Tales Of A Handler and her Dog

True and personal accounts of a handler and her first guide dog

  • From the beginning

    Welcome to my little corner of the internet where your main host is my guide dog. Most people on my Facebook page knows my guide dog’s name. But for the sake of mystery of those unfortunate souls that stumbled into this blog, I will keep it anonymous for now until I reveal on dog day. I mean you can google it but why ruin the fun?

    This summer will mark 5 years since I been match with my four-legged angel. I post a lot about my dog and our memorable moments on my Facebook. I decided to create this series of blog in celebration of the past 5 years. So, let us start from the beginning.

    I was born in Cali, Colombia. As an infant, I was diagnosed with Retinoblastoma bilateral. Fast-forward 2.5 years later, my mom and I are flown into New York City for better medical treatment. I spent about the first 8 years of my life battling cancer. At some point, my mom meets my stepdad, and they go on to have two children. My younger sister is Melanie, and my youngest brother is Jeremy. I do have an older brother name Angel. Har, har, Angela and Angel. Would you believe me if I told you my biological father’s name is Jesus David? I can not make this stuff up.

    Anyways, at some point, my parents enroll me in a school for the blind and visually impaired. When I was 10 years old, I was introduced to the concept of a guide dog. By this point, my family had an English Cocker Spaniel for about 4 years. I named him Clifford when I was 6 years old. I was a huge fan of Clifford the big red dog. Prior to losing my sight when I was five, my parents and I spent a lot of times in the hospital. This meant entertaining a 4-year-old with drawing activities, movies, and books.

    I remember my doctor telling me bluntly, that in order to save my life, he had to remove my eyes. With that, I made it an effort to absorb everything and anything with sight. This meant binge watching Winnie the Poo, Clifford, Dragon Tail, Arthur… all sorts of cartoons. I wanted to have a permanent picture in my memory for the day that I would be cloaked in darkness. Ok so, I do not actually see darkness. But it just sounded more poetic in my head.

    When I was introduced to the concept of a guide dog, my mobility instructor showed me an episode of Clifford, puppy’s day, where he meets a seeing eye dog. Clifford struggles to comprehend why his new friend would ignore him when he saw her and her handler out and about. My mobility instructor had a stuffed guide dog with a harness, and she took me on a Juno walk. Typically, a Juno walk is when an instructor holds the other end of a harness to simulate working with a guide dog. It was in that very moment, that I knew I wanted a guide dog when I grew up. I counted down to the year where I could apply for one. Two years later, I went on my first tour of Guiding Eyes for the Blind. Back then, classes were 6 weeks long and the bedrooms had two beds. So, you had to roommate with another handler. I returned 2 years later for another tour, and they were no longer doing double rooms. My final tour of Guiding Eyes was when I was 16 years old. My mobility instructor knew how much I enjoyed these presentations, so she always invited me along these school trips. Ideally, they were trying to bring different groups of students each visit, but I was squeezed into every single group! I never got bored of listening to these presentation especially because we got to do Juno walks with dogs in training.

    I decided to apply for a dog my senior year of High School. College was definitely in my future, and I wanted to have a guide dog for when I went off to school.

  • Who said a dog is not entitled to her own opinion?

    History professor: Now&days, are there still some doubts in regard to the United Nation?
    *hara whines*
    Now we know Hara’s opinion on the UN 6🤓😂😂😂

  • Some days were definitely more tolerable than others!

    So yesterday was a shitty day. Due to the guy who fed Hara while she was in harness when we were on our way to history class, I had to stop and Yell at him and then I had to make sure she was all right. Then I went to report the incident which caused me to miss class. Which I was a bit disappointed because I actually like my US history class. Anyway that was yesterday and today is a brand new day. Hara was a rockstar already as we made our way to math class. And while I was in math, I got an email from my US history professor which said that she missed me in class and that she hoped I was all right and she attached the PowerPoint presentation and notes for class from yesterday. Honestly this made me really happy. It’s really nice to know that there are professors who genuinely care 🤗🤗🤓

  • Do Not Feed Working Dogs Without Consent!

    Today, I was on my way to history class. Suddenly, Hara stopped and I stuck my foot out to investigate. Turns out, some guy was sitting on a set of steps, eating his lunch. He took it upon himself to feed Hara a piece of his chicken. I seriously lost it!

    You should never feed a working service animal without the handler’s consent! Scratch that, you should never feed any animals that isn’t yours. But bringing it back to my circumstances, you do not know if my dog has any special diet or dietary restrictions. There was another incident where I dug out a big piece of chocolate cake from Hara’s throat. I never felt her head dip to grab it from the ground. My guesses are that she snatched it from someone or someone fed it to her as we were walking by. I’m not a fan of either scenario!

  • The Power Behind Silence

    Every day at 6:30 in the morning we have to do obedience with our dogs. Obedience is a series of exercises in which you command the dog to sit, down, sit stay, down stay and recall. Usually this involve both verbal and physical cues. But today we did something different. We had to go to our obedience routine silently. We could not give the dogs any verbal cues. It was all done through physical cues. And I have to say that my Hara did a amazing job! 👏🏼 😃😊 as always she manages to impress me! 😍

  • I get excited about the littlest thing!

