Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero by Michael Hingson with Susy Flory
A blind man and his guide dog show the power of trust and courage in the midst of devastating terror.
It was 12:30 a.m. on 9/11 and Roselle whimpered at Michael’s bedside. A thunderstorm was headed east, and she could sense the distant rumbles while her owners slept. As a trained guide dog, when she was “on the clock” nothing could faze her. But that morning, without her harness, she was free to be scared, and she nudged Michael’s hand with her wet nose as it draped over the bedside toward the floor. She needed him to wake up.
With a busy day of meetings and an important presentation ahead, Michael slumped out of bed, headed to his home office, and started chipping away at his daunting workload. Roselle, shivering, took her normal spot at his feet and rode out the storm while he typed. By all indications it was going to be a normal day. A busy day, but normal nonetheless. Until they went into the office.
In “Thunder Dog,” follow Michael and his guide dog, Roselle, as their lives are changed forever by two explosions and 1,463 stairs. When the first plane struck Tower One, an enormous boom, frightening sounds, and muffled voices swept through Michael’s office while shards of glass and burning scraps of paper fell outside the windows.
But in this harrowing story of trust and courage, discover how blindness and a bond between dog and man saved lives and brought hope during one of America’s darkest days.
So I’m a sucker for dog stories, and this book drew me in because of the unusual circumstances in which the narrative is set in. Using a narrative structure that alternates between the tense situation as he and Roselle*, a beautiful Labrador Retriever, make their way down the 78th floor of Tower One and flashbacks of his life, Hingson weaves a story that is both gripping and informative.
A victim of the common practice of pumping pure oxygen into premature babies’ incubators in the 1950s (the oxygen causes the blood vessels in the eyes to burst and permanently damages the retina), Hingson has been blind since he was a baby. He relates how his parents integrated him into mainstream society by making and teaching him to do whatever normal kids did. Hingson went to mainstream schools and he taught himself how to get around by echolocation – to the point that he was able to cycle around the neighbourhood on his own.
The narrative then tracks Hingson’s path – and the challenges he faced plus how he overcame them – through school and his career, where at his peak, he was a regional sales manager and head of operations in New York for Quantum/ATL, a Fortune 500 company that provided data protection and network storage systems.
Getting his first guide dog at the age of 14 was a life-changing event for Hingson and the reader gets a glimpse of the intimate bond between man and dog. For the blind, a guide dog is like a working dog and the animals, too, go through a lot of physical and mental stress when they are at work. Guide dogs have to trained for about three years before they are fully qualified, and because of the stress, can only be in active duty for four to five years. You might also be interested to know that the blind people themselves have to undergo training to know how to handle the dog. And the dogs are matched to their owners according to how the dog’s temperament and personality complements the owner and their lifestyle. A bit like matchmaking sessions I’d say.
Hingson also voices his hope of one day “seeing” blind people being fully integrated into society with the help of technology. For example, he writes of self-navigating prototype cars that the blind can use to get themselves around. He also hopes that one day people won’t feel the need to let him go to the front of the queue to board the plane first just because he is blind and has a guide dog; he, like everyone else, is capable of standing in line and waiting for his turn.
Due to Hingson’s strong Christian faith, the book also takes on an evangelical tone as he gives many thanks to god for saving him and letting him come out alive of Tower One with the help of Roselle. If you’re a non-Christian as I am, it could seem a tad “preachy”, but that took very little away from the enjoyment I got from the book with its gripping account of the horrors of Sept 11, 2001, its informative nature of what it’s like to be blind, and most of all, its message of hope and belief.
Today, Hingson works as a motivational speaker and is also the National Public Affairs director for the Guide Dogs for the Blind team. And oh, Hingson reminds us to not feel the need to shout in his ear if you’re ever next to him. He’s only blind, not deaf.
*On Hingson’s website, he writes that Roselle passed away on June 26, 2011.
Book and eBook available from the Singapore National Library