[nagdu] dog guides and snow

[Julie J.]

Lora,

I'm not sure how other teams handle snow.  I'll explain how my last guide 
and I managed it.  I owner train though and might be the exception rather 
than the norm.

We just trudge through where the sidewalk should be.  I'm not sure if she 
could see a difference in how the snow lies, like if there's some ridge or 
impression that she is following or what.  Or she might have visually 
targeted the street corner where we want to end up.   I'm not sure how she 
managed to keep her line, but she did it reliably.

I'm not comfortable walking in the street when there are snow piles along 
the curb.  I can never tell exactly how far out in the street we are.  And I 
definitely don't like walking in the street when it's busy.  I don't mind 
going into the street for a small bit and then back up onto the sidewalk and 
I don't mind walking along the curb when there is no sidewalk.  Around here 
all the sidewalkless streets are pretty wide though.

Anyway I prefer the trudge straight through method.  So far it has worked 
for me. Fortunately people are fairly decent about shoveling, so it's 
usually only short stretches that we have to go through.

HTH
Julie


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lora and Myrtle" <blindhistory at gmail.com>
To: <guidedog-friends at yahoogroups.com>; "NAGDU Mailing List,the National 
Association of Guide Dog Users" <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 4:44 PM
Subject: [nagdu] dog guides and snow


> What in the world are guide dogs supposed to do in the snow? My dog 
> follows
> a fence if she can and if she can't she takes me out into the middle of 
> the
> road where is has been plowed and follow the snow bank. If there is a
> sidewalk that she can see she follows it. My dog really doesn't know how 
> to
> treat snow and neither do I. When I go back to school I can't have her in
> the middle of the road trying to follow the snowbank shoulder that is out
> far into the road. Is my dog doing the right thing?
>
> -- 
> Lora and Leader Dog Myrtle
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