[NAGDU] {Spam?} Handle signs, and more on how to get my dog disengaged from people

[Julie J.]

Yes, it was me with the sign with the picture.  That was really the only 
time in my life with guide dogs that I had a problem with petting.  Before 
then there was some, but not overwhelmingly so.  Since then I learned to 
manage myself to curb the petting.

My two main techniques are to not look at the person because they may 
interpret this as eye contact.  I do not want to engage with the person 
either positively or negatively and my experience with eye contact is that 
it will invite something from the person.  So I turn my head slightly away 
and put on that blank vaguely interested expression, like there is something 
clear across the store that's my goal.  I don't maneuver the dog, but I will 
turn my shoulders slightly the same direction as my head.  The dog may alter 
course a bit or not, depending on the particular availability of space, 
previous directions and how much exactly I move my head and shoulders. 
Remember when I broke my foot it affected my balance a fair bit, so my dogs 
are very used to me having bobbles and not following perfectly.  They are 
trained to keep going, knowing that I'll get balanced again with their 
forward movement.

I no longer use signs, patches, bandanas or anything with any writing on it 
for my dogs.  It helps that both Monty and Jetta are very focused on 
working.  Jetta still struggles with visiting when we are sitting or 
waiting.  I have taken to telling people they can't pet because she will 
bounce.  It's the truth.  And for some reason this particular explanation 
works better than anything else I've ever said.

I wrote a short book on body language and how to use it to best effect when 
interacting with the public and our dogs.  I'll have to get it out, dust it 
off and finish up the editing.

Julie
New lowered price on my book:
Courage to Dare: A Blind Woman's Quest to Train her Own Guide Dog
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QXZSMOC
-----Original Message----- 
From: Peter Wolf via NAGDU
Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2016 2:53 AM
To: lisiefoster at yahoo.com ; nagdu at nfbnet.org
Cc: Peter Wolf
Subject: [NAGDU] {Spam?} Handle signs, and more on how to get my dog 
disengaged from people

Lisie, and hi everyone-

I have the same thing, people going right in for the pet or engaging my dog 
by eye and voice.   Handiworks looks like what I’ve seen in person at 
Lighthouse in San Francisco.  Fluorescent bicyclist lime green with bold 
black print.  My favorite is “Ignore me I am a working guide dog”, or 
better, “Ignore me I am working”.

That will be my next verbiage.   We have spent a ton of money on patches 
over time.  First it was “do not pet”.  Then, Do Not Touch.  Then we fine 
tuned it to “Working Do Not Distract” and  “Do Not Distract”.   I think that 
first words encountered, “Ignore Me”, might be even better.

I’ve been thinking as I have started writing on this, that it might be fun 
to talk about perception.  It’s my great irony that one of my careers has 
been teaching perception and particularly at that, use of vision and 
expansion of peripheral vision.   Now I have lost the peripheral, and some 
significant aspects of vision…It has been a real trip to - no longer from 
interest or even passion - to return to my earlier indigenous training 
background as a tracker and scout, to go through O&M blindfolded, and 
remember the years of having to move through the woods blindfolded in 
different seasons with nothing more than a pair of speedos.  I had to find 
my way through swamps and thickets, find people, or camp, or somewhere 
unfamiliar.  So now, what has it been to return to so many of the things 
that I trained in, and even taught others, but by necessity learn, has 
gotten pretty amazing…like to echolocate by necessity because I just must 
close my eyes for some time and not use them at all.   Of course once the 
shock wore off, and my personal pity party was exhausted, then it started 
becoming interesting, fascinating, even enthralling to bring up feeling and 
hearing to displace vision.  Anyone else have this experience?  Whether you 
have worked with your hearing and other felt senses for a very long time, or 
had to make the shift because of rapid or sudden vision loss (my situation), 
I would love to talk to you about it if you have developed this.  Publicly 
or privately, I would appreciate having conversation about this a lot.  Now 
that I’ve learned to accomodate and be “centered” in the new normal that my 
vision is and relax about it, it’s as if I can sense I’ve gotten new 
“vocabulary”, in my senses, from which to begin really learning.  If you 
might have any guidance from your experience in how to work to expand my 
senses, it would be fantastic.  I’d say email or phone me.  That would be 
awesome.

