Time for Prince to take it easy

If every dog has its day, Kaitaia's best-known canine has just about had his.

Guide dog Prince, who has served David Senior faithfully for the last eight years, is about to go into retirement. He'll be 10 on Thursday, and while he won't reach the compulsory retirement age for another year his health hasn't been the best of late, so in a couple of weeks he'll be heading to a new home in Auckland for what David hopes will be a long and happy retirement.

"He deserves some good-quality time in retirement," David said last week.

"Guide dogs work hard for eight or nine years, and it wouldn't be fair to keep them in work when they get to the point where age is catching up with them."

He was not expecting the goodbye to be easy, although it would not be as traumatic as it was for some. Some guide dog owners grieved deeply for their companions when came the time to retire, he said, but he had plenty of interests and activities to keep him busy, and he had always seen his as working dogs first and pets second.

David, who lost his sight when he was 13, does not let his blindness slow him down. His community involvement includes holding a seat on Te Hiku Community Board, and he and Prince are regularly seen in Kaitaia's streets.

But while he had no doubt that a new dog, his fourth ("Fourth and a half; one didn't really work out and it became a matter of letting it go or letting my wife go. I'd been married 30 years, so it was probably best to look for another dog") will do just as good a job as Prince, the golden Labrador will leave some indelible memories.

He unerringly takes David to shops that are well known to him, the list including Shackleton's Chemist, where a bowl of water might well be awaiting him on a hot day. In fact he's been known to head for a likely source of water whether David wants to go there or not. He also knows where the local butcher is to be found.

Prince has a dark side too though. He has form as a shoplifter, although it is more a liking for holding things in his mouth than a Labrador's legendary appetite that drives him to that.

"He pinched something from Paper Plus the other day," David said.

"And he has trouble walking past food on the ground, which there is quite a lot of in Kaitaia. He knows he's not supposed to swerve to get it, so now he's learned to scoop it up without stopping. He thinks I don't now he's doing it."

He once carried an apple home, a distance of 1.5 kilometres, before he spat it out. On that occasion he was allowed to eat it.

And of course everyone likes to pat, and feed, a guide dog, although that too has always been discouraged. When Prince had his harness on he was working, David said, although now and then he looked the other way when someone offered him a morsel as the end of his working life drew nearer. And when he is standing easy, at a community board meeting for example, David removes his harness so he can relax and just be a dog.

Prince's successor will be an almost-two-year-old black Labrador by the name of Wade. He and David will meet in Kaitaia early next month.

"He's ready to go," David said.

"It's just a matter of matching me and the dog, and bonding, which will take about 10 days."

And how does a man who has never seen Kaitaia get around so confidently, even with a dog? David said he had been given a raised map of the town to study and memorise. He was still having trouble finding his way around Te Ahu, however, and hoped one day to get his hands on a raised outline of the complex so he could envision it in his mind.