Visiting Southeastern Guide Dogs, Part 1

All of us have seen a guide dog leading a blind person out in the world. But have you ever thought about what's involved in training these dogs or preparing their owners to give up their white canes? My visit to Southeastern Guide Dogs in Palmetto was an eye-opening experience. 

An incredible amount of information was crammed into our 90 minute tour.  Here are some of the highlights:
--The school was founded in 1982 by a husband and wife team. It is one of ten guide dog training facilities in the country. The 35 acre campus in Palmetto includes kennels, training facilities, a veterinarian hospital and dorms for the students.
--Three breeds of dog are trained: Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers and goldadors (a blend of Labrador and golden).  The dogs are bred at the school.  (When not "working," the breeder dogs live with a volunteer family.) The average litter size is seven puppies; the largest has been 14.  Approximately 250 puppies are born into the program annually.  Naming rights for a puppy can be yours for a $5,000 donation. 
--Each year the school graduates approximately 100 teams of dogs and students. The facility is in expansion mode and will soon up that number to 120 teams per year.  Over the life of the school, more than 2,800 dogs and students have been paired. 
--The cost of a guide dog is $60,000. This includes both training and lifetime medical care. The school's annual budget is approximately $25 million. 

--The Paws for Independence program is the traditional guide dog program. The school also has a Paws for Patriots program that matches dogs with veterans who have brain injuries or suffer from PTSD.  The school's Canine Connections program matches dogs with kids age 10-17 who are blind or are losing their sight. The primary purpose of this program is to teach the child how to care for a pet. 
--The school has seen an explosion of demand for dogs working with vets. Some dogs are matched with individual veterans; others work in a facility. Dogs have a finely tuned sense of smell due to the huge number of receptors in their noses and throats (300 million to a human's 5 million). This is why dogs can sniff out not only drugs or bombs but some cancers, anxiety and oncoming diabetic attacks. When at a veterans' facility, dogs often seek out individuals who are suffering from stress, thus alerting the staff that a patient might need some extra attention.
--The school likes to say that its dogs choose their own career paths. Approximately 40% of the dogs graduate and become guide dogs. Another 20% go into one of the school's other programs.  Some dogs undergo a "career change" and become police dogs. Others go into the breeding program or become ambassadors.  A small group of dogs decide to be regular pets.
--The career span of a guide dog is eight-nine years.  

While this information is interesting, it doesn't begin to capture the experience of being on campus and seeing the dogs themselves.  Stay tuned for a post about what's involved in the training program, including our own visit with the ridiculously cute 12-week old Talulah. 

The Belle of Amherst with Lisa Egan Woods

Each fall, I eagerly await the new season from the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training. Although I might not always love the play selection, the caliber of performance by the second year students is uniformly high. (There's a reason the school is one of the top ten acting programs in the country.)  The only problem is that I get attached to the students and miss them as they move on in their journey.  Going to performances in the Late Night Series is one way to counteract my separation anxiety.

Lisa Egan Woods as Emily Dickinson

As I understand it, the Late Night Series consists of performances that third year students have put together on their own.  The first installment in this year's series was a one-night only performance by Lisa Egan Woods of "The Belle of Amherst," a play about Emily Dickinson. It was wonderful. 

You don't have to be a poetry buff to know Emily Dickinson's name and, quite likely, some of her work. She is, after all, one of America's most significant poets. The story of her life yielded some surprises, though. 

Dickinson grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts and lived her adult life in seclusion in her family home. She spent a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, a school whose evangelical fervor did not suit her. Students were classified as professed Christians, those with hope, and those without hope. Dickinson found herself in the last category as she struggled with her faith. (As a Mount Holyoke alum, I found this history of the school particularly interesting. When I attended the women's college nearly 140 years later, it was no longer religious in nature. Nonetheless, the lights still went on and boys were ushered out when parties were declared over at 1 a.m.)

