[nagdu] Treatment of People with Guide Dogs

[Tami Jarvis]

Nicole,

Interesting observations. Human interactions are very different for me 
with the dog than with the cane... I was still getting used to different 
interactions from the presence of the cane when I started going around 
with dog, so I feel like I've been in a crazy sociology experiment. /lol/

With the dog, people will call her and give her directions, but I have 
trained her to ignore them (mostly). With the cane, people give me 
directions that are often silly and may be more likely to try to take my 
arm or something when I don't want them to. The dog has learned to help 
me out when the directions involve the phrase "over there." Whichever 
tool I am using, people still seem to think they need to tell me about 
every curb and step. People are more likely to talk to me at random when 
I'm using the guide dog, but they will often talk to or about the dog. 
I've kind of learned some techniques to then guide conversation into 
non-dog topics and get the focus away from her if I want to. If I'm lazy 
and not that interested in connecting, then a nice chat about the dog is 
fine. /smile/

It used to bug me that people seemed horrified that the dog might make a 
mistake because that would be awful somehow. Then I noticed that people 
are terrified I will make a mistake with the cane because that will be 
awful somehow. The annoying thing when I'm using the cane is when there 
are people around who are terrified the cane might touch something, 
especially if they are the type to insist that I watch where I'm going 
and where I'm swinging that thing! This doesn't happen often, but 
sometimes there will be gasps of terror or shock when my cane taps a 
pole or something. OMG! I ran into it! /lol/ I guess there have been a 
few times when I've missed a bit stepping up a curb with my dog and 
heard the gasps. But in general, with the dog, I do not appear to be 
running into things by tapping them with her.

Hm... Standing at street corners with the dog often means discussing how 
she knows how to cross the street since dogs are color blind or 
something like that. I'm trying to remember if I've ever stood at a 
street corner trying to explain how I cross with the cane. Seems I have 
at one time or another. Maybe it's that Portland friendliness? If you 
don't say something weird to someone standing at the same corner, you're 
just not with it in Portland! Refreshingly, people seem as likely to say 
something outlandish and controversial about politics, religion or even 
the weather as they are about the dog or the cane. /lol/

Tami

On 09/12/2013 05:42 PM, Nicole Torcolini wrote:
> Some of the recent threads have made me think of something kind of
> interesting. No, you don't interact with someone who has a guide dog the
> same way that you interact with someone who has a cane, but, if people would
> treat us more like we were using canes instead of dogs, we would not have as
> many problems. For example, some people have problems with people trying to
> give their dog directions. When someone has a cane instead of a dog, this
> problem does not happen. The same goes for interacting with the dog. You
> don't hear about people messing with canes as often as you hear about people
> messing with dogs. What do people think of this?
>
> Nicole
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