The second time

The second time

The second time I saw Emma was after a blind tennis tournament we played in Nice, France. Before returning home, we took a small detour and took a city train to Berlin’s outskirts. Emma’s trainer came with two dogs, emma being first to give my hand a quick examining lick. She was very excited and playful. We took the two dogs on a free run near a forrest, where they played, and I tried recall on her.

Pavel immediately said:

“This is not a dog, tis is a toy! She doesn’t look black and isn’t big, she is little sandy!”

True, Emma is sand-coloured, and definitely tinier in statue and height than both my Hovawarts.

The trainer told us a lot about her. Initially, Emma didn’t want to be there. She had felt the need to be responsible for everything that was happening around her, even though that suit didn’t fit her at all, it was too tall and too heavy. With the help of the trainer’s eight-year-old Australian Sheplerd, undoubtedly the manager of the dog pack, she learnt to relax and found out that even when she relaxed, others did the job and nothing happened.

At first, the trainer’s task was to teach Emma to do nothing, precisely nothing. No carrying things, no guiding, no being in control – just walking along and looking at the world.

She took her on a city train platform for a week, before Emma came out of hiding and started discovering the world around her, and to her big surprise the world wasn’t thunders and monsters, but the world wasn’t really interested in her.

Emma learnt that destroying blankets, digging holes or biting fences would lead to boredom, so she stopped it and preferred to be with the rest of the gang rather than the dog house all on her own.

She didn’t like the signal jacket on her body, she didn’t like the harness on her body, and she didn’t like pets – she was too impatient and too alert for that.

So the trainer spent a lot of time petting, stroking and cuddling her, combing and massaging her. She found a harness that was tolerable for Emma, and with that she went everywhere – guiding, playing, walking – playing and walking without the handle, of course.

She appeared to be very sensitive and easy to scare, but we decided to give it a go and so we put the harness on her and went for a small walk.

Emma loves a brisk pace, close to flying. She raced me along an uneventful path, but when we returned there was a narrow place. The trainer warned me that she might not like it, but she proved her wrong, guided me through without hesitation and showed me the entrance to a flower shop.

When Pavel, who was sitting on a bench resting, called her, she ran to him, kissed him hello and forgot that the harness was still on her back.

We then took Emma on the city trains with us. The trainer was happy to see that she didn’t seem to be scared at the sight and sound of one of Berlin’s major train stations. She curiously peaked through handrail fences down to the next floor, and watched people passing by. She even looked around herself on the city train and eventually started to take a sniff at one or the other passenger.

After that meeting, I was confident that I would soon have a new guide dog with me, thanks to a great portion of devotion and belief in little miss sandy.