Guide dogs love their work. They thrive on guiding their owners safely in all environments. They revel in being allowed to go into shops, cinemas and restaurants - unlike their fellow canines who are tied up outside looking forlorn and bereft. And they absolutely glow with the responsibility of being in charge.

Well, that’s the theory. And it has been true up until now for my guide dog, Lucy.

But in recent times, she’s showing signs of feeling bored with her constant hum drum routine work. I can almost hear her planning her retirement - days spent lying on the couch, feet in the air, or checking out the local parks with a mob of scruffy and rebellious ex-guide dogs. She sees herself eating anything she wants, not worrying about putting on weight, and generally living it up.

How do I know what’s going through her mind?

Lucy’s displaying some interesting signs of her boredom. The most significant one is that she slows down almost to a crawl when on the harness and working one of our routine walks. In fact, she was going so slowly the other day that a neighbour driving past us actually stopped her car to see if we were all right!

It doesn’t matter how much I try to encourage her, I just can’t get her to walk at her normal pace. I say things like, “there’s a huge biscuit waiting for you when we get there”, and “you’ll get dinner when we get home”, but to no avail.

Now, she’s very clever, because at first, I got very worried about whether she was in pain or had something terrible like dogggy leukaemia. I had the vet check her out and had people watch her when she moved around without the harness. Lucy knows I’m a softie and she milks it to the max.

But I’m not that gullible. When I take Lucy somewhere different, somewhere she hasn’t been to before, or hasn’t visited for a while, she works like a dream. Her movement is fluid, confident and fast.

Ergo, she is bored with the regular stuff, the stuff I need her to do.

The solution? Easy, I’ve got to trick her. And I can do this in two ways. The first is to go to my regular haunts, but by different routes each time. Now I’m not sure how long it will take her to work this out, or how many different routes I can take to the same place without actually going backwards, but I’ll give it a shot. The only drama is that it might take me twenty minutes to get to Point A instead of the usual five!

The second solution might be better. I’ve noticed that Lucy works really well after she’s been left at home, say if I go to a restaurant and don’t take her. So if I leave her more often, she might get worried and work really well. I can’t keep going to restaurants and cafes or theatres, so my friend in America gave me an idea. And that is to just leave the house, find somewhere to hide for a while, and then return. I wonder what my neighbours will think of me squatting down behind our front wall for about half an hour every day?

Who will win, Lucy or me? Is the dog smarter than the human, or the human smarter than the dog?

In all the research I’ve done on the art of public speaking, one important factor has always stood out - be prepared for anything to go wrong. Speakers are advised to imagine all the technological things that go awry - like lap tops and projectors failing, lights suddenly going out etc - as well as things like getting a bad introduction, dealing with a heckler, having a blank “senior’s” moment. You end up with a long list of what could go wrong, for which you need to find solutions so that absolutely nothing fazes you on the day.

As a blind public speaker, I think I’ve had to come up with disability-specific things that could challenge me on the day.

I must admit, I haven’t had a lot of these over my time as a speaker. The last one I remember was about three years ago when my guide dog and I almost got mashed in a revolving door as we entered the venue where I was addressing about two hundred senior staff members. The person escorting me to the venue didn’t think to tell me we were going through a revolving door until we were in it. Just in time, I realised that my dog would be crushed between the edge of one of the winged doors and the wall, so I did the only thing I could. I screamed, dropped Lucy’s lead and prayed. Luckily, Lucy backed up quickly and escaped the inevitable. I was so shaken afterwards, that I could have used a stiff drink. Instead, I had to pull myself together, focus and do my talk as though there had been no near death experience fifteen minutes before.

Well, this week the gods decided I needed to be tested again on my ability to rise above the disability challenges of public speaking. I was addressing a group of business professionals when I had my most embarrassing moment. Before the event started, I was being shown to my seat at a table to enjoy a lovely breakfast, when I did the dumbest thing. I felt my jacket hanging on the back of my chair, didn’t check which way the chair was facing, decided it was facing me, so turned and sat down. Needless to say, I found myself on the floor. The room went deadly quiet. No-one knew what to say, do or probably, where to look.

I went straight into damage control. I didn’t want these people to think that all blind people miss their chairs when they go to sit down. So I made a joke of it, saying ‘the problem is that I keep forgetting I can’t see!’, and ‘I’ve never done that before!’. Now, believe it or not, this became a useful lead in to my presentation. I used it to put people at their ease, so that they could see I laugh at myself.

It worked well, and I had a great presentation. In fact, I found this group - Perth Business Swap - such a knowledgeable, professional and ecclectic business network, that I am thinking of joining them.

So falling down on the job isn’t always a bad thing!

