June 3rd, 2022

On this day, I had my home interview with Guiding Eyes. If I wasn’t nervous enough about the interview itself, my dad mentioned that he had to be home because my brother was going to be playing on the radio at the same time as my home interview was happening. Overall, the interview itself went better than I expected despite everything going on that morning. 

During the interview, I was asked questions about my lifestyle, where I saw myself in a year, five years, etc. Then after the interview portion was completed, I went on a walk to show my cane skills and practice with Juno. For the first part of this route, I had to show that I could independently go to a destination using my cane. On the way back, I was able to do a Juno walk. A Juno walk consists of the handler, holding the handle end of the harness and the instructor, holding the harness body. The reason this is done is to help the handler feel what it would feel like to be guided by a dog. At first it felt very different from my cane, but as time went on, I got used to the feeling of going around objects instead of running into them.

When I returned from this walk, I was told that I did really well. I was also told that I should hear within the next six weeks whether or not I would be accepted into the program at Guiding Eyes. Being given this information so soon after finishing the Juno walk gave me some sense of hope that this just might work this time, as the last time I was told shortly after my Juno walk that the particular organization, I was going through was not going to be able to help me.