We’re heading to the halfway point of our 29-city “Healthy Pets Visit Vets” tour for “Your Dog: The Owner’s Manual.” We started in Houston the last week of April and now, the cities are starting to blur just a little bit. Is today Wednesday? Is this Detroit? I love meeting people and pets, and I love sharing information to make lives better, so every day I awake with an “attitude of gratitude” and head for the first media interview of the day before dawn. Then I meet with colleagues, then I have a book-signing at a PETCO, then it’s off to the next city.
Yes, I’m loving it, but still … things start to blur a little after a while.
Today, a woman named Marguerite Maddox reminded me, but good. And God bless her for it.
Marguerite told me she has been preparing to come out to our Detroit-area book-signing for a couple of months, after hearing me interviewed on PetLife radio talking about how the special relationship between a person and an animal can be life-changing, and how that’s never more true than when a trained service animal is paired up with a person living with a disability.
Like Marguerite.
“I heard you on the radio, talking about what dogs can do to help,” she said, “and I was determined to come out and meet you.”
Determination was exactly what it took, because getting around isn’t easy for Marguerite, not even with her service dog, Jello, to help. The book-signing was miles away from her home in Detroit, and it took her a couple of buses and an hour and a half to get to the signing. But she wanted me to see what she could do, and she wanted to talk to me about it.
Jello is a Lab mix, and she is Marguerite’s first service dog. Jello helps by making her aware of her surroundings, by picking up dropped items and by helping alert to sounds Marguerite cannot hear. She also, like many service dogs, helps to bridge the gap between people who don’t know what to say to a person with disabilities; “your dog is beautiful” is a natural place to start. And that’s where I started, with Marguerite, but that’s not where I ended. She told me how important it was to share her story, her love of photography, and how much she liked my books.
I do run into a lot of fans, but few are as determined to see me as Marguerite was, and I was very, very touched and grateful for her.
As always, our day in Detroit ended with a long drive to the next city. I wanted to drive Marguerite and Jello home so they wouldn’t face another long and difficult bus commute, but I couldn’t. We had to hit the road for Chicago. But I never have to worry about caring people in a place full of animal-lovers, and another person at the signing immediately stepped up to drive them home.
I’ll long remember Marguerite and Jello, and how they reminded me why I do what I do.
No comments:
Post a Comment