I’ve been tapping away on my keyboard, working on my young adult novel. Just finished chapter 12. Phew! I’m already up to about 22,000 words. I start to wonder how the finished and polished version will be met by the publishing world.

Then I read one of my children’s writers’ ezines that pop into my inbox on a regular basis. There’s a fascinating link to a blog by a children’s book editor. The blog is about how to read or interpret rejection letters. Well, I think, this will be telling. Straight from the horse’s mouth, it has to be illuminating.

And, yes, I suppose it is. In The 8 Rules of Rejections this anonymous editor tells us in no uncertain terms, that all rejection letters are meaningless!

Okay, that’s good news, I agree. Of course all these publishers who’ve turned down my manuscripts are wrong. Maybe they haven’t even read them. But what about the lovely rejection letter from Penguin that told me not to give up, that my manuscript showed real promise? Could this be classified as a personal note, a piece of constructive or specific advice? I think so, and I’ll believe it.

But as for the rest of my rejection letters - well, they were all wrong. And that’s my mantra for the day.

On Friday night, I attended the Fellowship of Australian Writers Awards Ceremony at Deakin University in Melbourne. As we entered the university grounds, signs everywhere announced the event with “Australian Literary Awards”. It was quite an honour to be attending such an event.

My main reason for going was not only to wave the West Australian flag, but to allow myself the pleasure of being presented with my award for my short story, ‘Sophie’s Rose’ taking out first prize in one of the categories. And I’m very glad I made the trip, despite the expense. What came across strongly to me throughout the evening was the emphasis the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Vic) places on promoting and encouraging new writers. Not only were the first prize winners presented and acknowledged, but also the people whose work was ‘commended’ and ‘highly commended’. All up, there were 104 writers presented with certificates out of a total of 1,000 entries.

The judge who scrutinised my category commented that my story stood out in both the first and second readings, which was a huge compliment for me. She even came up to me during the ceremony and gave me a copy of a book she’d written about her daughter who was born with severe disabilities and for whom the category was established, the theme of the short story having to be about disability. I was very touched by her generosity.

This national competition is one of the very few places where writers can enter their unpublished novels, with the hope of being picked up by a publisher.

The other great thing that came out of the evening was that the President of the FAW made a comment about all the FAW groups becoming one body, a move that I think would be very beneficial. In the West, there aren’t many opportunities for writers. In other states, there is a wider range of workshops and online classes to choose from for those of us who want to expand our writing careers. I look forward to this happening in the future.

Lucy, my guide dog, travelled well and had a great time in Melbourne. She met up with her puppy walkers (the people who raised her for the first year of her life) and her reaction was tear-jerking. She has never forgotten them and was so excited to see them again. The comment they made was although they’d found it so hard to give her up, seeing her helping me and knowing that she has changed my life is reward enough. What a great way to end a perfect trip to the East.

I’m trying to forget that I got sick on the way home. I ate something at Melbourne airport that was obviously dodgey. I spent almost all of the four hour flight home telling myself that I’d be fine, that I wasn’t going to be sick on the plane. The guy next to me must have been praying hard when he saw me reach for the air sick bag. I decided to warn the airline staff before we landed how unwell I was feeling because I knew that I’d need maximum assistance to get off the plane. When we got there, all I could do was get myself out of my seat while the airline staff grabbed my hand luggage and put Lucy’s harness on. I was so out of it that I had no idea they’d put it on back to front and inside out! Somehow, Lucy and I made it down the steps to the tarmac without breaking our necks. Luckily, my Mum was meeting us, so I didn’t have to frighten any taxi driver with my green face. But when she saw us coming, she thought something was wrong. Lucy was walking in a very weird fashion, almost crossing her legs because the harness was on incorrectly. We must have made a peculiar sight, what with Lucy’s gait and me hanging onto a security guy’s arm! But Lucy fared well, and we got home before the dreaded bug really took hold. That’s mind over matter for you.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to dinner at my neighbor’s place. There was another couple there who I’d met once before. The woman knew I was a cyclist, so started asking me about how I, as a blind person, could ride a bike. It was time to have some fun!

‘So does Lucy pull you along on the bike?’ she asked.

‘Oh yeah, she’s really good,’ I said, a glass of gin and tonic in my hand that had more gin than tonic, I suspect.

‘Wow, that’s amazing! Is she fast?’

‘Is she ever, especially down hill. She really picks up speed then.’

The rest of the group are silent, intrigued by our conversation, waiting for me to land this poor woman.

‘So how does she tell you when to turn?’

I think I hear a smirk from one of the others.

‘Oh, she just pulls me round the corners. I follow.’

‘Gee whiz, that is so incredible!’

Then I can’t stand it any longer. I’d nearly said that Lucy barks once for left and twice for right, but it’s too much. The others start rolling around when I let this gullible woman know that I ride a tandem, that Lucy has nothing to do with my bike riding.

