All the Things they NEVER taught you at Guide Dog School

I talk a lot about my guide dog on this blog – some might say too much.  But the past week has clearly shown me that no matter how comprehensive a guide dog school’s training is, there are certain things that you just don’t know you need to know… until you need to know them.

1) There will occasionally be times and places you don’t take your dog. On those occasions, it is not appropriate to tell your companions to find the crosswalk, or wait on the bus bench while you pick up your backpack.  Instead, bite your tongue and laugh uproariously at these faux pas, because God knows they’re laughing at you.  I actually found myself doing this when a bus pulled in to a stop, and the instant the doors opened, I just opened my mouth and said “Wait…” and my friend laughed so hard he nearly cried.

2) When you pick up that cane on said rare occasions, it is completely normal to hit posts and benches and garbage cans with it; that’s what it’s for.  But no one prepares you for the head trip that can ensue at moments like these because, oh yeah, you’re dog’s not being naughty; HE’S NOT THERE!

3) How to keep a dog calm after an injury.  On Monday night, Jenny got her tail slammed in a screen door.  Without getting into blood and gore, it wasn’t pretty.  Simply grabbing stuff and acting was an incredibly useful skill… which did ultimately require veterinary intervention…

4) Finding ways to distract your dog when re-bandaging wounds yourself is necessary.  My dog gets stupid with treats, so when it came time to re-bandage her tail, for some reason, a discourse about current immigration practices was all she needed to calmly stand there and let me wrap her tail.  This process took three minutes; previously, just getting the first layer on took 10 unsuccessful minutes of having her lay on the floor…

5) Discerning the difference between vomit and chewed-up “ground candy”.  While I have never experienced this first-hand, when I asked about things they never learned in guide dog school, my friends Lisa and Deanna had a lovely enlightening discussion about randomly discovering doggie throw-up instead of the item they thought they were taking away from their dog’s inappropriate chewing.

6) How to use a “cone of shame”.  I have not yet mastered this skill, but I will… when Jenny’s bandage  is removed and she wants to lick at her tail… Conversely, how to just stand there and laugh as your dog barks maniacally at the vet tech holding the disassembled cone of shame…

7) How to just stop second-guessing and follow your dog.  This has steered me wrong, but it does steer me right if my dog desperately has to use the facilities and can’t find any other way of “telling” me (short of doing her business on a public sidewalk).

8) How to simply enjoy the ride of the good, the bad, and the ugly. For a type A personality like mine, this was tough, but I had a great trainer and terrific follow-up support, and wonderful friends who DO remind me that my guide dog is a dog, and not a perfect, ugly-looking little automaton.

Guide dog school training is definitely comprehensive; they teach the skills to bond with your particular dog, and do prepare you for eventualities, such as distractions, traffic checks, and crazy weather.  But no matter what the training, much of what is learned is learned in the trenches… and that’s OK.  Simply having a sense of humour and acting on instinct when necessary will get any guide dog team further in a pinch than one traveler with a cane (which, by the way, is a completely 100% valid mode of travel).  I do prefer my dog… though, largely because I look much less stupid giving commands to said cane when I break it out and use it…

If you Want it Done Right, you Do It Yourself… or Ask Someone Else to…

Tags

blindness, communication, friendship, independence, relationships, requesting assistance

Last week I posted on my facebook status a question about which blog topics friends, family and readers wish me to cover. One topic brought up a HUGE level of discussion from blind and sighted friends alike:
When is it appropriate for a sighted person to say no to a request from a blind family member or friend? When is saying no selfish? When should the blind relative/friend take responsibility for themselves and be as independent as possible?

I took to Twitter and asked the question, and the level of responses was astounding. Ultimately, the answers went something like this (and I am inclined to agree):
1) A blind person should do whatever they can to be independent, but (just like sighted people) may find certain skills hard or challenging. Ultimately, making a concerted effort without resounding success is one thing; not even bothering to try in the first place is another.
2) A sighted relative/friend is within their rights to say no to requests if the requests are too frequent, unreasonable, or for a task that the blind person is clearly able to do for him/herself.
3) It IS selfish to say no if the task cannot reasonably be completed by the blind person. For example, if a blind person tries to get a restaurant’s menu online before going out for dinner and finds it inaccessible (embedded picture menus are very common), leaving them twisting in the wind and asking an overworked waiter to read them the menu while you’re sitting right there is unreasonable.

