[nagdu] Jury finds IA Dept. for Blind's guide dogpolicy does not discriminate

Tue Feb 24 21:40:37 UTC 2009

Julie,

Good thoughts, and I liked the way you explained the, er,  hazards of
partial vision.  I've been pretty lucky that the worst that's happened to me
is mortal embarrassment.  Pride?  Who needs it?  /grin/  Oh, and life is so
much easier when you use your adaptive skills instead of your eyes.  Making
the mental transition is something one really, really has to work at.  This
one does, anyway.  /smile/

Being self-trained in O&M with both cane and dog, not to mention in my other
adaptive skills, except for some bits and pieces I've managed to wrench out
of our state's excuse for instructors (except our adaptive tech specialist
and the Braille literacy guy; they're excellent), I know just how hard it is
to make yourself go out and pick up those skills -- or to do the tedious
practice of reading drills or whatever.  Ach!  And I'm a sort of compulsive
learner, studier and practicer.

I've learned to find ways to learn and practice those skills by giving
myself assignments of something to focus on as I go through my daily life.
There have been a couple of periods during the transition when my life has
been so out of control, I couldn't stay ahead of the game and had to learn
every single skill or new application of the skills I had so had to learn to
use them on the fly.  OMG!  Too much!  I finally have myself in a position
that outside sources can't muck things up for me, as well as a healthy
appreciation for how vulnerable some aspects of being blind (like lack of
access to resources or opportunities to get the resources you need; lack of
a means of independent transportation if you're in an area without reliable
transit or taxi cabs, etc.) can make you to those who like to control
others.  Ugh!

One side effect of owner-training while continuing to build my skills to
adaptive to progressive vision loss is that I have bumped up my independent
O&M skills so that I can get from Point A to Point B without cane or dog,
albeit slowly and carefully and wishing I had not somehow managed to walk
out the door without my cane since I was taking my dog to the groomer.
/smile/  My roommate (I think I'll start calling him DD for Daisy's Dad) is
a very good sighted guide, but it's nice to know where I am and what's
around me nonetheless.  Anyway, in our old 'hood, we had a nice level open
grassy field for a dog park, so I could just walk around to practice safely.
Or jog, even.  There were enough bumps and holes to learn to step in them
without breaking an ankle, and enough variance in sounds over time that I
learned to interpret and stay oriented much better.  When Mitzi and I were
there on our own, especially after dark, I could just practice walking in a
straight line or making right-angle turns while she played "lightning
poodle."  Don't ask.  /smile/  Being very literal, I would actually tell my
friends that when they wandered in to exercise their dogs in the dark and
asked what we were doing there.

"Did you say you're practicing walking?" they would exclaim, clearly stunned
by the notion.  "And what is lightning poodle?"

Er...  Actually, the crowd at that park was pretty good at understanding my
reasons once I explained, though they would also tease me about it.  /smile/

I don't recommend going out and getting some poodle or other and deciding to
train it to be your guide as a means of building independent mobility
skills.  Leash walking, training and playing with my dog did give me a fun
way to work on those skills and abilities without the sense of sheer
drudgery and frustration of doing it the old-fashioned way.  /smile/

Er....  I hope everyone knows that when I speak of owner-training and
self-training in O&M as fun, I mean that in the sense of really, really
intense work, huge time expenditure and great sacrifice -- not to mention
frequent fear and trembling!  I just happen to enjoy training animals, and I
enjoy learning new skills, and I enjoy being out and about, and I enjoy
hanging with my dog and playing silly games to keep her (and me)
entertained.  So I can focus on the those aspects while the work, drudger,
time, etc., etc., just sort of happen along the way.  /grin/

Tami Smith-Kinney

-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of JULIE PHILLIPSON
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 8:18 PM
To: NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users
Subject: Re: [nagdu] Jury finds IA Dept. for Blind's guide dogpolicy does
not discriminate

