About This Blog

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection." - Anais Nin

Why Blog?

This seems to be the hardest page to write. Why am I "blogging?" For a few reasons including:

• Keeping a written record of my experiences during Hearing Dog Team Training.
• Sharing the Team Training experience with family and friends so that they can get a taste of what it's like!
• Chronicling (and making room for) thoughts, feelings, and reactions during this time of new beginnings.
• Documenting my growing connection with my new canine partner. I love reading others' stories about their relationships with their dogs.
• Negotiating my evolving sense of identity as a Hearing Dog partner. Making room for related thoughts about deafness, assistance dogs, disabilities, and the human-animal bond.
• Honoring and paying homage to Maya, my beloved first Hearing Dog, and Karma, my successor Hearing Dog. Maya launched me on this journey, and Karma accompanied me during my transition onto the next chapter.
• Honoring and thanking my cherished family and friends, for supporting me, lending strength, and offering love and hope through times good and hard.
• Honoring Canine Companions for Independence, and its staff, volunteers, and supporters, without whom this adventure would not be possible. Honoring my beloved Canine Companions for Independence family, friends, and community, who help make this adventure so special.
• Exercising and strengthening my writing and observing muscles while building trust in the journaling process' capacity to attend to subconscious needs and wishes.
• Honoring and strengthening my inner voice; reorienting my internal compass.
• Paying close attention to my experiences, in the moment and in retrospection.

The Story Behind The Blog's Title

As for the story behind the title of this blog, I've long had great reverence for the significance of names and titles. "To touch the sound," and variations thereof, was a phrase that occurred to me as a kid, although I can't recall an approximate age or date of origin. It was just a phrase that swam through my head time and again over the years, poetic and beautiful and mystical, pleasing to the tongue and my imagination. 

I was bemused and surprised and interested to see the phrase in use in 2004 as the title of a documentary about Dame Evelyn Glennie, a deaf percussionist. To me, the phrase invokes (and evokes) the mystical while also speaking to the practical. I find it a near-perfect description of the Hearing Dog's mission; it speaks to the goals of the Hearing Dog's partner. "To touch the sound" conveys the reifying aspects of the Hearing Dog-Deaf Partner relationship, the resulting sense of calm and exhilaration and achievement upon locating a sound's origin, a reward unto itself. 

The blog's title is also, in its own small way, a nod to sweet Maya, my first brilliant partner and companion along the assistance dog journey. Upon learning the name of my new Hearing Dog back in January 2007, my beloved cousin K (a medical anthropologist), looked up the related etymology and shared this in an email:

"The Hindu meaning [of the name "Maya"] is most complex. In one definition referring to Hindu texts, Maya means the power of a god or demon to transform a concept into an element of the sensible world. In Hindu thought, illusion is the idea that nothing material is what it appears to be and all of life is a dream or illusion; Maya, therefore, is what makes manifest that which cannot otherwise be understood by humans... Thinking about this in terms of Cara's new relationship with Maya, her service dog, this is a powerful metaphor for what is transpiring between them, and Maya's role in hearing and making manifest the world of sound for Cara."

Privacy & Confidentiality

Whenever possible, I will try to error on the side of caution when it comes to privacy - of names, people, and other information that could make a person or dog personally identifiable. This caution extends to photos as well as written information. A couple of primary reasons for this:

• This blog is personal in nature. All information is filtered through the lens of my experience, reflecting how I sense and perceive things in the world. I feel strongly about refraining from identifying people personally, unless their permission is given. In this increasingly public age, I want to preserve the nature of choice.
• Canine Companions for Independence's privacy policies during Team Training include a moratorium on names, and for good reason. There are such great investments and on so many levels (emotional, financial, and otherwise) by parties affiliated with all the canine and human candidates during a Team Training. Curiosity abounds during the period preceding and following "pre-matching" of human and canine candidates. Friends and family members want to know the name of one's prospective canine partner, while puppy-raisers and their communities want to know if their dogs have successfully found matches. With all things subject to change, including anticipated as well as unforeseen factors, no matches are "final" until declared so by Canine Companions instructors. 

Disclaimer

All opinions reflected in this blog are solely my own, and does not reflect the opinions of Canine Companions for Independence, its staff, volunteers, or supporters. The material contained herein is shared voluntarily.