That having been said, it all depends on the friendship or family dynamic. Many sighted people are too quick to step in and do for us what they THINK we cannot do for ourselves; others have super-independent blind friends or relatives who insist on doing everything even if it’s not expected, reasonable, or even requested. My relationship with my friends and family has generally clear boundaries, not because of my blindness or their vision, but because all relationships are give and take and (I hope) communicative. For example: I fold laundry in my house (whenever I get to it); Ben folds the socks. Ben HATES folding clothes, and I don’t mind putting my mad organizational skills to work figuring out how to squeeze that last T-shirt into the dresser drawer. It takes me FOREVER to fold socks, and even then I can’t be sure they match; what takes me an hour with mixed results takes Ben five minutes. We’ve found it a generally fair tradeoff. When it comes to restaurants, if I can’t get the menu online ahead of time, any sighted companion who is dining with me will read me the headings (soups, sandwiches, pastas, wraps) so I can get an overview of the menu without having the whole thing read to me when all I want is pizza.

At the end of the day, it’s up to me, and others, as blind people to do whatever we can reasonably do for ourselves, and politely advocate when things are unnecessarily being done for us; it’s up to friends or relatives to tell us when our requests for assistance are unreasonable (too frequent, cutting in to personal time, without reciprocity). For every person and relationship, the specifics will be different (I love that my husband can cook, but I do some mean cooking myself; others might find cooking scary, challenging, or incomprehensible, and that’s OK). At the end of the day, communication on both sides of the blind/sighted continuum will make boundaries and expectations perfectly clear. So to my blind readers: do what you can, make an effort, ask for help when needed, but be generous with your thanks and mindful of time commitments. To my sighted readers, love us enough to tell us when we ARE being unreasonably “needy”, ask us what you can assist with or if our struggling with a task is necessary so that we can improve it. To everyone, sighted and blind, be quick to listen and slow to speak harshly, and keep an open mind.

My best friends are Human… Seriously!

I take the bus to and from work every day, and have done for the majority of my working life.  Even when I wasn’t working, the bus has always been my primary means of transportation to job interviews, to get books at the library, to meet friends for coffee, to go shopping, you get the idea.  For the most part, I’ve had good experiences on the bus, but sometimes… not so much.  The bus is full of interesting people – both fascinating and otherwise – and I get many reactions from many different people.  I’ve been told in a sickly sweet yet loud voice how sorry someone is because I can’t see, apologies from someone stepping on my guide dog’s paws because she likes to stick them out in the aisle, and the evver-present questions about how I live my life and could possibly be happy as someone who can’t see.

One comment I got yesterday really got my hackles up.  Perhaps because it was just an exhausting day, but I got pretty prickly when a man got on the bus, he saw my guide dog, and said something to the effect of, “Such a cute dog; he’s your best friend!”  Someone might say that, well, a dog IS a man’s best friend, but it wasn’t said like that; it was said like my dog is MY best friend.  I tried to correct him by saying something like “Well, she is a wonderful dog, but my best friends are people,” and he came back with “no, no, no, she is your best friend because she is your eyes!”

At that point, I gave up.  There’s no point in trying to change someone’s perception of what my life is like, or what my dog does for me.  Sure, Jenny is a super-smart dog (as evidenced today by her super awesome problem-solving skills contrasted with a HUGE sniffing/distracted tendency), who gives the best snuggles a girl could ask for; she’s kept me safe from oncoming cars, kept me going in a straight line or angled me to a corner when I thought I knew better, guided me through the crazy streets and sidewalks of New York City alone and with my husband, and taught me more than I ever wanted to know about my own perceptions as a blind traveler.  I owe her a tremendous debt, but she is a dog, not a person, and my best friends are people.  Wonderful, whitty, sarcastic, moody, flawed people.  Jenny cannot drink a cup of coffee with me at 4:00 AM when I’ve had a bad day and can’t sleep.  She can’t wax eloquent on the economy, literature, politics, religion or technology when I feel like having a profound conversation.  She can’t call or text me and allow me to serve her when she’s struggling due to some severe medical concerns.  She can’t verbally smack me upside the head when I do or say something totally outlandish (that’s when running me in to poles comes in to play).

