[nagdu] The Differences in Dogs and Canes

[Raven Tolliver]

To Sharonda and Cindy Ray,
Allow me to clear up your misunderstandings.
I never said anything about guide dog users being better than cane
users. Such a statement could not possibly be true since there are
people who are far better with a cane than some people are with guide
dogs, and vice versa. Also, using a dog would not make anyone a better
person, traveler, etc. What I said was that guide dogs are better
mobility aids than canes. This is because dogs have a wider degree of
vision, so to speak, than a cane. My cane can only find things within
a four to five foot radius of my body. My dog can see across an entire
parking lot, and react to things in advance so that I don’t ever
encounter them. If there is an obstacle in front of us, if possible,
my dog starts moving over before we get within three feet of the
obstruction.
I never compared people in my previous post. It would not make sense
to, since we’re talking about mobility aids specifically.
To help illustrate what I mean, let’s use the example of pen and paper
compared to a laptop computer. My roommate prefers pen and paper,
while my buddy, Nick prefers his laptop. Using a laptop does not make
Nick a better person or writer than my roommate. And just because my
roommate can’t afford a laptop, doesn’t care to learn better computer
skills, and prefers not to deal with the malfunctioning and
maintenance of a laptop, does not mean that her pen and paper are
better than the laptop. In this situation, the cane is the pen and
paper, and the dog is the laptop with far more capabilities. My
roommate’s penmanship may be better than her typing skills, but her
pen and paper do not outshine a laptop. We are talking about tools
with certain levels of capability, apart from their potential users.
One tool may require more cost, time, and maintenance than another,
but this is the cost of having a tool with higher functionality, and
more guaranteed capabilities and precision. Cars are better than
bikes, smart phones are better than their track phone and flip phone
predecessors, power tools are better than manual hand tools, and
central AC units are better than window-mounted air conditioning
units. Does that make more sense?
Also, I guess the reason why I think of hitting something with a cane
as still running into it is because the way other people reacted when
I would hit things with my cane. People would comment, laugh, and some
people would want to help me so that I would hit absolutely nothing
else with my cane. Too, I felt that hitting things with my cane slowed
me down greatly; and in highly furnished rooms or crowds, hitting
things or people doesn’t help find ways around them. Like I said
before, the dog is better because it allows the user to react to
obstacles, pathways, doorways, and such, as a sighted person would. My
dog knows in advance that what we want to go to or want to avoid is
coming up, so he reacts to it immediately. The cane does not give its
user time to react in advance; and I count that fact as a drawback.

-- 
Raven