OK, let’s go back to why I was going to write in the first place.  The point 
where I went off was perception.  It was a big part of my Psych degrees, was 
at the center of what I eventually taught, and is probably part of what 
drives people to stick their hands out and go for our dogs!!  Hey I’ve been 
writing a lot lately, and hopefully I’ll chill…Eek, I have a desk full of 
stuff piling up!  But one more, because I hope you find this exploration 
fun.  It’s about the Psychology of signs (on dogs).  It may be that the way 
many signs (I mean patches) on our dogs can actually attract rather than 
repel well intentioned people.  It’s about how the subconscious works when 
we read signs.  I want to talk about that, and then depart, sort of take a 
risk and go way out there with it.

The subconscious is literal.  It does not understand “do not”, as quickly as 
“do” something.  In fact, “do not” goes invisible to the subconscious, and 
only the “do” part registers. I’ll explain that in a moment.  But a case in 
point first:  This is why punishment makes dogs paranoid, or if punished 
more, even neurotic; but love makes them want to do anything to be closer to 
us and “get it right".  We know this from hypnosis.  In hypnosis, you’d 
never point to the table lamp, and casually say to client, “kill the light” 
when they leave.   They might do far more than simply turn off the light 
switch.   Seriously, classically in an example like a patch reading, “Do Not 
Pet”, the “do not” is glossed over, and the thing that is the action, like 
“pet”, is what the preverbal reaction in a person is, before they even know 
it.  This is actually what we are writing about, when we say to each other, 
“they just seem to reflexively reach for my dog”.   It’s strange, and I hope 
it bears out better than in a bunch of well funded Psychology studies.

Julie was this you - someone wrote that they tried a “hand” image for their 
“don't pet” patch in the beginning.  And if I recall correctly, that it was 
even less effective than a patch with just words was.  Guess what, that’s 
exactly the subconscious reaction I’m talking about.  What the passerby saw, 
was a hand.  What they didn’t see, although it was there, and probably in 
bold line at that, was the “No” circle and line across the hand.  They got 
“hand” - and reached out their hand!   So I’m sitting here writing to you 
guys, now thinking to myself,  Hey cool, I’m sold!  If this is so true, I’m 
going to buy the “Ignore Me” patch!  I like that…few words, obscenely bright 
color, with a positive, not negative Command in bold print.  I’ll let you 
know if it works.

..So the other week, I wrote a piece for the group on how I’ve developed 
this little martial artsy movement to break off or avoid people messing with 
Metukah.  I’m realizing in writing to you guys today, what it must be that 
is operating in it, that has been making it effective to prevent a “lock on” 
or if I’m too late…to get people off my dog.  As I’ve said, being a snow 
white silken windhound, she is drop dead supermodel gorgeous, which doesn’t 
help us at all!

Ok.  So let’s break down what is making the martial artsy movement work.  It 
contains subconscious communication to others through body language, on an 
instant and pre-verbal level!  To recap, when someone is coming in at my dog 
physically or verbally, usually they are on my “dog” side, out across the 
dog from me.  That’s either ahead of us, incoming, or diagonally ahead of us 
in space, or next to her.   They are rarely on the other side, because that’s 
just me.  The dog is on my other side.  And if they are behind, it doesn’t 
matter, they are just a voice.  Ok, you got the spatial?

In my case, Metukah is usually on my right side.  As they reach in, or have 
already reached in (because I didn’t see them coming), or start engaging her 
verbally, I shorten the leash (soon to be handle), toward me, and I turn her 
slightly forward and slightly crossing in front of me toward my other side 
(my left side).  Not really though, not so much as that.  I don’t cross her 
in front of me.  I pivot *me*, and her with me.  My arm holding her leash 
actually doesn’t move much.  It is me moving, and she comes along as the 
bent arm moves with me.  I don’t mean big movement that interrupts our 
standing there or walking.  What this movement is, might appear to a good 
watcher, as if she accelerates forward a little, and slightly turns inward 
toward our line of travel. But again, actually, It’s not a big movement, but 
it is a slight “arc”.  Remember, I am not really putting her into a turn so 
much, she is simply pivoting in direction slightly around me as *I* do.  Do 
you get it?  So for keeping a line of travel while I am doing this, it’s 
only really a little bit of an S turn.  And we continue forward.  If I’m 
standing still when it comes in, I just pull or pivot.  The person then 
doesn’t get my chest facing them as would be normal, now it is actually a 
little bit of side chest and half a shoulder.  No longer facing, but not so 
far as to be turned away.  There.  I hope that paints it.

