[nagdu] navigating without your cane

Jenine Stanley jeninems at wowway.com
Sat Oct 8 19:57:29 UTC 2011


Cindy and other TSE grads, 


Has TSE always had that policy of allowing you to use your cane prior to
receiving the dog? Just curious as I'd thought they used to force people to
put away their canes and learn the building sans cane before getting a dog. 

I don't think there's a right or wrong to either way of doing things,
allowing or not allowing canes. It's not so much breaking an emotional
attachment as breaking a kinesthetic one, muscle memory and all that. For me
with my very first dog, the switch from leading or getting input from the
right side of my body, my cane hand, arm and shoulder, to the left side, a
very hard pulling dog, was tough. The time without a cane to equalize that
input did help some. 

Jenine Stanley
jeninems at wowway.com


-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Cindy Ray
Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2011 2:58 PM
To: NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users
Subject: Re: [nagdu] navigating without your cane

Well, TSE has you use the cane to help you orient yourself to the building
for the time until you receive the dog. Then until the dog is in harness,
you heel the dog throughout the building. I think this is a good thing
because you have come to feel fairly confident about the building by the
time you get your dog and you can truly heel it rather than inadvertently
reverting to having it lead you where it thinks you want to go even if it is
on leash. The first dog I got there was just from Saturday afternoon until
Sunday afternoon when the dogs were issued. This  would not have hampered or
improved my transition to the dog one way or the other. Now I've been there
enough that I would be confident either way, and once I did a Juno walk
right before a meal so had to return without the cane. It wasn't a problem.
No cane after we got the dogs though.
Cindy


_______________________________________________
nagdu mailing list
nagdu at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nagdu_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nagdu:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nagdu_nfbnet.org/jeninems%40wowway.com
-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 10.0.1410 / Virus Database: 1520/3943 - Release Date: 10/07/11





More information about the NAGDU mailing list