I'm at the Seeing Eye, getting my first dog guide. I arrived July 22 and it's been the experience of a lifetime. This is the seventh post on the subject, so if you'd like to start at the beginning, go to the July 23rd post, Getting a Dog, Day 1.
The past few days have been spent working on specific things we're likely to encounter while going from place to place. One of my favorites was the escalators. New York is loaded with them, and often it's hard or impossible to get where you're going without one. I've heard many things about escalators from other dog guide users, including that they should always be avoided, that certain ones should be avoided, and that there was a right way to do them. So, I was glad to learn that I didn't need to avoid all of them, and that Paige knew just what to do. We rode escalators in a mall and in a department store. The first ones we did were unfamiliar to Paige, an she acted apprehensive. After we did them twice, she was perfectly comfortable. Later, we went to a store where Paige had been trained and she took me right to the escalator, showed me the edge, and when I said "forward," we walked on as if we'd been doing it together for years.
We also learned how to get us both through a revolving door. My life is loaded with revolving doors, too, but I usually look upon them as giant blenders. People are going in and out at the same time and the thing is spinning around, just the thing I need if I want to turn my cane into a pile of toothpicks. The doors we practiced with had nobody else going through them, so we could take our time, find the opening, get us both in, and go through at our own pace. After a few tries we got pretty good at it. Paige still showed me the regular door each time we approached the building, though, which is a good thing since in real life I'll probably continue to prefer them. The timing seems pretty hard to get right if the thing is spinning nonstop.
Besides specific things, we worked in environments that many of us could expect to find ourselves in. We've gotten very good at stopping at streets, crossing straight and somewhat angled intersections, working past pestering dogs, and the like. We're still working on those things, but this week we walked around in grocery stores, drug stores, malls, and hotels. These were great for several reasons. First, We had both tight spaces to work through in the stores and wide-open spaces with hard-to-find-with-a-cane turns and passages in the mall and the hotel. We had complicated passageways to figure out and many distractions for the dogs. We had great opportunities to find revolving doors, escalators, corded-off lines to counters (the food court at the mall, the bank, the hotel all had these an we went looking for them in order to get the most experience with them). Best of all, these environments were air conditioned. It was a hundred degrees out there! Nobody wanted to work their dogs in the afternoon on the hot pavement (Our personal comfort didn't enter into it, of course.).
Paige's new thing is showing me doors. We had been walking around the school for several days before we started going out onto the leisure path for "strolls." Once we had done that a couple of times, the light bulb went on and she realized that I liked doors and that she got a big reward-- lots of praise and a chance to go for a walk-- when she showed me one. So, she started pausing and showing me every door in the building, and now every door in every building. This is great. Last week I was having trouble walking up to things. She would get close to something, but then she would view it as an obstacle and try to get around it. Now, she tries to figure out what I want and take me to it. One day I put my backpack on a chair and sat in the next chair for a few minutes. Then, we went off to do something else for a half hour and came back. She took me right to my backpack. This is something my cane never learned in ten years. Paige learned it in a few days.
All our work this week wasn't indoors. One of the things we were introduced to was traffic islands. I have a couple of these in my neighborhood at home, so I'm glad to get the practice. They're pretty scary for me, but Paige doesn't act like they're anything special. She goes right across the first part of the street to the island, turns the way I tell her to go (This is the hard part, which way do I tell her to go?) an then when I give the word, crosses the other part of the street.
Paige is distracted by things that might distract any dog, but she has her own favorites, of course. You might expect her to have focus issues when she sees or smells birds, other dogs, food on the ground, or people reaching out to pet her (what are they thinking??). But, her big thing is paper products. She loves paper towels, Kleenex, napkins, anything like that. I'm working very hard at correcting her for going after napkins or other goodies. We worked through the grocery store and I thought she was angelic in the checkout line, but Ralph told me later she ducked her head down and ate three small pieces of straw wrapper while I was paying. Well, at least we left the place neater than when we found it.
Next week, among other things, we'll go into New York City. I can't wait to learn how to deal with turnstiles, subway platforms, trains, crowds, horses, bicycles, police barricades, street vendors... then maybe we'll leave Penn Station and see what else will be new for us.
