Member of the Wedding Is This Girl’s Best Friend

In commenting the other day about a wedding story in the Ventura Star-Free Press, I wondered, “Have I missed something? Are flower dogs now de rigueur ?”

It was a traditional wedding story, introducing the members of the wedding, describing the bride’s gown and listing the bride and bridegroom’s family connections and academic credentials; but it also reported, matter-of-factly, that the flower dog was the bride’s golden Labrador, Trinity Lakee, which “wore a pink wild rose collar. . . .”

Now Margaret Lindstrom of South Pasadena sends me an article from the maiden edition of South Pasadena Magazine that proves that Trinity Lakee was not the first.

The story, by Dini Favaro, editor of the magazine, is titled: “A Member of the Wedding: Caroline and her dog Gabriel are inseparable. So naturally he came to her wedding.”

Unlike the Star-Free Press story, which treated the flower dog as routine, this one is mostly about Gabriel and his relationship to the bride. It notes that “when Caroline Rasmussen and Rodger Dyer got married on July 15 at the South Pasadena Christian Church, they had a traditional wedding. Sort of.”

Like the Ventura wedding, this one had a bride and bridegroom, maid of honor, bridesmaid, best man and groomsman and all the other principals. But prominent among those attending the bride was Gabriel--part black Labrador, part golden retriever, and part Irish setter. He wore a large satin bow and a bouquet around his neck.

Unlike the bride in Ventura, Caroline did not allow Gabriel to follow her down the aisle before the ceremony. “He’d steal the show,” she explained wisely.

But Gabriel did leave his place by the front pew and escort the new bride back up the aisle after the ceremony. He was only doing his duty. The bride has been blind since birth.

Favaro tells us that the bride had thought about using a guide dog for some time, but her family had been against it. They thought a dog would make it harder for her to get around and find a job and an apartment and get on and off buses and planes.

But not wanting to be dependent on a cane and a sighted person, Caroline decided to try it. She told Favaro, “Now I’d never go back. I love him.”

Favaro tells us that Caroline acquired the dog from Pilot Dogs Inc. She traveled from her then-home in Des Moines, Iowa, to the dog school in Indiana, and stayed there while she and Gabriel trained together.

“She learned command training and how to teach the dog new commands. Together they practiced getting around construction sites, getting on and off buses, shopping in stores, riding on escalators and going through revolving doors.”

But there is one thing Gabriel hates and will not enter unless he has to: Phone booths.

“If I tell him to go forward, I have to trust him that it’s safe for me to go,” she said. “It’s his responsibility to get me around. And over the years there’s been a lot of learning to trust one another.”

Ironically, Favaro points out, Gabriel has had to adjust to Caroline’s relationship with Rodger and now her marriage. “It’s a problem for him and me sometimes,” Rodger told Favaro. “He’s a little jealous.”

Making it more difficult is the fact that each guide dog, once trained, is a “one-person dog,” and he will work only with that person. But Caroline thinks that Gabriel senses that Rodger is blind too.

“His favorite place is under the kitchen table. He won’t stay in the middle of the room. He gets stepped on too often.”

When Gabriel is 12 or 13 he will have to be retired. Caroline does not look forward to that. She will have to get another dog. “I think it would be hard for him to accept that. So I want to give him to a friend.”

Though Rodger cannot borrow Gabriel for an afternoon, Gabriel has helped him take out the trash.

“He’s special,” Caroline told Favaro. “After all, we are together more than you are with a spouse. He’s with me 24 hours a day--everywhere except for the shower.”

Meanwhile, I wish Favaro the best with her new enterprise, the South Pasadena Magazine, which will finish off this year as a quarterly, but will become a bimonthly in February.