[nagdu] Steps

[Tamara Smith-Kinney]

James,
 
Welcome!  I share your anxiety about steps, which of course made them much
more difficult for me, even with the cane, because I was so busy worrying
about them that I would forget to actually deal with them instead of
standing at the top of a flight of stairs with my best
deer-in-the-headlights look.  /smile/  Switching to dog was difficult all
over again, even though I had stairs to practice on if I wanted to leave the
apartment...  Still!  It took me a long time to get past the point where
that stupid fear of having the ground drop out from under me in a disastrous
way wasn't screwing me up.  Sometimes, honestly, I still backslide.

My owner-trained poodle guide and I have developed a system of sorts, which
I can't describe very well, but which enables me to know when we're at the
top of a flight of stairs and when it's safe to go down...  Otherwise, we
simply do not go because the dog has decided I'm not ready, so we're not
going until I shape up.  This system sort of evolved over time, so I'm
usually paying too much attention to making sure I'm balanced and good to go
to notice exactly what she does differently than with a basic down curb.

Pretty much, she seems to angle in front of my right leg (I'm left-handed,
so work her on my right) unless I'm really out to lunch that day, in which
case she gives me a harder block.  I'm undergoing progressive vision loss,
so sometimes I have it together and sometimes I'm a complete dolt for some
reason, especially when it comes to interpreting my surroundings.  Also, I
have intermittent balance problems.  Sigh.  I used to worry this would cause
me to screw up my poor dog on a regular basis, but she has simply shown me
how clever and adaptable she is.  She's quite smug about it, actually.
/grin/

Anyway, the extra nudge -- or block when I need it -- tells me there are
stairs, so I can balance myself and adjust and get my downstairs mindset
going...  Unless I pull a Tami and overthink it, in which case the poodle
says, "Heck no!  We won't go!"  /lol/

You may be less, um, airheaded than I, so the nose touch you mentioned
teaching Jordan would probably help a lot.  You would know what the stop was
for and could respond appropriately, knowing what was in front of you.

Hm...  It suddenly occurred to me that Mitzi and I have been working
together for nearly two and a half years now.  I'm struggling to get my
overall lifestyle back to what I consider normal so that we are both getting
the regular activity and teamwork we both need, so we frequently have to do
refresher work here and there.  Still!  It's getting hard to remember a time
in my life when I couldn't just toss the harness on my dog and head out for
whatever random activity without a care in the world except dancing the
dance with my poodle.  /lol/

Now, if someone can explain to me how to do some refresher training with my
human partner in crime, I can use all the help I can get.  He's going
through an over-protector phase, which means we get to do a lot of ignoring
the distraction of his warnings about what's in front of us, which causes
him to get more overprotective, so then I talk about how I need to get me
and Mitzi out more on our own, which scares the heck out of him, so then...
He gets it, really he does, and he tries to be good and not interfere,
but...  Put the man under stress and he can't seem to help himself.  Sigh.

Well, some of his cause for concern is perfectly reasonable.  Dangerous
traffic on our main road to anywhere; an exploding homeless population
(Portland is #1; #49 in renter/consumer protection; no one in charge seems
to recognize the correlation); sharp drop in quality of public
transportation; etc. and so on and so forth; ad infinitum.

Meanwhile, of course, there are always stairs, and I always have to stop to
deal with my fears and balance issues, while he turns around at the bottom
and worries at us while we get it together at the top of the stairs.  /lol/

We will just not talk about parking lots!  /rotfl/

Tami Smith-Kinney

-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of James Brown
Sent: Friday, November 12, 2010 8:12 AM
To: nagdu at nfbnet.org
Subject: [nagdu] Steps

    Hello All,

My name is James Brown, and I have been a guide dog user for six months now.
Locating down steps in unfamiliar places still creates  a little anxiety for
me.  

Jordan, who has a fast stride, currently stops for steps as he was trained
by Fidelco, but stopping could mean plenty of other things as well.  I
thought about training him to tap my leg with his nose to let me know we are
about to go down steps.  Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts?

Thanks,
JB
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