GUIDE DOG LIFE | BEST QUESTION EVER
Does Your Guide Dog Know Any Tricks? And Other Perplexing Questions
Answered by the dog
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Dear friends,
If questions like, Where does your guide dog sleep? or, Do you take your guide dog to the dentist? keep you up at night; I’m here to help.
Don’t worry. I don’t think your questions sound stupid. Perplexing, maybe, but not stupid.
This is the second most perplexing question a passerby has asked Patricia about me (the dog).
Is that a dog?
I was standing next to Patricia in a convenient place to be picked up — we were waiting for an Uber.
The car arrived; it was some kind of sedan, and I knew there would be enough room for me. Pat could squeeze herself in next to the door, I thought.
The driver slowed to almost a stop, rolled his window down, leaned out and asked, “Is that a dog?”
In that split second between brain and mouth, I knew Pat made the decision not to say, No, this is my 90-pound cat. Instead, she said, “Yes, he’s my guide dog,”
The driver said, “No dogs!” and drove off.
A second car arrived, and the driver looked at us, but didn’t stop to confirm whether I was actually a dog, he just said, No dogs!
The third driver loved dogs, but told us that even if he didn’t, drivers must not deny guide dogs the right to ride with their humans.
We eventually got to where we were going.
The next question is the best one ever — I could not make these things up:
Does he know any tricks?
Well, aside from identifying doors, door handles, elevator buttons, curbs, stairways, train stations, bus stops, cashier’s counter at the coffee shop, cream counters in coffee shops, trash cans, benches, and chairs? No.
Does your guide dog bite?
What do you think? I’m a dog; of course, I bite! Bacon, dog snacks, milk bones, and most forms of food, including dog food, but usually not people.
I may or may not bite someone who directly threatens my people, but it’s generally frowned upon.
You guys who know me, already know I’m 90 pounds worth of solid muscle and buns of steel. Therefore, I could, hypothetically, wrestle a person to the ground and restrain them until they calmed down, but most folks don’t want to end up under my large self.
And, when you sit down and think about it, have you seen my sweet face?
Honourable mention as far as perplexing questions go:
Seriously, who let the dogs out?
I get asked this a lot, and I think it’s because of the second line of the song Who Let the Dogs Out?
They really want to know, I mean, the entire second line is: Who, who, who-who?
Side note: I once thought they were singing Woof, woof, woof-woof. And that would be what they were saying if dogs sang it, but I digress. So, back to the question.
This is one of those great mysteries of the music world. We do know the answer to this question, of course we do. But dogs live by a strict code of silence, and on this particular subject, we’re not talking.
Love, Cooper
P. S. I almost forgot. Where do I sleep? I'll sleep on my comfortable dog bed if I’m not sleeping on Patricia’s feet.
And Does Patricia take me to the dentist? No, I usually take her.
Related story:
The above questions also appear in Cooper’s new book, Dear Diary, Love Cooper