I love my dog – I truly do – but when it comes right down to it, we are different species.  We rely on each other in many ways more special than I can say.  But when it comes right down to it, she does have her limitations.  She will never be a human being, and those flawed beautiful creatures are my best friends.

Beauty is NOT just in the eye of the Beholder

Tags

beauty, discovery, perception, Senses

Sometimes people treat blindness like it’s this endless world of darkness.  Of course, in a sense of visual acuity, this might be the case for some, but certainly not all of us who live with vision impairment.  And in the figurative sense, nothing could be further from the truth.  When someone makes such comments about how drab and boring my life is, the conversation goes something like this.

Random person (RP): “Oh, I’m so sorry you can’t see.”

Me: “It’s not so bad.”

RP: “But you can’t see sunsets or pictures or…”

Me: “True, but I–”

RP: “That must be so tragic.”

And it continues in this vain.  Vision is so integral to sighted life – and, as my friend Leona so eloquently put it, such a greedy sense – that the idea of living without it is viewed as more terrifying than premature death.  I would even go so far as to state that we who live without seeing such beautiful things as sunsets, loved ones, photographs and mountaintops – or seeing them imperfectly – are thought of as “broken” people.

 

But just because I can’t see much at all – or others I’ve met in person or through social media can’t see things clearly – doesn’t mean that beautiful things can’t be appreciated visually.  Last week, I found this gorgeous article by Nicole C. Kear, author of the terrific memoir “Now I see You.”  In the article, she briefly describes what it was like to discover there would be a point at which she wouldn’t be able to see anymore, and a recent experience where she accidentally left her Iphone at home and realized she could still visually catch beautiful things around her.  I found it poignant and moving, and have enjoyed seeing her journey of losing her sight – from “carpe diem” to acceptance, sometimes one in spite of the other.  The world can also be captured through photography, and one doesn’t necessarily need great vision to create works of photographic art.  Not long ago, Dudley Hanks was interviewed about his work as a freelance photographer; in another interview, he showed how technology aids him in capturing, touching up, and developing his photos.

 

But what about those of us who’ve never had vision to begin with and have no memory or reference to colour?  Or those who simply don’t process the world visually?  We are by no means left out when it comes to enjoying the beautiful things of life.  Some have a terrific ear for music, others can identify the call of many birds around the world, still others are fantastic chefs and can find the perfect herb or spice to enhance a dish’s flavour or aroma.  I enjoy working with my hands, particularly with beads; the contrast of size and shape (and, yes, colour) is breathtaking to me.  If you’ve never gone into a bead shop, closed your eyes, and just let your fingers run through the hung strands of beads, take the opportunity and enjoy one of life’s simple pleasures.  Do as I did last weekend and take a step outside on a warm summer night (provided it’s safe to do so), close your eyes and enjoy the quiet of an evening (or the sounds of children laughing), the smell of neighborhood barbecues and backyard fire pits, and the feel of the grass between your toes  without all that greedy vision to distract you.

 

Are there times I wish I could fully see my loved ones’ faces, photographs, and nature, or get in my car and just take a scenic drive through the mountains just because it’s my heart’s desire?  Sure, of course there are.  But I think in some ways my lack of vision has allowed me to appreciate some of those little things that I can smell and touch and hear without the greediest of the five senses hijacking my enjoyment.  And just because someone’s vision isn’t perfect, it doesn’t mean it can’t be used to capture some truly beautiful things visually.  The world can be a wonderful place, filled with sights, sounds, smells, textures and flavours; treating sight like it’s the only way to appreciate beauty is itself a way of denying oneself an enhanced appreciation of beautiful things themselves.