[NAGDU] Escalators, and how different schools handle them?

[Heather Bird]

Lisa, thanks so much for sharing this info. If I ever travel to Germany, this is very good information to have, because I will need to be prepared for people to freak the heck out when Ilsa and I board an escalator. Does IGDF have any specific recommendations regarding escalators? That is, do they generally support schools training them, and they simply put up with the German schools not teaching escalator work? Or is the reverse the case, where they do not recommend escalator use, but they tolerate the US schools training their dogs to use them? If anyone knows the answer to this I would be very curious. I was traveling with an NFB member, someone from my chapter who was terrified of escalators, a cane user, not a guide dog user, and poor Ilsa was very confused when she would show me one and wag her tale, so proud of herself, then I'd ask her to turn about and go another way to find an elevator. She was very put out. Ilsa is still good friends with escalators, but I'll tell you, after convention, she thinks that elevator is a curse word. I'd started calling them elevators because of all of the convention craziness surrounding the use of the elevators. I have taught Ilsa the words for finding "stairs" and also escalators and elevators, but I pronounce them a little strangely, to keep the terms separate as they sound very similar. So escalators are ess key laters, and elevators are el luh vay tores, when I am commanding Ilsa to take me to one of these things. I do believe strongly in the ability of our dogs to learn a fairly large vocabulary of terms, but they also have to be different enough that they can distinguish them easily. So, whenever I add a new command I have to make sure that it doesn't sound too much like other commands. So, when I want to label something for Ilsa I have to run all of her existing commands through my mind for possible rhymes: left, right, forward, wait, hup hup, off, up, down, sit, and other commands that the school taught her, plus new commands I have taught her. For instance I taught her "seat" to find an empty chair, and the command to seak something out at TSE is "Zuke" but if the command had been "seak" then I would have had to use "chair" rather than "seat" because that would sound too similar.

Heather Bird
"They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." - Martin Niemöller
In our diverse society we must never fail to speak up in the face of Human Rights violations lest we be the next targets of such violations.

-----Original Message-----
From: NAGDU [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lisa via NAGDU
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2017 4:37 AM
To: NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users
Cc: Lisa
Subject: Re: [NAGDU] Escalators, and how different schools handle them?

Hi everyone,


I've just read the whole threat about escalators and thought it was very interesting. Here in Germany, guide dog schools teach the dogs to avoid escalators. So if we walk towards one, the dog has to stop and refuse to walk on it. I don't know of any German school that  trains their dogs to go on an escalator, so all your experiences were completely new to me. 
They also sounded a bit complicated or at least as if they require a lot of concentration but I'm sure, things like getting on and off a train were complicated at first, too, and by now, we all are so used to doing it.

It was even part of my qualification to show my dog avoids escalators correctly.


As always, there might be exceptions over here, too, but the common 
opinion is: dogs, no matter if guides or pets, aren't allowed on 
escalators because it's way too dangerous.

That's not my opinion nor do I oppose to it  because I simply don't know 
enough about the methods you described or the dangers people see. Just 
wanted to share how things are in Germany regarding this topic.


Lisa



Am 19.07.2017 um 00:21 schrieb David via NAGDU:
> Well, I messed up in my response to Sandra.  1.  I referred to her as 
> Julie.
>
> Claire is at the point now where lifting her with the chest strap 
> doesn't mean much, except for timing on her leap.  I suppose I should 
> start letting her make the decision on her own, if she has the timing 
> down.  I won't always have the little tunnel of vision that I have now.
>
> *David and Claire Rose in Clearwater, FL*
> *david at bakerinet.com*
>
>
>
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