WEST PALM BEACH - The yellow Labrador retriever lying at Amy Dixon’s feet doesn’t act like she’s doing anything special.
Elvis’ eyes are closed, and he’s using her left foot as a pillow, like he’s lying in a sunny spot by the window, dreaming of bacon, instead of inside the French West Palm Beach restaurant Pistache, where Dixon is leading a wine tasting.
The yellow-and-black sign attached to his harness that reads, “Do Not Pet Me, I Am Working,” seems like an ironic “dogs of Instagram” moment. He’s even drooling a little.
But when Dixon, who is legally blind, makes the slightest move to sit down or whispers one of the 150 words he knows by heart, Elvis is up like he’s seen a squirrel. He pulls her toward a red leather banquet and places his head on the seat, signaling he’s found her a spot to sit.
People marvel at Amy Dixon, the self-styled “Blind Sommelier,” who didn’t allow a degenerative eye disease to keep her from a career leading wine tastings around the world, entertaining with her two favorite topics: wine and Elvis.
It’s why she speaks at countless fundraisers around the country for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, which trains more than 150 guide dogs a year and gives them for free to the visually impaired.
But Dixon marvels at Elvis, who has made this life possible, who gave her the courage to live alone, travel the world — and even to become a world-class paratriathlete instead of resigning to the life of dependency doctors had feared.
“I prayed to God for a tall blond,” she said. “He sent me one with four legs.”
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Dixon, 38, grew up in New York horse country, near Connecticut, playing soccer and competing on the swimming and diving team and in horse “eventing,” a style of equestrian where rider and horse race through different kinds of skills events. She was studying pharmacology at the University of Connecticut and working as a sommelier at Greenwoods restaurant in Bethel, Conn., when something went wrong.
She was 22, in her last year in school, when she started seeing bright pulses and attributed it to the migraines to which she was prone and the stress of school and work.
When they persisted after several months, she finally saw a doctor who diagnosed uveitis, a perpetual inflammation of the eyes. They told her she would begin to lose her field of vision, from the periphery, until, one day, the world would go dark. She was told she could not become a pharmacist, because, as she jokes, “you can’t be a blind pharmacist.”
“She had all these things she wanted to do, and I didn’t know how she was going to do it,” her mother, Cathy Dixon said. “I was so worried.”
But she admits she “should have known better” than to discount her ultra-competitive daughter. Amy found experts at Yale Medical, where she submits to a host of experimental procedures to stave off sight loss. It has meant more than 16 surgeries over the past 15 years, everything from eye injections to implanting capsules that slowly release steroids into her eyes.
Amy focused on wine and began traveling as a consultant and in sales. But as her sight dwindled, she had to stop driving. She started using a cane and found strangers stopped talking to her, intimidated by her condition.
Today, her field of vision is the size of a dime in her left eye, a keyhole in the right.
“I felt very different from everyone else,” she said. “People felt sorry for me. I’d walk into things, trip over chairs. I was really embarrassed by my blindness.”
That’s when she found Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a Yorktown, N.Y., nonprofit that trains Labrador retrievers and German shepherds — at a cost of nearly $45,000 a dog — and gives them for free to people who qualify.
Elvis, who turned 7 on Valentine’s Day, came to her a freshly trained pup six years ago, and she learned to work with him in her hometown of Greenwich, Conn. He became her constant companion as she boarded planes, trains and taxis all over the world. Elvis has been to Italy, California, Grand Central Station and places in between.
Now, when she gets on a train or bus, she tells Elvis, “find a seat,” and he does, pulling her to a spot and resting his head on the chair.
At wine tastings, she’s part expert, part entertainer. Elvis is always part of her routine. As she’s talking about tasting the subtle blueberry notes in a malbec, Elvis is looking for the undertones in the lotion he’s licking off her left leg. Together, they make for an experienced and entertaining pair, said Virginia Philip, one of the country’s handful of female master sommeliers who works at The Breakers and owns a local wine shop.
“She’s very talented,” Philip said. “When you lose a sense, particularly your sight — even just being able to see whether you’re tasting a white or red — it puts you at a distinct disadvantage. … I don’t know that I could do it. It would be almost impossible.”
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Dixon says Elvis gave her the courage to start exercising after an anaphylactic reaction to a medication during surgery shut down her thyroid two years ago and made her gain 56 pounds. From there, she decided she wanted to run — and faster.
A born competitor, Dixon found a community of athletes on Facebook who guide runners with sight disabilities. She started training with Caroline Gaynor, a triathlon guide and director for Team RWB, which helps disabled athletes — particularly veterans — continue to compete. They run and swim tethered by a leash and ride a tandem bike, with the sighted person up front.
Within six months, Dixon — down to 130 pounds, below 20 percent body fat — ran her first triathlon in June of last year, with Gaynor leading the way, and unwittingly qualified for the USA Paratriathlon National Championship in Austin, Texas, this May.
“I’m really, really proud of Amy,” Gaynor said. “She’s very driven and incredibly optimistic. She may be the most optimistic person I’ve ever met.”
At this rate, Dixon has her eyes set on the 2016 Paralympics in Rio, a goal Gaynor said is well within reach. She writes about her success and failures — and her favorite blond — with a witty edge in her blog, The Blind Sommelier.
And at the end of every run, Elvis is waiting, his tail wagging more violently the closer she gets to the finish line.
“He’s been to every race, every swim, every workout,” she said. And he’s also been to each of her surgeries in the past six years.
“I reach down, and he licks my hand, telling me it’s going to be OK,” Dixon said.
He is more than a tool that helps her remain independent. He is the one holding her hand in the dark.