She probably went red, but I couldn’t see it.

Maybe one day they’ll train guide dogs to pull bikes.

Such a lot is happening that I haven’t had a chance to blog about the talk I did at the Western Force match on Saturday night.

Well, probably it was dampened a bit because the Force lost by one point. Very disappointing for them and for the fans watching.

But I survived the night and was actually amazed that being small didn’t make me invisible. Glen Mitchell, well-known sports commentator, introduced me to a noisy room of corporate sponsors and fans who were sampling the finger food and availing themselves of the free drinks. As I climbed onto the stage, I thought that I just had to get on with it, do my talk and not worry about who was listening. I just had to do my best.

But when I opened my mouth, the room fell silent! I was so schocked, I almost forgot my speech. You could have heard a valve pop out of a rugby ball - if the balls have valves - during the whole presentation.

Afterwards, the Minister for Sport came up to me and congratulated me. But what had amazed both me and Glen Mitchell was how quiet the crowd had been, especially as they’d been talking over the live band and Glen’s interview with one of the players earlier.

So I escaped the rugby scrum and actually enjoyed the match. But I didn’t make them win, so I’ll have to review my speech for next time. Maybe I should have been talking to the players.

I’m quaking in my cycling shoes because on Saturday night, I’m doing a presentation at the Western Force Team Event at Subiaco oval.

I can just see it, thick set rugby players as tall as skyscrapers towering over little me, all of five foot four inches. I’m going to get a cricked neck from peering up at them. Maybe I’ll need a loud hailer to be heard. Even when I’m standing on the stage, I’ll probably still be looking up at them.

I’m sweating over my speech because if they can’t hear me, they probably won’t even see me. I need to make some sort of impact right from the start, grab their attention. How about a firecracker? No, maybe a bit dramatic. Maybe if I wore a few pairs of stilettos and several lumber jackets, they might think I’m one of them.

  I’m going to open with a congratulatory remark about the team having blind side flankers in their membership. Now that’s real equal opportunity!

If I survive the night, I’ll let you know how I go.

 

I took advantage of the slightly cooler weather today and caught a bus into town to pick up a library book that was waiting for me. I was standing at some traffic lights when the audible signal indicated it was safe to cross. Just as I gave Lucy, my guide dog, the signal to move forward, a lady stopped me with a question.

She sounded Asian and her english wasn’t good. She wanted to know where the shopping centre was, and a particular bank.

It’s not unusual for me to be stopped by tourists asking directions, but it always amuses me. I’m not sure why they think a blind person would know where to find shops, streets etc. I had to tell this lady that there were many shops in the city, and that I didn’t know where that bank was. Luckily, another man overheard and helped out, pointing out where the big shops and the bank she was looking for, which he could see across the road.

In saying that it surprises me that I get asked directional questions, in another way, it makes sense. I am pretty aware of where I am, the streets around me, and where particular shops are located. I have to know. I keep a mental map in my head all the time. On buses, I often answer passengers questions of the driver about where a certain street is. I even tell them I’ll let them know when they’re there, which astounds them!

So even though I had a bit of a giggle, it’s quite a sensible thing to ask a blind person for directions. 

When I write stories for children, the first thing I must do is develop believable characters. Kids these days are so different to the kids of my day, and I’m very aware of the gap. I struggle to understand the latest gadgets they use to play interactive games, the “virtual reality” games they swoon over on the computer, let alone the complex language of text messaging.

But do the characters in my stories have to be so generation x or y, or whatever the latest classification is? Do some of the pleasures of my childhood still exist in kids today?

The answer is yes! Just the other day, my friend (same age as me, and no, I’m not telling) brought around his daughter and son aged 11 and 8 years. I offered the kids a drink and they chose cold milo. And that’s when I got excited. The 11 year old girl eats/drinks her milo exactly the same way I did as a kid, and still do, when the child inside me gets out. You put the milo in first, pour over the milk, and watch the milo come to the top. The fascinating thing is that the milo is still dry. So you dunk it under with a spoon and eat the now wet clumps of yummy milo. You take your time over this and you must never, never dig out the stuff that has stayed on the bottom. That’s for last. You drink the milk and then eat the stuff at the bottom. Yum!

I was so pleased to se that old traditions don’t always die out. Kids these days love having their milo the way kids in my day did. Yippee! I can use that in my stories, and my character will be believable.  

 

It’s hard being a writer, spending hours trawling for opportunities and competitions; creating new work; submitting, submitting, submitting; and then waiting, waiting, waiting.

So sit back, take the time to have a laugh. Read Shannon Caster’s article ‘You know you’re a writer if…’ in the Kids Magazine Writers website.