendship that grows into marriage. We'll see Corky during a lecture by Professor Kuusisto, suddenly roll on her back, kicking all four feet in the air.

Between delightful stories of Corky, we get anecdotes of indignities that disabled people suffer. To the early 20th century, laws kept disabled people off the streets in deference to the public's sensibilities (205).  Attitudes began to change when soldiers were blinded by gas and guide dogs, "fought" alongside troops in World War I (82-83).  But prejudice and pity add insult to daily struggle for Kuusisto to this day. People stand over Kuusisto to pray for healing and forgiveness (161).  Others accuse him of using his disability to gain privileges (204). When one man screamed at him, Corky simply pushed between the two, de-escalating the situation.

Kuusisto learns from his dog.  "I was going to be enlarged," he realizes in his first days with Corky (41).  The power of praise for Corky opens Kuusisto to understanding the power of praise in human relationships (56). He writes that dogs can't "heal" us, but "draw us out into the world" (181), blind or not.  Corky was a "Renaissance dog," showing flexibility in five areas of canine cognition identified by Duke specialist Brian Hare: empathy, communication, cunning, memory, and reasoning (229). "A dog in class," Professor Kuusisto writes, "insists love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries" (233).

Kuusisto brings a poet's sensibilities to his memoir.  There's a rough chronology to the book, but some of the earliest memories pop up late.  For example, telling about an offer to work as spokesman for Guiding Eyes in his forties, he interpolates a story from his teens of being close to death from a self-loathing fast when, on impulse, he entered an Episcopal church; affected by the idea that the bread and wine could consecrate his own flesh, he decided to take, eat, and live (194); and he decides the job is a risk he can face.  He alludes to Buddhism, Duke Ellington, Jung, and King.

What I appreciate most is simply the gift of Corky, and the instruction from the Guiding Eyes staff whenever Corky did something well: "Love her up!"

[Photos: Just because I use any excuse to include photos of Mia, I include two from time on my patio mid-June.  In one, I love her up; in the other, she's loving up my mom.]



(All page references are from Stephen Kuusisto, Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018.)






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