07/09/2022
On March 31, 2022 I decided to reapply to The Seeing Eye. I really enjoyed my time there and feel that having been the first, they are in fact the gold standard as far as dog guides go in the U.S. I submitted my retrain application and waited. The next week Lori called me on Monday the 4th to tell me that because of the past TSE would like to have a letter from me explaining the time in between and why I thought I'd be a better fit for a dog now. I wrote this letter, and waited again. 6 days later on Sunday 04/10/2022, at 7:44 PM or 8 years to the day that I came back from TSE with Garbo, Chris Matoon called me and asked if we could do a home interview on Wednesday April 13th at 5:30 PM. This was extremely fast, but of course I said yes. As the day approached, I worked on cleaning things up a bit, and thinking over routes in my head. Living in the actual city of Denver, I had lots of choices, and not having completed a home interview in a big city before was a little unsure of what he would want to see. I felt good, though because I had spent the previous 3 months learning the area and building up my walking speed and endurance. On Wednesday afternoon I was finishing final preparations when at 4:16 PM which is 6:16 PM TSE time so I didn't expect this at all I got a call from Angela, because they had decided not to serve me because of the risk due to my past. I explained I was already scheduled for the home visit and asked her what we should do. She said she would make some phone calls and call me back. After getting off the phone I continued preparations, and gave it to the Lord. I told him if he wanted me to have this dog, he needed to put things into place. At 4:32 PM Angela called me back and said we would use the home visit report as my appeal, and to just go for it. So after we got off the phone, I finished getting ready, and waited for Chris. When he showed up, we talked a little about how I don't wish to partner with a shepherd because of things that happened with Ranger, about how things have changed, about how personality and traits are more important to me than gender, color, or breed. We then headed out and walked up to Colfax, and walked down to Race. I used my cane during these parts, and then at Colfax and Race, we turned left, and began the Juno walk. We walked back to Franklin Park using Juno. At that time, Chris said he saw no reason for them not to serve me but that the decision wasn't up to him. Again waiting was the name of the game. On Friday 04/22/2022 at 2:22 PM, I received another call from Angela that informed me they had decided to give me a chance. At that time she told me it could be over a year, because they had so many people waiting for dogs. On 04/25/2022 I received the Travel form, Medical form, Independent travel questionair, Preparing for Class, and the Covid form. I got all this back to them with exception of the medical form which I returned on the 10th of May after my TB test was finished. I was then told it would just be a matter of waiting.