    Going on my first night trip with Hara to get ice scream 😄 not that there’s a difference between night and day travel for me … 😂😏 but still …

  • July 6th, 2017

    Angela Villota

    Day Four of Training

    Day 4 of training consisted of my first attempt of obedience with Hara. I grew up around untrained pets, so it was such a mind-blowing experience when Hara listened to my commands. Yes, I know she is supposed to do that but… only people with untrained pets can relate! Today was also my first time putting on the harness without supervision. This may seem trivial, but it was a huge deal for me. The process of loading into the van was quite exciting. I did it without falling which was something to celebrate. We did our first official rout in White Plains. Deanna was still attached to the training leash, but she did not do anything to prevent Hara from being naughty. If she did mess up, it was up to me to correct her. Luckily, I only had to correct once but that was enough to let Deanna know that I was a light corrector and needed to work on it. That afternoon we were each given the opportunity to use the multipurpose room for a 20-minute play time. Upon arriving to my scheduled playtime, Deanna showed me how to recall. I was impressed at how Hara came to me when I called her over from across the room. Then I set the bucket of toys down for Hara to dig in and pick out a toy she may like. Basically, this dog loves anything from bones, to squeaky toys to bouncy balls. Playing fetch with her was so much fun. I am not sure if I showed her how to play fetch or if her puppy raiser did. I was so glad they gave us the opportunity to blow off some steam in the multipurpose room. I felt bad that we could not give them free range in the room. We had to keep them on leash or on tiedown when we had to do other things such as showering, using the bathroom, taking a nap etc. This is done to establish boundaries between handler and dog. At one point, Deanna had me working on corrections with a stuffed toy Labrador. … Basically, I suck at it. I would be issued a gentle leader at some point. Thankfully, Hara does not require a heavy hand. I also noticed how comfortable I felt during our walk. I can totally see why we were matched together, and I am so grateful for that decision.

  • Dog Day!

    Angela Villota

    It is July 5th of 2017, and it is my final morning without a dog! This is it! We did one final session of fake obedience before breakfast, then I had to wait long excruciating 15 minutes for our 8:15 meeting where we would learn our matches. Deanna would be the one announcing our matches. I remember being the last one to be told in the class. I swear she did that on purpose. Despite thinking the female black lab was too uncomfortably fast for me, I was super excited to learned that the trainers felt that we were a perfect match. Her name is Hara and at first, I was not too crazy about the pronunciation of the name, but it grew on me! I never told anyone my preference for a dog because I would have been happy with anything, but I secretly wanted a black female lab just so I can put pink bows on her head. … I did not actually do that until like 4 years later, but I did buy her cute sweaters and scarves to rock in the winter!

        Anyways, my room was right next to Erick’s and because the walls were so thin, I was able to hear him receiving his dog. Boy was I jealous and about to burst with anticipation. I placed my ear up to the wall like a nosy neighbor and just absorbed his happiness with his new four-legged best friend. When I heard Deanna knocked on my door, it took every ounce of self-control I could muster to prevent myself from shrieking something fierce. After letting Deanna into my room with Hara, we sat on my bed and I fumbled around with my treat pouch, attempting to retrieve a high value treat. I had both Charlie bears and high values, but I did not know the difference. I promise the instructors had gone over the differences, but I was already daydreaming about the moment Hara would be brought to my room. I thought if I left the alumni room faster, got to my room faster, time would match my speed and Hara’s leash would be in my hand in no time. I saw this as a true life-changing moment. I felt Hara’s judging eyes on me the whole time my hand was fumbling around in my treat pouch. Deanna handed me her leash and I felt like I was holding a baby. Like here is this leash in my hand attached to a well-trained dog that I can possibly ruin or fail. I can imagine this moment being special to a trainer too. Here is a dog you spent months training and now you are handing the leash over to a new student. After Deanna left, it was just Hara and me sitting on the floor. She whined a lot. Which honestly kind of broke my heart as a first-time handler because I felt like she did not like me.

    Lunch time was announced over the PA, and we heeled our way to the dining room. I practiced having Hara lying under my chair while I ate. At first, she tried to get up a few times, but she was able to settle eventually. After lunch, we had our first official walk down country road. I was not a fan of that walk because it felt kind of awkward. Like it was not Hara’s fault, it was the actual walk. It was zig-zaggy, there was a few lose pebbles on the ground and I thought for sure I was going to fall because my middle name is Klutz. When we returned to our room, we were supposed to be bonding by sitting on the floor for a few hours. I was honestly bored because I wanted to play with her in a bigger room or groom her or go for another walk. I was so eager to learn how to care for her. Feeding time was the second highlight of that day because it was related to her care. After a long day full of excitement, I looked forward to bedtime. I gave the “go crate” and Hara eagerly walked into her crate. I gave her once last head-scratch prior to latching the crate and getting into bed myself.