It's ironic that I was thinking about Craig Miller as I hurried to make the four blocks in eight minutes to catch my bus. OK. So maybe I was flying across the street, but it's my own downtown, beloved despite its growing notably quieter self, and I was feel-in' groovy.

Listening for the traffic patterns at Seventh and Vine, I heard what I eventually decoded as the clip-clop of horses' hooves. "Joni, forward" - I uttered the command as I have thousands of times.

And pow! Kerplunk! Kerplooey! My graceful, fast-paced self crashed ever so gracelessly to the pavement as we reached the up-curb.

My first thought was humiliation. My second was that my knee was in pain.

The third thought came only when suggested by the kind police officer who helped me get up.

"I think your dog was excited by my horse," she said. My dog, a sweet golden retriever, is the very reason I was able to move so rapidly and confidently across the street. Could it have been her fault? She didn't try to pull me toward the horse, didn't leap or growl or stray from her job of guiding me directly across that street. Still, as I reflected on the street crossing just seconds before, she had indeed failed to pause at that up-curb to alert me to step up onto it, a failure which probably caused me to trip.

But this isn't about police officers or buses or clumsy adult women who trip over curbs.

It's about the remarkable reciprocity that bonds a guide dog to a human being, one partner guiding, the other partner feeding and praising, and both loving and trusting the other completely.

Craig Miller violated that trust in the most incomprehensible manner. After his black Labrador, Inky, guided him safely home from a bar last year, the Lansdale, Pa., man kicked his dog to death. Inky sustained multiple injuries from the repeated "blunt force," but died 15 minutes after his ruptured spleen filled his abdomen with a pint of blood.

Last week, Miller was sentenced to prison and a $1,000 fine to be paid to the Leader Dog School in Rochester, Mich., that trained Inky to be his guide.

Miller is blind, has alcohol and drug abuse problems - and maybe other troubles - but the judge who tried his case was not swayed by those potentially pitiful circumstances. His sentence is appropriate - but the damage does not end with one drunk man and one dead dog in Pennsylvania.

Every one of the schools training guide dogs in the United States will now be somewhat more on the alert for potential violence in angry students. And every blind handler is subject to more scrutiny by the general public who maybe only knows one guide dog story, the story of the man who kicked his dog to death.

Disability has always been an equal opportunity minority. It visits individuals of every racial, educational, religious and socioeconomic background. It becomes a part of people who are generous or stingy, funny or sad, lethargic or energetic, optimistic or despairing. As part of that larger group, people who are blind also come in every flavor. And one, just one, misguided violent man destroyed a wonderful animal.

Guide dogs are bred or selected for traits of intelligence, loyalty and an eagerness to please. Every once in a while, a school makes a mistake and a dog is trained that turns out to be aggressive or spiteful or foolish. That's the way it is with humans, too.

If you see a blind person speaking firmly to a dog who has leapt at another animal, guided its handler into an intersection or failed to pause for an overflowing trash bin, please don't panic. Most blind people who receive these precious animals adore them, bond with them, are appreciative of the bond of reciprocity that holds the partnership together.

Craig Miller is one tragic exception, and it is hoped that he will never have another animal - of any kind - again.

Contact Deborah Kendrick by phone: 673-4474; fax: 321-6430; or e-mail: dkkendrick@earthlink.net.