Memorial for Angie
June 12, 1998-July, 2007
She was the dog of my dreams. I had wanted a German shepherd and had heard how their gait feels different from a lab. I knew of their devotion and intelligence. When this 57-pound lady came into my life at the Seeing Eye, it was love at first sight for me and a definite “I’ll take it under consideration” for Angie. She was certainly bright and felt that between the two of us, she could out guess and out brilliant me any time. She was very fast and a hard puller. She was very goal oriented to a fault. She needed to be first.
Angie had things all figured out, or so she thought. She was desperate to be first at everything, first to the dining room at the school where we trained together, first to get to the van. Her memory for past events was phenomenal. She was a one trial learner. The trainer said that she was very bright among a class of dogs that were all very intelligent. She stood out.
I thought that the problems of her attachment to the trainer would resolve once we were home, but she transferred these strong feelings to my husband rather than to me initially.
Her eagerness was difficult to deal with at times. For example, there was the time that my husband happened to drive by just as we approached the curb. In her eagerness to reunite us, she tried to jump onto the top of the van as it traveled down the street.
I needed the help of a trainer who came to my home and spent a few days with me helping us to bond and me to establish the leadership role with this partner.
A bright dog brings its own set of challenges. She was forever challenging my authority. She was ever alert. She was my self-appointed guard as well. Once, in an airport, a stranger came up to us and said that my dog was the most alert guide he had ever seen. Whereas others rested quietly with head down, my dog’s head was always up and her eyes were counting everything. She knew who should be where and what they should be doing. If they did something else, she would alert. She hated people to come into a group late. She would growl or bark her disapproval for their tardiness. Once during a break at a seminar of about 50 people, one person walked in who was not of our group. My dog had to tell me about her.
Walking with this guide was almost like walking with a sighted friend. She telegraphed everything to me through the harness and she didn’t miss a thing. If my husband happened to be driving down the far side of the street where we were walking, I could tell by the way that she turned her head and gazed after him that he had passed us.
She was friendly with strangers, yet she was very vocal and I knew immediately if someone entered or left the room where we were. I would tell others in the class that I was teaching that she hates late comers and will always tell on them.
Often I felt that I was a drag on the other end of the harness. She would yank me forward over rough ground as if to tell me to hurry up.
Still I loved this girl. It was she who accompanied me to our nation’s capital where we visited several members of congress. It was as if Angie could read my mind. We sailed through the halls in pursuit of the offices we needed to visit. It was wonderful working with this partner.
It was sad when her career ended after only a year and a half. Her vocalizations, meant only for communication, scared others as they were often growls. This is why I found it necessary to retire her early.
She was still in very good health and we kept her. She assigned herself the task of ridding our yard of squirrels, something that she never completely accomplished.
She went quickly. We saw in the days leading up to a week-long vacation that she was off her food. However, my husband realized that he had inadvertently purchased a different formula of the food we were using. Attributing her poor appetite to that, we bought the “correct” food and she ate better. We went on vacation with instructions for our dog sitter to watch her and take her to the vet if she did not continue to eat. The worst happened and she was taken to the vet. We were notified and cut our vacation a day short. We knew her time was limited, but we didn’t know that she only had a few minutes. She came into the house and lay down on her rug. She was gone. She did everything quickly. The good news was that there was nothing we could have done for her. The vet said it was cancer in her lungs.
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