I loved the way poems were interspersed throughout the play. I was surprised to learn that only seven of Dickinson's nearly 1800 poems were published during her lifetime and that those poems had been heavily edited.  (A complete collection of her work was not published until 1955, almost 70 years after her death.)

Only known picture of Dickinson

The play includes a meeting between Dickinson and Higginson, a publisher with whom she had had a long correspondence. Dickinson believed that Higginson had come to visit for the purpose of deciding which of her poems to include in a book. Instead, he made it clear that he found her poetry--with its short lines, slant rhyme and seemingly random capitalization and punctuation--unworthy of publication. Her dream shattered, she wrote the poem "I'm Nobody." The poem packed an emotional wallop when put into the context of an isolated woman whose desire to communicate with the world through her poetry has been crushed. 

I'm Nobody!  Who are You?
by Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

(Side note: Higginson also declined to publish Walt Whitman.)

Wearing Dickinson's trademark muted colors, Woods truly inhabited the role of the poet. The play contained humor and sorrow and resignation, and in each instance Woods struck the right tone.  (In fact, in a brief conversation with her after the show, I was surprised by the differences between her "Dickinson" voice and her own speaking voice.)  It was a performance of which Woods and her fellow students who helped with direction, lighting, set design and direction should be proud.

The Asolo Conservatory season is kicking off soon with two absurdist shows in one -- "The Actor's Nightmare" by Christopher Durang and "The Real Inspector Hound" by Tom Stoppard.  Tickets for the four show season are only $100, one of the best deals around.  I can't wait. 

Lowbrow and Highbrow Family Fun

I spent the last week in September at my sister's taking care of Drew, my 13 year old nephew, and Jakie, my four year old nephew dog, while Suzanne and Tim were off on a business boondoggle in St. Tropez.  It was a surprisingly easy and fun week, but for Drew's excruciatingly long flag football game and Jakie's gag-inducing incident. 

I headed back to my sister's last week-end for a responsibility-free and fun-filled couple of days.  On Friday night we headed to the Cine-bowl and Grille in Delray Beach.  (It always pays to keep an eye on those Groupon offerings -- Suzanne scored an hour of bowling for four with shoe rental, a large pizza and a pitcher of beer for $40.)  

Bowler babes

I'll preface this by saying that I am not known in my family as an athlete (and for good reason). Nonetheless, I had visions of breaking 100 on my first bowling outing in many years.  My dreams were dashed when my first four balls ended up in the gutter about halfway down the lane.  Drew kindly suggested that we might put the kiddie bumpers up when it was my turn.  I began eyeing the slide-looking devices the little children in the next lane were using to get their balls going in a straight--if painfully slow--path to the pins.  I lowered my hopes to achieving a double digit score.  I gave up taking a few steps before releasing my ball, sacrificing speed in hopes of a bit more precision.  Despite my absolute and total lack of success, it was great fun with music blaring and videos streaming and copious amounts of unhealthy food being consumed. 

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Suzanne got on an incredible hot streak in the second game.  She rolled two strikes in a row, then a spare, and had scored 121 with a frame or two to go before our time ran out. The boys had headed to the arcade and missed her performance, but Tim and I watched in awe.  Perhaps there's still time for her to join a senior league and get a shirt with her name embroidered across the pocket.

Saturday night found us at the Broward Center for Performing Arts for a performance of "Once."  The show won eight Tony Awards in 2012, including Best Musical, so I was happy to be able to tag along with Suzanne and Tim for the performance.

Before the show began, audience members were invited onstage to check out the set (which was an old mirrored bar) and buy a drink.  Needless to say, I was all over that.  As a bonus, some of the actors came onstage, instruments in hand, and began to play just as I was climbing the steps.  There were fiddlers and a mandolin player, a pianist and an accordionist.  One guy played the tambourine with his foot while strumming a guitar.  The music made me think of gypsies, and the crowd really got into it.  The actors continued playing as the audience members were ushered to their seats, with the music flowing seamlessly into the first song of the show.  Seriously fun.

