The Dog with the Old Soul. Jennifer Sander Basye

audience waited, polite and attentive. The graduates sat, alert and poised. The flag had been saluted; the speeches made; the staff and students congratulated. Now it was time to take the final step and send the graduates out into the world to fulfill their mission.

      Donna stopped beside one of the graduates and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Raising a puppy is an act of love and faith,” she began. “When a puppy comes into your home, he comes into your heart. He is a part of your family. You give him all the time, care and love you can. Then, almost before you know it, that curious, wriggling, uncoordinated puppy has changed into an obedient, mature dog, ready to return to Guide Dogs for the Blind and take the next step in becoming a working guide.

      “I’m thrilled and happy that Llama—” she indicated the golden retriever next to her “—has become a working guide. But I’m sad, too, because it is always hard to say goodbye to someone you love.” She picked up Llama’s leash and handed it to Gil, Llama’s new partner. “Goodbye, Llama. You are a special dog.”

      The crowd murmured in appreciation, and some in the audience sniffled audibly and reached for their tissues. Then the graduation was over. Soon Llama and Gil were on their way to Vancouver, Canada, and Donna was on her way home to Newark, California, knowing there was a good chance she would never see Llama again.

      Llama was the third puppy the Hahn family—Donna, John, and their daughters, Wendy and Laurel—had raised for Guide Dogs for the Blind, but he was the first to complete the program and become a working guide. He had come into their life fifteen months earlier, a red-tinged golden retriever with white hairs on his face and muzzle that gave him a washed-out, unfinished look. “An ugly dog,” Donna had said at the time. But soon his looks didn’t matter.

      At first, Llama was as helpless as any new baby. “Neee, neee, neee,” he cried when he was left alone. He woke Donna in the night and left yellow abstract designs on the carpet when she didn’t get him out the door fast enough. Donna patiently cleaned up the accidents. Soon Llama learned “Do your business,” one of the early commands that every guide dog puppy learns, and the accidents rapidly decreased.

      Like all guide pups, Llama was trained with love and kind words, rather than with food treats. Soon he would follow Donna through the house on his short puppy legs, collapsing at her feet when she said, “Sit,” happy to be rewarded with a pat and a “Good dog.”

      Llama seemed to double in size overnight. By the time he was five months old, he was accompanying Donna everywhere. It wasn’t always easy. Llama had to learn to overcome his natural inclination to sniff the ground and greet every dog he met on the street. At the supermarket he learned not to chase the wheels on the grocery cart. At Macy’s he learned to wait while Donna tried on clothes. With a group of other puppies in training, Llama and Donna rode the ferry across San Francisco Bay and toured the noisy city.

      In May Donna was summoned for jury duty in superior court in Oakland. Of course, she took Llama. Privately, she hoped that his presence would be enough to get her automatically excused, but the plan backfired. For a week, Llama lay patiently at Donna’s feet in the jury box while Donna attended the trial.

      All too soon, a year was up, and the puppy that had wagged its way into Donna’s heart was a full-grown dog, ready to return to the Guide Dogs campus in San Rafael and start professional training. There was only a fifty-fifty chance he would complete the program. Working guides must be physically and temperamentally perfect before they are entrusted with the life of a blind person. Donna had given Llama all the love and training she could; now his future was out of her hands.

      Llama passed his physical and sailed through the training program. When it came time to be matched with a human partner, the young golden retriever was paired with Gil, a curator at an aquarium in Canada. Matching dog and human is a serious and complicated ballet in which the dog’s strengths, weaknesses and personality are balanced against the human’s personality and lifestyle. When done well, an unbreakable bond of love and trust develops between human and dog.

      Gil and Llama were a perfect match, and their bond grew strong and true. Gil had never had a guide dog before. Once home, he found that Llama gave him a new sense of confidence, independence and mobility. Every day they walked together along the seawall to Gil’s work at the aquarium. In time, everyone grew to know Llama, and Llama grew to know all the sights and sounds of Gil’s workplace. For ten years, Llama was at Gil’s side every day—at home, at work, on vacation, and on trains, planes and buses.

      Meanwhile, at the Hahns’, Wendy and Laurel grew up and moved away from home. John and Donna continued to raise pups. Their fourth dog became a family pet. The fifth became a working guide in Massachusetts, and the sixth a service dog for a physically handicapped teen.

      While they were raising their seventh pup, Donna’s husband, John, a fit and active air force veteran, began having stomach problems. An endoscopy revealed the bad news. John had advanced gastric cancer. Thus began a long series of treatments and operations to try to catch the cancer, which always seemed one step ahead of the surgeon’s knife. It was a grim, sad, stress-filled time. Soon John could no longer take any nourishment by mouth. With John’s strength waning daily, the family came to accept that he had only a few months to live.

      In October, with John desperately ill, a call came from the Guide Dogs placement advisor. “Donna, we just got a call that Llama is being retired. He’s been working for ten years, and all that stair-climbing and leading tours at the aquarium have caught up with him. He has pretty bad arthritis. Gil is coming down to train with a new dog. I know John is terribly sick, and the last thing you might want to do right now is take care of an old dog, but Gil specifically requested that we ask you if you could give Llama a retirement home. He can’t keep Llama himself, but he wants him to be with someone who will love him.”

      “Of course we’ll take him,” said Donna, never hesitating.

      Several days later Donna drove up to the Guide Dogs campus to pick up Llama. She paced back and forth across the receiving area as she waited for a kennel helper to bring Llama to her.

      “Do you think he’ll recognize me after ten years?” she anxiously asked an assistant in a white lab coat.

      When Llama arrived, moving stiffly in the damp morning air, it was not the joyous reunion she had imagined. Llama seemed pleased to see her, but in a reserved, distant way. An hour and a half later, Llama was back at the house where he had spent the first year of his life.

      Donna pushed open the front door. “John, we’re home.” Llama didn’t hesitate for a second. He walked in, turned and headed straight into John’s bedroom, as if he had been going there every day of his life. From that moment on, he rarely left John’s bedside. Although he was too old to guide, Llama had found a place where he was needed.

      Llama was a careful and gentle companion for John. When John got out of bed, pushing the pole that held his intravenous feeding bottles, Llama was beside him, ready to protect him, but careful never to get in his way or get tangled in the medical apparatus.

      “I don’t know how that dog always seems to know exactly what you need, but he surely does,” said Donna more than once.

      “He was sent to take care of me,” John replied.

      By the end of the month, John’s condition had worsened. The hospice nurse administered morphine. Donna was afraid the drug would make John disoriented and that he would try to get out of bed and would fall over Llama, so she ordered the dog to leave the room.

      “Llama, out.”

      Llama, who had never disobeyed a command, didn’t budge.

      “Llama, out.”

      Llama didn’t move a muscle and remained planted by John’s bed.

      The next morning, however, Llama began to pace frantically back and forth through the house.

      “What’s wrong with him, Mom?” asked Wendy, who had come home to help her mother.

      “I don’t know. Maybe he’s sick.”