Review: Have Dog, Will Travel

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey
by Stephen Kuusisto

Lovely little memoir by a man who is blind from birth, then finally gets a seeing-eye dog at age forty or so. After years of pretending he could see--because his idiot parents forced him to--at age 38 he lost his good job and finally confronted the reality that pretending wasn't getting him anywhere. (Literally)

So he gets his service dog and undergoes the training to work effectively with her. That's the cool stuff--the dog comes pre-trained, but but human being has a lot of work to do!  Finally, together they begin on his real journey of life--traveling independently, taking on new jobs, and doing all the stuff that a blind man alone is afraid to do.

It's a little soppy and repetitive, but still fascinating. One thing I'd never considered is that a dog takes his direction from the human handler, and so long as there's a safe way to do it, he does. So if the human, say, wants to jaywalk across a city street in downtown New York, the dog will check traffic, see if there's a way across, and take it.  Even it if scares everyone watching near to death.

Good dog!