[nagdu] Guide dog injured on escalator

AnnaLisa Anderson annalisa at sector14.net
Thu Nov 12 00:59:54 UTC 2009


Hi Tami,

Well, the way Sunny does escalators is just very nonchalant and
matter-of-fact.  Whoever trained her did a very thorough and great job.  I'm
not sure who her first trainer was as she was a reissue.  Or perhaps our
trainer taught her...  Anyway, she just walks on, stands still till we get
to the end and walks off, no big deal.  Only occasionally does she want to
jump off the end, so I don't even have to drop the harness handle.  I was
very surprised the first time we did an escalator together, because she just
walked onto it calmly like she did it all the time.  We do now for real
though, just about every day.  I worry sometimes that she won't walk off in
time and hurt herself, she just seems to know when it's time, and calmly
walks off.  I have been thinking about that scary story though for the last
few days and keeping well aware of where her feet are to be sure nothing bad
happens.  Picking a dog up by the back strap of the harness might not be the
best thing, because then their feet are sort of hanging down and their nails
stand a better chance of getting caught if you don't lift them up enough, or
if you let go too soon.  Also then the dog has no control to walk off by
themselves.  Most people couldn't physically do that anyway.  I sure
wouldn't want to try, especially with one hand.  JMO. I always keep my right
hand on the rail slightly ahead of where we are, and put my foot one step
ahead when we're getting close to the end, so I can feel when it starts to
flatten out and we can get off gracefully.  Admittedly that's harder to do
with a moving sidewalk.... Also when we're getting close, I encourage Sunny
to hup up and sort of do a forward motion with my body so she doesn't linger
too long.  Hopefully that makes sense. <smile>

With my first dog Megan, I taught her how to ride escalators myself.  I did
it all wrong, but it still worked out because of the kind of dog she was.  I
was at convention in Detroit back in 1994, and figured there had to be a
better way than to always deal with the elevator crowds, especially if I
only had to go up or down one floor.  So I  thought I would see if Megan
would be willing to at least try the escalator.  Before then she had seen
them of course, and looked at them with curiosity, but balked at trying to
get on one.  Well, my first mistake was starting out with a down escalator.
I got on, she didn't.  Fortunately I had a couple friends with me who could
stay at the top with her till I got back up there.  So I thought, well,
that's that, we won't try that again.  Megan had other ideas.... the next
time we walked by an  escalator, she walked right up to it as if to say, I
can do it Mom, really I can, let me try again.  Or perhaps it was fear of
being left behind again...  Whatever motivated her, she was very intentional
in showing me that escalator.  This time it was an up escalator, so I
thought, well, okay, why not?  So I stepped on, and she jumped on... and
wanted to keep climbing the stairs.  I told her to stand still, then when we
got to the top, she jumped off.  I was ecstatic, and she was so proud of
herself that she literally jumped for joy.  We had to go up another floor,
so we did it again right away, and she was just as eager the second time to
try it.  After that she started to get the hang of it pretty quick.  Down
escalators were a bit more tricky, but it wasn't long before she figured
those out too.  She always wanted to jump on and off; I don't blame her, so
I did give her some leash so she could do that, and that seemed to work
pretty well.

That's just what I did, and that was long before I even heard of clicker
training and taking things slow and easy... <grin>  It just sort of happened
out of necessity and for my convenience, and luckily Meg was not easily
frightened by anything and was eager to give it a shot.  If Mitzi is like
that, I'm sure she'll do fine.

AnnaLisa and Sundance






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