Waiting for Suki

It is hard to keep from counting the days until October 18th. I have lots to do to get ready to leave home for almost three weeks, but time seems to crawl by. Stacks of clothes, lists of things to do before I leave, people I have to notify that I will not be here for three weeks, the house, the dogs, the plants: all have to be tended to.

I know there will be a lot of issues to be dealt with. My two dogs, Saoirse and Nuala, are going to be v e r y jealous of a new dog that is allowed to go everywhere with me. They will have to be given an extra dose of TLC every day. I will have to approach my usual taxi stand, the swimming pool, the beach, restaurants, stores. I hope they will not make problems, and if they do, they will have to be talked to quietly and patiently. (Guide dogs must be allowed in these places by law, but, as with many things, the law is one thing and what happens on the ground is another.)

Walking around with a cane is, to say the least, not to my liking. Despite the disorientation and confusion of walking through Nahariya at night, I can do without the people calling out to me when they see me in the street waiting for the light to change, the woman who grabbed my arm crossing the street, etc, the crowd at the train station in Tel Aviv who called to me as I approached a bus stop: “Yamina, geveret, Yamina!” (Right, lady. right!) as if I were a soccer player charging down the field with the ball and my route is going to determine whether the team wins the game! They mean well, but I am looking forward to not having people constantly treating me as an exhibition and assuming I need help even when I don’t ask for it. I have a strong feeling that with a dog things will be different. I imagine Suki with me everywhere I go. A big improvement.

I am very aware that there will be things in my routine that I will have to give up or change. No more hour swims far out in the sea: leaving a dog on the beach for an hour and swimming far out, as I did today will no longer be possible. I will have to reserve long swims for times when there is someone on the beach to sit with Suki, or take her into the water for a short paddle in the shallows instead!

Meanwhile, the deliberations continue within Machsom Watch regarding the Machsom Watcher with a dog…. Several of the women see no problem in my taking a dog with me to stand at the checkpoints. I cannot leave Suki home, and I know that this will be perhaps one of the things I will have to “give up” for a guide dog. I would hate to leave, but the last thing I want to do is to scare or upset people or make them feel uneasy by having a dog near them. Palestinians have enough to contend with at the checkpoints as it is. Moslems relate to dogs more or less the way Jews relate to pigs, and there is also the added “bonus” that people are accustomed to dogs are used at checkpoints being used to sniff out people’s cars, which is very upsetting. People are told to remove any food or any copies of the Koran from the car before the dogs are allowed to jump into the vehicle – sometimes with muddy paws, which the handlers care little or nothing about.

Whatever happens, it will all be worth it. I can hardly wait for Suki to be mine. I still don’t know what I have done to deserve this lovely gentle creature, but I guess I am very lucky.