Chapter 9

Gayle as a Companion

It was wonderful knowing that I didn’t have to give up Gayle when they found slight hip dysplasia. The affliction never seemed to bother her. She made the best companion dog ever, as she would stay with me when I’d take walks, unlike the hunting dogs I‘ve had before and since.

Oh, she was normal and chased squirrels, and it gave her such great exercise that rather than discouraging them from the feeder at our house in Vestal, Tom made something that looked like a propeller. He sunk a screw at the end of each of each propeller on which he‘d attach a corn cob, and when the squirrels would go to get the corn, suddenly they’d be upside down. They got the hang of it… literally, and would hang on the end eating the corn off the cob. Once they’d had a good feed, we’d release Gayle to the back yard saying “Go get the squirrel.”

She never got the squirrel, but got a lot of exercise, but her main job now was taking me for a walk each day, and we would go down the African Road Park which still allowed dogs back then. I got to take her on a vacation up to R.I. to visit my mother… just she and I on our first trip alone. Before trying to drive her so far, I checked into the harnesses for dogs, and a vet told me to just get a regular harness and attach the seatbelt through the back, and that would prevent her from being thrown if there was a sudden stop. I don’t know why, but Gayle always felt special with that harness on. She looked good in it. Almost made me sad to think what a great Guiding Eyes Dog she would have been.


Back home I would use the collar some days, the harness others. One sunny bright day I wore my sun glasses out to the park. Our house was the next to the last on the street, and we just had to cross African Road at that intersection, and we were at the top of the path taking us down into the park. I’d let her off the leash once down into the Park, and once up the hill before going back on African Road on the way home, I’d grab the center of the back of her harness to put on the leash. When I got to the top of the hill that day, a car going the normal speed limit came to a screeching halt. I had to laugh. He had seen this Lab; the harness; a woman in sun glasses grabbing the back of the harness, and thought the dog was the Guiding Eyes dog she was meant to be. When I realized what he thought, I waved a thanks, and took off my glasses, showing him I wasn’t blind.

I’ve been checking back in my journals to the times when I had Gayle, and realize that she was around for a lot of things: When my adult children had problem relationships; through the good times and celebration of their getting married; through the trauma of my son Alb getting burned; through difficult times of grief when my son-in-law Ray got killed in a head on (fault of a careless teen-aged driver); when Mary Lounsbery died… a relative of my new family, my predecessor, Mary Jane’s aunt, who treated me like she was my own aunt. Through my own dear Aunt Daw’s death; through my mother’s downward spiral into dementia; through my brother Danny’s death after 20 years of having MS; and through my mother’s eventual death. Through all that and more, so I would often have much on my mind and really needed someone to talk to right at the moment, and I had Gayle. We’d take a walk, and if no one else was around, I’d talk to her, and it was as if she understood.

After the initial vacation with Gayle to my Mom’s in Rhode Island, and seeing that she was so taken with Gayle, I wrote her a picture book with all the pictures I’d taken while in Rhode Island, calling it Gayle’s Vacation. I kept getting duplicates of those pictures, made duplicate books for the new grandchildren …first one born in 1990. I began taking the other pictures of my very photogenic dog as well as other wildlife, and later the farm life in our house in Pennsylvania, and continued making picture story books for my grandchildren In most of the books, Gayle was the heroine and my inspiration--probably the only books that have or will have gained recognition, and probably, exclusively from my grandchildren and their parents. Christmas one year I gave grandsons, Russy and Ricky, a book each in which they had a starring role with Gayle rescuing them in one way or another in a story I made up with photos which illustrated the two stories which I’d made after taking the pictures. Their mother, Jo, was always complimenting my photo books, but the boys father wasn’t one to compliment, but when HE said “Those books were pretty good” I began to believe that maybe they were, thanks to my wonder dog, Gayle.