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Train Your Guide Dog

The dog at right was "Toby", a big friendly mutt who was dumped on me. When I needed a guide dog to help me get around, I did like people have done for thousands of years, and practiced getting around with him with nothing more than has leash.

The whole "Guide Dog industry" is barely 100 years old, and it infantalizes its' clients.

Instead of teaching people who need a guide dog how to train a dog, they stick to the "give a man a fish, he eats for a day" model. Apparently, people with low vision can't be trusted to train their own dogs any more, and the dogs are taken away from them to be "retired" because, again, a visually handicapped person can't be trusted to care for two dogs.

We keep saying "a dog is for life", but this is how we repay a dog for it's lifetime of loyal service. It's cruel and unneccesary. It's also avoidable if you train your own dog.

There are plenty of adult dogs in rescues waiting to find their "forever home". And nobody's asking for $20,000 or $30,000 dollars in donations to train them.

How I Trained Toby

At one point, I needed a dog to help me get around safely. While I still had some vision, it wasn't a good time at all.

I took stock of what I had - two big dogs, and their leashes.

There's plenty of communication between a dog and it's owner, even with just an ordinary leash. I shortened the lead from 6' to 4', and took him to a parking lot at the nearby commuter train station. After morning rush hour, the lot isn't busy, so it made an ideal place to practice.

There was a road on one side, so I was able to use my hearing to listen to the sound of cars driving by. I was thus able to keep parallel to the sidewalk. Starting several hundred feet away from one end of the parking lot, I picked out a hydro pole at the other end, closed my eyes, and walked with Toby towards the pole orienting myself by ear.

After 100 steps, I opened my my eyes, and I was less than a foot off the desired destination. So I found it was possible to navigate reliably using my hearing keeping me oriented parallel to the street.

I repeated this a number of times, with Toby going on ahead, learning that this was his new job.

Then I decided we should tackle the sidewalk.

I held Toby's leash in the hand that was on the street side, so that I never had him crossing in front of me. We practiced navigating the sidewalk in both directions, 10 steps, then 20 steps, then 50 steps, before opening my eyes to check my bearings.

Toby was a quick learner. Turns out the biggest part of the learning process was actually learning to trust the dog. He quickly picked up that he had to keep street-side, and with more practice we navigated the sidewalks with increasing confidence.

Crossing The Street

This is the hard part - while dogs aren't colour-blind, they don't really understand the concept of traffic lights (and neither do many drivers, unfortunately).

This highlights the fact that "guide dog" is a misnomer - the human is always in control, determining where the dog goes. Neverthless, for going to known destinations,they know what do do. When it came time to cross my first street without using my eyes, I used my ears instead. I listened to the traffic, and when it sounded safe, I crossed, hoping that I wouldn't hear the sound of squealing brakes or become road kill. If other people were able to do it, why shouldn't I be able to figure it out by myself?

After a while, it became second nature, to the point that whenever my vision was mostly useless, I would use my hearing to cross the street safely, even without a dog.

It's not true that those with vision loss develop more acute hearing. What happens is that instead of just hearing, you listen.

Jack, the small dog that I "inherited" when his owner died, quickly learned to take the off side (edge of the sidewalk bordered with grass) when the three of us went out for a walk. All I had to do was hold a leash in each hand and walk between them.

Toby eventually died of cancer. Jack still keeps me company, but he's too small to serve as a guide dog in Canadian winters. And fortunately, the doctors are saving my vision bit by bit. I will always be low vision, but by using big screen smart TVs, I am now able to use a computer again.

Time To Stop "Accepting Your Limitations"

Ask any psychiatrist, psychologist, any other doctor or social worker - learned helplessness is a huge barrier to getting people to make the changes necessary to improve their lives, or even believe that they can turn things around. But you can most certainly learn to train your own guide dog. There's no special skills involved, no "secret sauce," no special breeding programs.

History is clear on this. People have been using dogs to help them get around for a couple thousand years now. Basically "any old dog," because special dog breeds simply didn't exist for most of human history.

Businesses supplying guide dogs to the visually handicapped (and they most certainly are businesses) would have you believe otherwise - that only they have the special skills needed.

If they really wanted to be helpful, they should instead help people train their own guide dogs, helping users achieve true autonomy while training the dog to help meet their own personal needs and style.

The only problem with this solution is that it will kill their fundraising model. And there are plenty of people in the "helping people with vision problems" business who will resist any call to get people to train their own dogs. After all, it's hard to get someone to understand that they're an impediment to users when their paycheque depends on them thinking their clients aren't capable, competent individuals who can train their own guide dogs.

The CNIB - Is This Really How A Charity Should Operate?

On January 18th 2023, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) ran an exposé describing how the CNIB (Canadian National Instutute for the Blind) spends more of the money from the funds it receives on yet more fundraising than on all other activities combined.

The full story is actually worse. CNIB Annual revenue in 2021: $66 million dollars, per their own financial statements. figures in thousands of dollars

Number of guide dogs produced annually: 20. Not all the 29 dogs in that year's "graduating class" were guide dogs

Sure, they have other activities, but fundraising, and paying fund-raisers, is their main focus. "Helping people" is mostly an excuse for the fund-raising activities.

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Copyright © 2022, 2023 by Barbra Hudson.
Email: barbra@lowvisioncomputing.com

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