For a young girl at university, it is hard enough to cope. What with the piling debts and deadlines for assignments. Not to mention safety walking through town at night on the way to or from a night out. But if like me, you have a visual impairment and have a guide dog to look after, and who looks after you - you might find it 10 times as hard.

Holly and Rumba

I became a guide dog owner in July. Rumba, (now) two-year-old Labrador/golden retriever cross (black). A bundle of mischief and intrigue.

She helps me get around obstacles in the uni and around town/places I generally visit, as well as gives me the confidence to cross roads safely.

When I'm around uni with her, she can't walk past many people without receiving attention/fuss. She looks for it now everywhere she goes and it's sometimes distracting.

She's got a sign on her back as part of the harness she wears (fluorescent yellow with dark blue writing which reads Please Don't Distract Me I'm Working). I want to scream at people who do distract her while she's working. They can't help it though - everyone's a sucker for a cute dog. They all have to understand though, that to me she's not just a dog, she's more-or-less my eyes too. It makes it stressful just to go to the university shop or into town.

Another stressful thing with having a guide dog (responsibility 24/seven) is letting her go to the toilet. As a dog she'll need to go five or six times a day. So I have to fit in with her routine just as much as she has to fit in around mine. It's even worse when she decides she doesn't want to go in the places designated for her (grassy areas and her pen outside of my university halls of residence). She'll want to go, change her mind then when we set off on our way she'll decide to just go, without much warning. She knows we've just been in a place where it's okay for her to go.

When it comes to nights out, I can't go on all-nighters or sleep over at people's houses very often. Friends always ask me if I'm going with them to Sugarcubes (a nightclub I used to go to before I became a guide dog owner) The loud music; bright lights; sticky floors; possible broken glass and the prospect of drunken, foolish people, means that Rumba won't have a very nice time if I went with them.

I have to stick to quieter pubs and restaurants and only the houses of people we know very well. I've been told by the trainers at the Hull branch of Guide Dogs For The Blind Association that I can leave her for up to three hours a couple of times a week after Christmas. This gives me a little freedom. It also gets Rumba used to being alone for small periods of time in case she is ill and I cannot take her with me to a lecture.

Having this responsibility 24 hours a day, seven days a week though feels like I have a child. She needs feeding, playing with, grooming and taking out for walks/trips to the toilet, just like any ordinary dog.
These things have to be taken into consideration for a child too. Though I can take Rumba anywhere, any shops, restaurant or service. A child isn't that lucky to be accepted everywhere. They certainly cannot act as anyone's eyes either.

Above all though, as people tell me almost daily - I'm lucky to have Rumba, even with the things she brings with her. Without her I may be cut off from half the world I now know.

Read part 2 - Looking through Rumba's 'eyes' >>