
Growing up in rural Minnesota was idyllic for John Zavoral. During the summer, from morning to dusk, from “My buddies and I would ride our bikes everywhere. I can’t even image how many hundreds of miles we rode,” he says. They went fishing and swam in neighbors’ pools and got into all types of mischief. In the winter, they would go snowmobiling together. “It was very Norman Rockwell-ish. There was something about being independent at that young age. If you got hurt but you weren’t bleeding to death, you just kept going.”
He had one vision issue in the fourth grade: He was diagnosed with amblyopia (also known as “lazy eye”). The treatment for this condition is noninvasive. He had to wear an eye patch over the stronger eye to strengthen his weaker eye. “It was put on with very, very sticky adhesive, and it pulled my eyebrow out,” Zavoral recalls.
Not a pirate patch? he gets asked “No,” he laughs. “Remember, you’re dealing with third and fourth graders. That thing wouldn’t have stayed on for five minutes.” He also had to wear bifocals.
While he played hockey in high school, going to school activities was difficult for the teen because his parents worked differing schedules. As a result, “I started working early, when I was 14, at a supper club washing dishes,” he says. “During the summer, I worked at a landscaping company. I liked making money and I liked being independent.”
Zavoral attended vocational school and earned his certificate in graphic communications. For 27 years, he worked as a printer, eventually becoming a master pressman at Northwest Airlines. “It was the best job,” he says, giving him and his family plenty of opportunities to travel for free.
When he was in his late 30s, he lost a portion of the vision in his right eye from a genetic disease that causes “drusen” – growths under the retina that can lead to vision loss. But, he says, “that never stopped me from living my life.”
In 2008, when Delta bought Northwest, he was laid off and spent two years on unemployment. “First time ever in my life,” he says. It was a challenging situation. Eventually, he found a sales job at a small apparel company, then took another sales job, before he “parlayed that into a job at Comcast,” as a sales rep. “I worked with businesses on their telecommunications needs, including phone, internet, and television services.”
In January 2020, he was promoted to senior sales representative, but a few months later, in March, “I noticed I had a gray shadow in my good eye.” He and went to see his eye doctor immediately, but unsatisfied with the doctor’s response, he got a second opinion where he was diagnosed with permanent vision loss: the blood flow to his optic nerve had stopped, and he lost the central vision in his left eye. “I still have a little bit of peripheral vision, but over the span of a couple of days, I became legally blind.”
His vision loss coincided with the start of the COVID pandemic. “It was very tough to get assistance, tough to get mobility training, tough to do anything,” he says. “This was probably one of the greatest challenges in my life. It certainly wasn’t what I expected my life to look like at 56.”
Even as he was dealing with his vision loss, Zavoral continued to work. “It was incredibly difficult,” he says. “There were a lot of dark days.” Since he still had some residual vision, he used assistive technology to stay at his job for a further 16 months.
The Guide Dog Lifestyle
“My wife suggested I should get a guide dog,” Zavoral says, He didn’t think he was a suitable applicant, but after letting it sit for a few months, he started researching guide dog schools, which led him to the Guide Dog Foundation. He filled out the online application, “not really knowing what the outcome would be.”
He was amazed that within an hour after submitting the form, someone from the admissions department of the consumer services office reached out to him. “I had a phone interview,” where he was told he would be a great candidate. That initial interview was followed by an in-person interview with Tami Gomes, a Foundation field services representative, at his home in Minnesota.
“Tami was incredible,” he says. “She was so thorough and really dove into the nuts and bolts of my life and what I do.” She made the determination that a guide dog would make sense for his lifestyle.
As Zavoral moved on to the next phase of the application process, he was told that he needed some additional orientation and mobility training before he could train with a guide dog. “I was a little disappointed,” he says, “but I ended up getting a really good mobility trainer.” When he was invited to class in 2022, “I arrived feeling really confident.”
During Dog Day – when students meet their new guide dogs for the first time – Zavoral admits that it wasn’t love at first sight. “I could sense right away the high level of training [Ajax] had,” he says, “but he was going through his transition too. I loved him, but I wasn’t connected yet.” That changed the longer he and Ajax worked together. “The connection grew every day. You couldn’t get him away from me right now if you wanted to.” He laughs: “I’ve been given this incredible gift. You can’t have him back.”
He continues: “There are high points in your life: when you're born; when you go to school; when you get married, have kids, maybe buy a house; when you're successful in your career. Getting my guide dog ranks up there for me as one of the high points in my life so I can handle what I’ve been dealt. My family noticed when I called them from campus. There was a difference in my voice, my mannerisms, my attitude. And it’s all because of my guy.”
Independent Again
Zavoral parted ways with Comcast, which left him questioning whether he wanted to go back to work at all, considering the emotional and physical turmoil of the past several years. However, he connected with Minnesota State Services for the Blind for job counseling. He briefly considered training to become an orientation and mobility instructor but decided against it for logistical reasons.
He interviewed for a sales position at Lloyd Security, a provider of residential and commercial security systems and accepted the position of sales manager. It’s a job he finds extremely satisfying, and he’s able to work from home almost exclusively. The owner, Jill Lloyd, is very supportive of people who are blind or visually impaired and secured a state grant to help upgrade the company’s outdated software so it would be compatible with the assistive technology Zavoral uses.
Before he and Ajax were teamed together, Zavoral admits, “I didn’t feel good about my future. And you guys interjected this dog. But it’s not just a dog. The level of hope they bring you and the independence … everything’s different.”
Getting a guide dog, Zavoral says, “is a life event that I never anticipated. I thought, okay, I'm blind, you know, what can I do? And what he's done, what GDF has done, what my trainer's done, what my classmates have done … it's a brand new fresh start. It's amazing.”