Blind athlete Sean Cheshire shares a close bond with guide dog Nick.
Gina Levay/Blind AF
Army veteran Sean Cheshire doesn't like feeling limited, so he has found a way to live an innovative and exciting life since losing his eyesight in an accident while working as a paramedic at the age of 36.
“If you want to know who I am and what I represent, see how I live,” she says.
Witness: She competed in the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro and became the 13-time US champion of paracycling. In 2021, she rode singles (not tandem) bikes across the United States for 60 consecutive days. The documentary “Blind AF” recorded a 3,600-mile journey.
She biked over 2,000 miles from Canada to Mexico, setting record time for Paralympic athletes last year, completing a 23-mile rim-to-rim hike through the Grand Canyon without a guide within 11 hours.
“The mentality can't say, 'What can I do, can I do that?”,” Cheshire says. “It's like, “If I want to do something, how do I do it?”
It was a difficult question to face right after being blinded due to a traumatic brain injury that persisted in 2010 behind an ambulance during a snowstorm.
“It's incredible that we take our independence for granted as individuals witnessed. I am a strong, independent single parent and I have lost all sorts of independence from this injury,” she recalls. “I was really depressed and all I could think about was dying.”
After fighting complex PTSD through an adaptation program at the VA hospital where she trained for the half marathon, Cheshire began the next chapter. When someone told her that she wouldn't be good enough for her to compete in the Paralympic Games, it proved to be the driving force she needed to prove them wrong.
Keep a guide dog
Sean Cheshire gained independence in 2020 by partnering with guide dog Nick.
Gina Levay/Blind AF
Another pivotal choice was to choose to partner with a guide dog, a German shepherd named Nick in 2020. Cheshire didn't take that into consideration until she and her friends shopped at the mall and stopped at a table holding nonprofit guiding eyes.
“A woman named Lisa tried to talk about guide dogs. “I'm not a dog person. I can barely take care of myself. I don't know if I can take care of my dog,” she recalls. “She said, 'You can try it, and if it doesn't work, it's not like they'll leave the dog with you and get stuck there forever.”
Therefore, Cheshire applied for a guide dog and partnered with Nick. Nick “absolutely” increased her independence. The “spanky” service dog helps PTSD by waking up from a nightmare and reflecting emotional state, not only leading to doors, stairs, chairs, escalators, curbs, other objects she finds and asks.
“Nick is literally my emotional barometer,” she says. “If Nick seems okay and you don't understand why, then that's the signal I see myself and think about my feelings – what is my anxiety? What is my fear? Because it has more to do with me than he. It's an incredible bond. It connects with these dogs.
Shawn Cheshire and her guide dog, Nick, enjoy Grand Canyon National Park.
Gina Levay/Blind AF
I'll move forward
Nick joins Cheshire while training adventures, hiking on trails near Flagstaff, Arizona, or swimming while paddleboarding. He had the guidance eyes of blind trainers while riding bikes all over the United States, as it was not feasible for him to run it.
She began her journey by soaking the wheels of a Pacific bike from Florence, Oregon, and reunited with Nick on the night that ended in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where she immersed the wheels in the Atlantic.
The key to ride quality is unlikely: music. The wireless JBL speaker on the back of the lead bike played the song non-stop (not heard in the movie due to copyright considerations).
“We were listening to hip hop, dance music and what we could hear in the wind and traffic noise,” she says. “It was like my blind gaze. I was able to see how far I was from the lead bike and not too close.”
Shawn Cheshire will pause near the Grand Tetons in Wyoming and cycle along the Transamelica Trail.
Gina Levay/Blind AF
She also had a two-way radio in her helmet, communicated with the lead bike and followed the car and movie crew.
“They would always give me feedback on how close I was to the rumble strip, the edge of the road, or the guardrail,” she says. “So I was constantly thinking about all the sounds, focusing on the music, listening to what the crew were saying, and I was really trying not to be overwhelmed by the wind, the semi-truck or everything else, and there was a lot of it.”
Cheshire hopes that the film, directed by Gina Levay and screened April 7th as part of the Reelabilities NY Film Festival, will inspire audiences from all life.
“I hope people can hear and feel that no matter how bad it gets, there's still a way,” she says. “There's always a way.”
