[nagdu] Stories to help educate public around guide dog edequet

[GARY STEEVES]

Hello:
 
I am looking for some ideas from everyone. I’m located in Vancouver Canada where I do some freelance reporting and human interest stories for the Accessible Channel. The Accessible Channel is a cable tv station in Canada where all programming has descriptive video and close captioning without having to do anything with your tv settings. At five to each hour we have community interest stories that are reported on by visually impaired reporters.
 
Recently, when doing a presentation   on TAC  and the stories we did on the process of me getting a guide dog I shared some stories  of things that have happened to me and Bogart. An idea that came out of there was doing short one or two minute pieces addressing some of the issues guide dog handlers face. My example was once recently while going up an escalator a woman behind us said “I know I can’t pet you but you are so cute.” Of course, Bogart had his head turned around on a swivel drinking up the adoration. I had to point out to the woman that talking to him is distracting him and he needs to focus, especially wile on an escalator and that she was putting the dog in rreal danger. She didn’t  say or do anything but I felt like she was really insulted. Hopefully I made my point.
 
Does anyone have scenarios that have happened to them that they feel we could resolve by educating the public through our little pieces? Everything is welcome. To you who have had dogs forever it might seem pretty common but our goal is to try and help people know how to interact with people with dogs.
 
Feel free to email me off list at g.steeves at shaw.ca or on the list is also fine so everyone can see what we all experience.
 
Thank you
Gary
 


----- Original Message -----
From: "Brittney N. Mejico" <brittneymejico at verizon.net>
Date: Friday, June 3, 2011 12:56 pm
Subject: [nagdu] question that has been asked before!
To: the National Association of Guide Dog Users NAGDU Mailing List <nagdu at nfbnet.org>

> Can anyone please tell me how to put in eye ointment?  I 
> know this subject was already brought up but I am really scared 
> to do it my vet subjusted I get sighted assistance does anyone 
> have any tips I no longer have the e-mail where this subject was 
> brought up 
> 
> thanks