Diva's Tail: Love in the Lead

Give Me a Clue

Sunny and I met just outside the doors to the dining room.

“Where were you?” she asked me.

“They invited me to a grief group since I had a dog before.”

“Was it helpful?”

“Maybe for some of them, but for me, waste of time. It was just people boo-hoo-ing about how great our dead dogs were.”

We made our way to our designated table.

We dressed our salads and started eating. I wasn’t super fond of sitting at the same place with the same people all the time. I like to mix things up. Plus, Sunny was in my training group, Amber was our trainer, and the other spaces were occupied by the college students studying how to teach O&M to blind people.

I never liked the term “Orientation and Mobility” or O&M. because it’s about independent travel, but I’m not in charge of terminology.

“Just think,” Sunny said, “Tomorrow night at dinner, we’ll have our dogs.”

“Oh, stop it!” I teased. “I’m already going out of my mind.”

“Did you put anything in the dog breed section on the application?”

“No German shepherd. Other than that, I’ll take whatever. My mom wants me to have a blonde girl.”

“Why?”

“I guess it’s because it’s harder to get good pictures of a black dog. Thheir faces tend to get lost in the solid color.”

“She’s a photographer?”

“Not so much now, but she has won prizes for it and used to teach it.”

Amber joined us and prepped her salad. Servers brought our dinner.

“Good timing, Amber,” I told her.

“Always. I love that I don’t have to cook when I’m here with a class.”

And here I was thinking about how I wish I could have made the spaghetti sauce for our first meal so it would have tasted better.

“Can you tell us what breeds we’re getting?” Sunny asked.

Amber put her hands in front of her face in a warding gesture. “You know I can’t tell you.”

“Not even the color?” I asked, knowing the answer was “no” before she said it.

“So,” Amber began, “Do you ladies know about the prison program?” When we both said yes, she asked, “What do you think of it?”

Sunny answered, “I think it’s great.”

“I agreed and added, “I’m glad people who have done wrong have a way to bond with an animal and do something so helpful.

Probably both of us but at least one of us has a prison-raised dog.

“Some students ask for prison dogs because they have such perfect manners.” She explained.

“That makes sense,” Sunny said, “because they don’t have as many distractions.”