[Critique Group 1] Oct. 25, 2017 submission

[DQ Noriega]

No Outfit is Complete Without a Few Dog Hairs

 

            Dogs shed.  This is a fact of life to be included when
considering becoming a dog guide handler.  By the time we left The Seeing
Eye, Tammy's coat shone with daily brushing.  This minimized the amount of
fur she deposited on carpets and my clothes, but didn't eliminate it
completely.  Labs have what is called a double-coat.  The outer layer is
made up of straight slightly stiff longer hairs.  Under this is a soft
fluffy fine coat for insulation.  Tammy had two shed-outs a year, one in
fall and a major one in spring.  Taking her to a dog groomer for a good
vigorous bath and brushing helped remove a lot of her undercoat.  But for a
few weeks each spring and fall, daily brushing harvested enough fluff to
knit a litter of puppies.  Before training with Tammy, I had always loved
red, pink, any vivid bright color.  In childhood, they were the colors I
could recognize the longest as my vision began to deteriorate.  When I was
seven, I was disappointed that no one noticed it when I wore a new red
dress.  My mother laughed and marched me into my room.  She opened my closet
and pointed out that almost all of my dresses were solid red, red plaid, red
stripes, or red polka dotted.  

 

Mom had taught me to make French knots to braille my sweaters, headbands and
socks to help me match my accessories when dressing.  I tried not to buy two
items of clothing that were identical in fabric or style. I learned to sew
in junior high and with a lot of help from my mother I always managed to be
attractively dressed.  Having grown up in poverty, it was important to Mom
that we not be embarrassed at school by our clothes or appearance.  It
wasn't always easy to provide shoes and appropriate clothing for five
children.  She had a great eye for color and spent hours helping me redesign
Goodwill Store finds.  Mom taught me to take care with my appearance.
Although I don't care what other people look like, I feel more confident
when I know I am attractively dressed.

 

            At five foot three inches tall and weighing one hundred and ten
pounds, I was petite.  The mini skirts I wore were longer on me than they
were on taller girls.  In high school I easily passed the skirt length tests
our physical education teacher imposed.  She made the class kneel on the
floor and used a ruler to check skirt lengths.  Any girl wearing a skirt
more than six inches above the floor was automatically sent to detention
after school.  My stepfather joked that mini skirts were invented so girls
could run fast and that because they wore them, girls needed to run faster.
When I left for college, I only owned one pair of jeans and one pair of
tennis shoes that I had used for gym class.  Curt said I made him feel like
a bum whenever we went out because I always matched from head to toe.  I
borrowed a cambric work shirt, put my hair in pigtails and donned my one
pair of jeans and gym shoes to meet him for a movie and he still thought I
looked like a fashion plate because I had tied my pigtails with blue ribbons
to match my shirt.  

 

Because my brothers and stepfather were tall and had long legs, I had gotten
into the habit of wearing heels ranging from two to three inches high.  I
had dozens of pairs of wild shoes.  My favorite shoe store used my size in
its window displays.  After they were taken from the windows, the store
often put them on sale for just a couple of dollars.  So I left for college
with chartreuse suede ankle boots, red high-heeled alligator boots, baby
blue Cuban heels and a lot of other exotic footwear.   They weren't very
practical for trudging across a rural campus. Although I could even run in
heels, I found that they gave very poor footing on slick surfaces like icy
sidewalks and rain slick steps.  If I needed to do a leash correction, I had
to have a solid stance.    

 

            So, with Tammy in my life it was time to rethink my wardrobe.
Heels and platform shoes were out.  Boots had to have a good nonskid sole
and be chosen for protection from mud, snow and rainwater.  Running shoes
were good choices for walking miles and looked okay with jeans.  Skirts
needed to be ankle length because they were easier to keep ladylike, while
bending to harness a dog, clean up after her and sit on floors with her.
They also worked better for climbing up into high vehicles like buses or
pickup trucks.  Black skirts and slacks didn't show black dog hairs left
behind by a wagging tail or Labrador sides and shoulders as my girl guided
or just leaned against me.  I could still wear bright colored blouses and
shirts but black wool coats and jackets were good choices if I didn't want
to be running up large dry cleaning bills.  

 

            Many people who are born blind forget that others can see them.
In a sighted world, it is very important to take special care with your
appearance.  People are much more likely to approach in a friendly or
helpful manner, someone who is clean and attractively dressed.  Whether you
are going for a job interview, looking for a sales clerk's assistance or
just striking up a casual conversation at a meeting or event, it is
important to make a good impression.  Having Tammy in my life meant
resorting to a lint brush or roller as just one more step to preparing for
going out into the sighted community.  

 

            Tammy loved her grooming time.  I can't say she appreciated my
need to vacuum more often because of her presence in my life.  She hated the
noise of the machine.  Perhaps she thought that the vacuum cleaner might
start with the dog hair and develop a taste for the flavor and a desire to
consume the whole dog.  Whatever the reason, my fearless protector in
traffic and dicey situations scrambled to remove herself from any proximity
to that dreaded mechanism.  She almost fell out a window when she jumped to
the bed and pressed against the screen over  an open window to escape her
nemesis. If anyone were vacuuming a public building, she always cut a wide
berth around the infernal machine.  Attempts to allow her to sniff the
vacuum when it was turned off never completely convinced her they weren't
dangerous.  

 

 

 

 

 

DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

Quieth2o at charter.net

573-544-3511

 

I am late getting this posted because I managed to launder my IPhone on
Monday. All my contacts etc. were gone. I bought a new phone on Tuesday and
it took most of today to get the settings adjusted and the various passwords
reinstalled to retrieve files from the cloud. Phew, I need to avoid putting
my phone through a full wash cycle again. 

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