Excerpt: Two Dogs

Introduction

Like many young children of the last 40 years, Sesame Street was a staple of my life. Because of school, I generally didn’t have a chance to watch it during the week but on the weekends the entire week’s worth of episodes would replay through the morning and I would almost always be glued to the television set for the duration.

Along with Big Bird, Bert, Ernie and Oscar, my most vivid memory of the show from childhood are two segments that were played when I was roughly six-years-old. One was a piece on puppies from Guiding Eyes for the Blind. It briefly explained how these puppies were potential guide dogs and that they would be raised in foster homes until a certain age when they would then return to the school and be trained and placed with blind people. The other segment showcased a blind woman and her golden retriever guide dog. The two were stopped at a curb waiting to cross an intersection when a young girl came up to them. She asked the woman for permission to pet the dog, and the blind woman replied that she could pet her dog but warned her “not to distract him since he’s working.” The short piece ended with a shot of the girl patting the dog’s head and the guide dog team crossing the street. I remember being incredibly confused by the entire thing – especially the idea of distracting a working dog. But what stood out more for me was the fact that the dog had helped the blind woman cross a street.

With so many years separating me from these memories I can’t recall which I saw first, but I do know that the combination of the two is what truly sparked my desire to have a guide dog. At so young an age I didn’t fully comprehend exactly what a guide dog was, but with three pet dogs (and several more before that) I was already well aware of my genuine affection for the animal and I immediately grasped the concept that guide dogs helped blind people. What more did I need to know?