The story of the play is nothing remarkable -- a disheartened Irish musician whose songs celebrate his lost love meets a woman who encourages and inspires. But I loved the music, and Stuart Ward and Dani de Waal were wonderful in their roles as "Guy" and "Girl."  The choreography was simple, yet beautiful. I especially liked the way the actors were situated so the audience could see their reflections in the various mirrors.  And in a flashback to my work with students learning English as a second language, I laughed as the Czech immigrants worked on their English by watching--and arguing about--their favorite soap opera.  All in all, a highly enjoyable way to spend the evening. 

Recent -- and Recommended -- Reads

Anyone who loves to read knows how addictive a good book can be. You find yourself squeezing out 15 minutes here and there to read "just one more chapter." (Really, does that volunteer work have to be done right now?)  Here are some books that have recently stolen my time.

The Hundred Year House by Rebecca Makkai --  Told in reverse order, Makkai takes us through four generations of a family home and its residents (including the artists living on the estate during its tenure as an art colony). It's a ghost story of sorts, with the spirit of the original matriarch of the house lurking in the background to be called up when anything odd occurs. But it's much more a story about the secrets people keep and their consequences. Makkai's writing propels the story, well, backwards with language that had me reaching for my post-it flags. (Take, for instance, when one character breaks into the main house. "Doug's back had been turned on the hallway for a long time, as if he'd never watched a spy movie in his life....Now that he'd become aware...of the fact that he couldn't turn his head like an owl, he was uncomfortable whichever way he faced.")  I loved the discovery of the unexpected stories behind the people and key objects introduced in the earlier portions of the book. (Would that be reverse literary bread crumbs?) "The Hundred Year House" starts off strong and picks up steam from there.  I'm looking forward to reading more by this young author.

Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller -- I grew up reading Nancy Drew, and I love a good thriller to this day. But as my horizons expanded to literary fiction, I've found it more difficult to find thrillers that satisfy my quest for good writing and a compelling plot. "Norwegian by Night" hits both marks. (In fact, the NY Times says it has "the brains of a literary novel and the body of a thriller.") The book tells the story of Sheldon Horowitz, a widower who has been transplanted from New York to Oslo to live with his granddaughter Rhea and her husband Lars. It is a tough adjustment for Sheldon, made more so by the fact that Rhea and Lars believe he is suffering from dementia.  And while he does have a few delusions, Sheldon's eccentric behavior is driven more by the fact that he is haunted by the past -- most significantly, his son who died in the Viet Nam War while trying to make his father proud and his own secret past as a Marine sniper in North Korea -- than by dementia. When violence erupts in the family's apartment building, Sheldon almost inadvertently gets involved and becomes the caretaker of a young boy whose mother has just been murdered. The book tells the story of the pair's journey (both physical and emotional) as Sheldon tries to keep the child out of harm's way.  For Mark Twain fans, there are references throughout to "Huckleberry Finn."  In addition, Sheldon's identity as a Jew is an important facet of his personality. While I didn't fully appreciate either of these aspects of the narrative, they add to the depth of the story. "Norwegian by Night" is a great read for fans of the genre.

Euphoria by Lily King.  This book has gotten so much press that I suspect I'm not sharing a literary find. But I'm chiming in nonetheless. "Euphoria" was inspired by the time Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson spent together in 1933 on the Sepik River in New Guinea. Although the events and tribes described are fictional, King has incorporated details from the work that Mead et al did while in the region. (To hear King talk about her inspiration and see some great pictures of Mead and her tribes, click here.) Mead/Nell's research was focused on whether gender differences are innate or cultural, with her research coming down definitively on the side of culture. (Click here to read a bit about Mead's work.)  While it was fascinating to read about the various tribal cultures, the relationships among the anthropologists and their differing approaches to their work interested me even more. The story is told primarily from the perspective of Bankson/Bateson, although it starts with -- and periodically shifts to -- Mead/Nell's view. I found this device a bit confusing, especially at the beginning of the book. Ultimately, though, it added to the narrative. "Euphoria" is a great book for anyone with an interest in human relationships. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  So many great books, so little time.