A Day With Norine and Santino

I'm in sunny Florida right now and just returned from spending the day with Norine and Santino, December graduates from GDB. Santino is a wheelchair guide for Norine and is her 4th guide dog. We met last year at a local yarn shop where I saw Norine sitting at a table with her then guide dog Princess. I told her I was a puppy raiser for GDB and she told me she was waiting for a wheelchair guide from GDB. We've kept in touch since and on my return to Florida we made arrangements to eat lunch and knit in the same yarn shop where we met.

We ate at a restaurant called Bagelheads, which was a great sandwich/salad restaurant. We talked and ate lunch and then the bus service Norine uses came to pick her up to take her to Really Knit Stuff so we could attend the afternoon social knitting called "Adult Daycare." Norine had me snap a picture of how Santino gets on the bus with her.



When we got to Really Knit Stuff, Norine took off Santino's harness so we could visit. I was able to give Santino hugs and kisses from his club at this time and to pet him and tell him what a wonderful boy he was. Quite frankly, Santino was not very focused on me at all, he was more concerned about people entering the store with boxes. He stood right in front of Norine and faced the people with boxes. Norine tells me Santino is very protective of her.



Norine wanted to demonstrate the two special tasks Santino was taught for her: Retrieve the dropped cell phone and retrieve the yarn. Here is Santino bringing the cell phone back to Norine:



Here he is fetching and bringing the dropped yarn back to Norine:









Santino thinks of fetch and retrieve as a game - he enjoys it.

Tallahassee is a challenging place to have a guide dog. The sidewalks aren't in the best shape and do not run down the entire length of a street. You'll have sidewalks on one side, then they will end and start up across the street. People aren't aware of obstacles they can pose with parking and overlapping on driveways and sidewalks. Santino does a wonderful job, but he sure has some challenging situations. I believe GDB has worked a little with accessibility issues here, but there isn't a lot they can do right now. This is the capital of Florida and is a big university town. I would have thought people here would be more aware of accessibility issues.

After knitting awhile with patrons at "adult daycare," Norine had to go home. Here are pictures of Santino waiting at the lift the shop has for wheelchairs. After Norine gets to ground level and the lift to the bus, she calls Santino and he comes and hops on the wheelchair with her.







I had a great time. Norine's parting words to me were "see you next year." I certainly hope so!