Adventures with Racer

Visited the City Creek Mall on Friday night with my niece and boyfriend. Waiting for the elevator, the doors open and a girl about five years old exclaims, “Oh, how cute, please come in this elevator, please, please!” The elevator is going down and we need to go up, so we say Sorry as the doors close. We continue to wait and then the elevator appears again, this time going up. The door opens and it is the same family with the pleading little girl, only this time she is cheering, YAY! We step in laughing as the cute girl makes room for Racer to sit right beside her. I love encountering polite children and she just calmly stands near my dog saying sweet little things like, what a good boy, what a sweet dog!

There is a creek running down the center of this mall, and we decide to stop and see if Racer notices the large koi fish that are swimming in the creek. My boyfriend tells me that Racer starts to curiously watch the fish; his ears perk up and the tail starts wagging.  Passersby stop to watch my dog watch the fish.

This morning we went to the park for a walk. Racer decides he needs to relieve and my boyfriend says he will do the honors. He takes the leash and steps onto the grass while I hold the harness and stay on the sidewalk. After a few minutes, I hear my boyfriend’s footsteps and my dog sidles up to me and leans into the back of my legs. I say hello, and am about to reach down to buckle the harness on when I hear a guy say, “C’mon, lets go buddy.” I suddenly realize it isn’t my boyfriend or my dog! The owner gently pulls on his leash and they walk away. Then my boyfriend walks up. Having seen the whole thing, he says, “It was a black lab.” At least I had the breed right!” Smiles ensue.  

It Makes Sense

I am in awe of my experience with blindness. I’m not saying I wouldn’t jump at the chance to get my vision back, but honestly it is interesting to me to think about the way I experienced the world when I had sight verses now when I am blind. Just thinking about the human body and how it compensates, I remember going to a lecture where the speaker said that the visual cortex is a very large part of the brain. But when a person goes blind the brain switches gears and sends more signals to the other parts of the brain which control the other senses, so they get more nutrients and blood flow and they grow larger and larger while the visual cortex actually shrinks.

It’s springtime now, and today I was on my early morning walk around the Avenues. My guide dog leads me and takes the stress out of navigating through the neighborhood so I am able to daydream and notice what my other senses are picking up. We set out at 6:30 am, and at that time there are so many birds singing. It is so loud and beautiful that it makes me imagine that I am in a rain forest. I even hear a wood pecker nearby. I start to smell fragrant flowers that are so sweet and the scent is so potent I think I must be walking through a flower shop. I want to bottle it and use it for perfume. This particular morning a very unexpected scent hits my nose, and I could tell my dog was keen to it too. The most sensational aroma of fried chicken permeated this section of the block. How strange! At this hour of the morning? Really! I don’t know who was drooling more, me or my dog!

I used to go on many walks when I was sighted, but I don’t remember experiencing any of the things that caught my interest this morning on our fabulous walk through the Avenues!