Angie I'll take a shot at this although I might be being too brave to do so!
Anything that helps by visual means is being referred to as a visual aid, so

that could be a machine like a CCTV a magnifying device or a human sighted 
guide and in this case it is a guide dog because your dog is helping you by 
using his her ability to see.
What the NFB centers are doing is eliminating help from any other visual 
means and making you learn to tune into your own abilities to gather the 
same kinds of information and learn to trust and depend on yourself and only

yourself without the confusion of in adequate vision.  .
When someone is first learning or relearning travel skills they are learning

much more than just traveling with a cane. they are also building and 
strengthening confidence and self respect.  They discover that they have 
regained independent mobility, and eventually are still able to do all the 
things they could do before losing vision.  Once someone has established 
that sense of confidence and can travel competently, on an emotional level 
you have proved to yourself that you can accomplish what ever you want to 
do.  It didn't just happen in a week or a month it took lots of time to 
carefully build that confidence and trust in yourself.  For example think of

something that you feel you are really good at, and think about what you had

to do to achieve that competence.  How did you feel about yourself once you 
reached your goal?  Pride, ability to move on to accomplishing other things?

You could even compare it to graduating from school.  You don't just become 
a psychologist, or a lawyer in a short period of time.  You had to work at 
it and practice it, and do it often like learning to ride a bike or play an 
instrument.  The more you did it the better you got at it right?
It is the same with learning to do anything even to use a cane or a guide 
dog.  When you are learning to use a cane you might stubble on an uneven 
surface or miss a step but I'll bet you just learned how not to do it again!

You notice the differences in the sound that your cane makes and you start 
being more careful paying attention to traffic sounds as you approach the 
corner.  When you use a dog and skip the cane altogether you figure oh my 
dog will take care of it and stop when I get to the corner so I don't need 
to think about it right?  You don't give yourself the chance to develop your

own awareness to the environment.  You learned to be overly dependent on 
your dog, not working as a team, and putting way too much pressure and 
stress on the dog.  When you miss that step you don't take responsibility 
for it being your own mistake, no you correct the dog and blame it on him or

her!  By skipping the learning to use a cane step you are cheating yourself 
and being unfare to the dog.
When you get a dog for the first time you didn't all of a sudden know how to

do it perfectly, in fact it takes several weeks of training and then 
sometimes months after that to feel comfortable and trust in your dog, but 
it still took a lot of hard work to accomplish that goal.

Now the use of sleep shades is a whole other issue.  Like I said before you 
are eliminating the confusion of poor vision and tuning into your other 
senses.  If someone has residual vision I can't tell you how many times I 
have thought I knew what I was seeing only to find out it wasn't at all what

I thought it was.  Is that a pot hole or just a dark patch of blacktop 
coming up?  Is that door open or is it a glass door that is closed.  How 
long am I going to feel around looking for the door handle or visually find 
the door bell.  Once you start learning to do these kinds of things without 
the help of poor vision it becomes much simpler.  I think this is probably 
hard for a congenitally blind person to understand because it has simply 
never been in their experience.  I have never been trained or used sleep 
shades and I don't think I would ever like to.  What I have done many times 
is closed my eyes and trusted my other senses to figure something out.  That

is a hard thing to do, and most of us would not want to or perhaps even be 
able to do it voluntarily.  Most of us blind and visually impaired folks 
have simply never gotten adequate mobility training.  There is a shortage of

mobility instructors and there is neither the time or money to give mobility

the time it deserves.  Somehow some of us get good at it on our own or 
perhaps got lucky and did have a good mobility instructor who was able to 
teach something and managed to somehow give you the confidence to transfer 
those skills to other situations, but many times that just doesn't happen 
for lots of reasons.  OK let me know how well I have explained it or how 
much I've screwed up! (grin)
Julie Phillipson
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Angie Matney" <leadinglabbie at mpmail.net>
To: "NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users" 
<nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 6:56 PM
Subject: Re: [nagdu] Jury finds IA Dept. for Blind's guide dog policy does 
not discriminate

> Would someone please explain this nonstandard use of the term "visual aid"

> to me? My dog is not a powerpoint presentation.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Angie
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> nagdu mailing list
> nagdu at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nagdu_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> nagdu:
>
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nagdu_nfbnet.org/jbrew48%40verizon.net

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.237 / Virus Database: 270.11.1/1960 - Release Date: 02/19/09 
10:48:00

_______________________________________________
nagdu mailing list
nagdu at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nagdu_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nagdu:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nagdu_nfbnet.org/tamara.8024%40comcast
.net