Open Writing

Lulu's Holiday Adventure

Taking a guide dog on holiday to the mountains sounds delightful, but it has its drawbacks, as this year's family getaway reminded me.

The first thing that went wrong was that we got a phone-call in our chalet on Saturday morning. The person on the desk said, "The manager wants to know if the sheet lying near reception is for your dog." Bewildered, my husband said he knew nothing about a sheet, but would come immediately to sort it out. No sooner had he gone out the door than I realised what the problem was and groaned inwardly. We live in a country where accents can play havoc with the language and lead to lots of miscommunication.

Within minutes, my husband was back, cursing the dog and railing at my daughters. "Who let Lulu deposit her business at the entrance to the hotel?" he demanded. The girls protested that they had been distracted by the forms they had been asked to fill in and by our phone-call alerting them that we had broken down on the dirt road fifteen kilometres from the resort. This was understandable, and Lulu wouldn't have disgraced herself if she had been travelling with me, but it was enough to make me insist that my furry companion remain strictly under my care for the remainder of the week.

Not that she minded; devoted labrador that she is, Lulu was only too happy to be benched close to me at all times. After all, she was there to assist me and provide me with a degree of independence around the resort. But there, too, we hit problems.

As soon as the sheet issue was resolved, my husband took me for a walk around the premises to look for an appropriate "busy-busy" site. We found one at the end of the driveway; a patch of scrubby grass that flanked a field where horses roamed. All I had to do was walk along three sides of a quadrangle, down a short stretch of road, and onto the driveway that led down the hill. No problem. I did it easily during the day and foresaw no hassles after dark - Lulu having been trained to walk in the dark from her puppy-walking days.

But - oh my! It appeared that her puppy-walking days were a dim memory … or her own eyesight had taken a dive! Along the corridor we went, successfully navigating our way along two sides of the quadrangle, then she came to a dead halt. I waited. "Lulu?" Then I grasped what had happened. We had reached the wall at the end of the corridor and she couldn't work out where to go next.

Okay, so I sorted that one out. We made it to the short road and began marching along it with our chins held high. But there were little lamps lighting the edge of the track on our right, and because she had missed the turn in the corridor a few minutes earlier, I decided to help her along by steering between the lamps when I thought the time had come to turn.

Big mistake. Unbeknown to me, the lamp which I had assumed to be on the far side of the driveway actually marked the corner where we were supposed to turn. My decision plunged me into a concrete gutter, and I have to tell you, falling into a concrete gutter in the dark isn't fun. Lulu just put on brakes and stood there while I tumbled, first onto my hip, then onto my side, and finally onto my back. I prayed that nobody had seen me bouncing or heard me remonstrating with my animal because the last thing I needed at that moment was their take on how it had happened.

"Excuse me, madam, did you perhaps slip on the sheet for the dog?"

Hardly. It could be a case of the blind leading the blind, but I don't think so. Lulu is simply accustomed to taking her lead from me - perhaps more than she ought to. So, instead of deciding that the time has come for a trade-in - or more dramatic still, for a cane - I have decided to work on our relationship.

"On the couch, Lulu! You're not complaining, are you? Now tell me about the sheet incident … how did that make you feel?"

**

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