Two things happen in this.  One, Metukah’s head, and therefore eye contact, 
are instantly disengaged from the person.  And it’s good because in doing 
this, I have just engaged, or “tasked” her in movement.  She instantly is 
attending to me.  The product of this is, that the person just kind of 
breaks off, without seeming to realize what is happening.  This is because, 
in a nanosecond, their subconscious has - quite  literally -  just been 
given “the cold shoulder” by the dog, and also by me.  In an instant, the 
person who expected the front of a dog, with all it’s deliciousness like 
head and neck, face, eye contact and attention, suddenly only has ribs 
turning into a butt, which give nothing.  And the guy on the end of the 
leash is suddenly occupied seemingly elsewhere.

Think about this. Here’s where I said I was going to go “way out”.   I’m 
going to get almost esoteric here.  This is fun!  What I am realizing is 
happening is this:  It’s like an experience of whiplash to the neural 
expectation of someone who has just targeted your dog for attention.  Think 
martial arts.  Let’s use this example.  Say, a punch comes in.  Anyone know 
this one?  If you’ve spent enough time training, you don’t have to throw a 
big block anymore.  You only have to move yourself in space a little from 
the feet if at all, and your face,  just a little to the left or right.  You 
let the punch come in, so that it is not impacting but now only brushing by 
on the skin of your cheek.  When you do this, here’s what happens in the 
perception of the puncher:  The puncher neurologically *does* perceive that 
they got what they were trying for.  They may have called it “Punch”.  But 
what their subconscious went for was simply “contact”.  This is where the 
subconscious comes into play.  Now, If you don’t move, and they do hit you, 
they’d have the same satisfaction neurologically, because they’d naturally 
register the “hit”, which is…contact.   So here’s the thing:  With this if 
you allow contact, but you aren’t where they thought you were when they 
started throwing the punch, you don’t even have to hit back...   Just leave. 
Because in that moment, for a nanosecond, actually, they will become 
neurologically confused.  What they reached out for in their expectations 
didn’t happen.  Yet they did start contact, which was something different - 
and they remain stuck in their brain map about it…  In that moment you 
already just turned and went home.  What I have come to realize is, when I 
pivot and turn Metukah slightly away from someone’s reach or speech, that is 
exactcly what happened.  That’s what we are actually doing!

Here’s the difference:  In the above scenario, if you “blocked" it, that’s a 
different message - you’d then have a “fight”.  That’s no fun. (In dog 
handling, to me that’s the equivalent of “stop / don’t pet”, which rhymes 
with “get off my dog”, which can get a response from others directly or 
spoken to someone else like “What a jerk”.

I never actually dissected the mechanics of this.  Cool, huh?  This also 
works by the way, when it is too late, and someone has already engaged the 
dog, locked on.  Then it is harder for (me), because I feel like I’m being 
rude.  But still, I have learned to instantly gently pull and redirect her 
first, thus tasking her with a direction change, to break off the contact. 
And then of course it is my option to say hi, or nothing, or “So sorry, she’s 
a working dog”.   I wrote this earlier, saying that until I got the hang of 
it, I felt that I was being callous, antisocial, or rude.  But in these 
moments, there isn’t time to discuss it and educate people, unless I want to 
hang out and talk about it.   How to remain in good neutral regard while 
working…not impatient, or resentful, or irritated, that’s my challenge 
sometimes.  I do a lot of educating, because I find most people do mean 
well.  But perhaps because I do, it has been occurring to me lately that 
there seem to be a whole lot more people who do know a respectful boundary 
about working dogs than there used to be.  I think that our society is 
changing in this, with dog awareness increasing.







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