[NAGDU] Introducing a New Member

[Bree R.]

Thank you for letting me join your list. I don't know if this is a list that can help me. Or if I belong here. I think I want to at least try to get some more info about guide dogs before I decide whether or not a guide dog would help me with travel.

I finished mobility training through ACBVI before I moved last spring. I met a few people who had guide dogs and I wondered if they were even an option for me. I know I should talk to the guide dog schools to ask but it's intimidating since what if they just say no & I'm wasting their time.

I don't think or don't know if I should even try because I have done mobility training and it helped a lot. I don't think I have to have a guide dog to be safe. Or take someone's dog who needs them more than me. Mostly because my better eye I can see out of is corrected or can be to 20/70. I think that I would not think of a guide dog if I could see enough to not use a cane & if the people I met didn't make me wonder.


ACBVI said it is low vision but not blindness & I know guide dogs are for people who are really are blind. I just can't use what I can see very well I guess is how to explain it because what I see doesn't match what is there. I don't have RP but it's similar they said except there's just rod and cone dystrophy and mostly it's a male condition so they didn't know what was going on for a long time. I wear glasses over contract lenses which is how I can see 20/70 in one eye and it's like 20/200 on the other. My glasses are made with crystals and they're supposed to help them work together but it doesn't always work and sometimes makes it worse. I am night blind since I was a kid and have amblyopia where my right eye won't look straight and also photophobia. I think if I could see 20/70 really like 20/70 is then I wouldn't need a cane even it's just it is not the same trying to walk or get around as it is to read letters on a chart.

The counselor at the last session I had with Voc Rehab told me my vision is really not bad at all and to be grateful and I am. I think that is why I don't want to call and talk to guide dog schools because I feel guilty. 

I wanted to ask someone with a guide dog though if I really couldn't try to have a guide dog. I remembered the name of the NFB from something a while ago so I found a google result for your list when I searched NFB and guide dogs.

I hope it's ok for me to ask this here. I mean I know Im glad I can still see and all and I hope I don't keep having worse vision but I'm 27 and it has been getting worse for many years now. I feel bad though if I sound ungrateful. I'm really not. I just wonder if it is true that I cannot try to get a guide dog and that they are for only totally blind people. I sort of wish I could try to have one now because it seems like it would be much better to travel and to not have to run into something to know its there with my cane and to move around things a dog would see especially in the winter when it's hard to tell where curbs and roads are and the snow makes it hard to find landmarks.

I hope it isnt breaking any rules for me to post here and thank you. I am nervous as you maybe can tell.

Bree