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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Learning more about the challenges of the blind

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This week I’m hanging out in downtown Minneapolis at the Hyatt Regency hotel, mingling with an extraordinary pack of beautiful, smart, well-behaved canines, all guide dogs, attending the convention of the American Council for the Blind, which has a membership of 10,000. My sister-in-law, Gigi, is attending with her guide dog, River. My brother traveled with her from Dallas, primarily to give us an opportunity to visit for the first time in eleven years, but we both are registered and attending some of the convention offerings which run the gamut from organizational governance, education, and user groups to recreational opportunities. Last night we shared some writing at a writers/poets group and tonight I’ll be attending a session on massaging guide dogs. I’m curious about what will be taught since I have taught pet massage through Ely Community Ed in Ely.

If you have never closely observed a blind person working with a guide dog, do so if you have the chance, and be ready to be amazed. Spaces like this hotel are a real challenge for people and dog alike. Imagine that you are traveling to a conference in a city with which you’re not familiar, first having to navigate an unfamiliar airport. Now imagine doing it blindfolded, finding your gate, your luggage, plus the bathrooms, escalators and exit doors.

Of course, these days technology makes all those tasks much easier. Everyone has a smartphone with all its conveniences, and just the ability to call or text makes convention-going a lot simpler. Just as GPS provides voiced directions for drivers and walkers, apps such as BlindSquare are available for Apple products to provide additional information useful to people with visual impairment. Using information provided by FourSquare, BlindSquare will identify the cross streets and interesting places nearby. It can answer questions like, “What’s the most popular café within 200 yards? Where is the post office? The library?”

It provides contact information, directions, even some restaurant menus, and calling for a reservation. BlindSquare is aware when the user travels by car, bus or train and starts to report interesting places ahead and street crossings, just like an irritating passenger who reads all the billboards and won’t shut up. Other apps are available for indoor spaces, such as airports, getting signals from beacons, but they are not widely installed in smaller venues.

So, the adventure continues. Having arrived using the hotel shuttle, you walk into a wide-open lobby area with no idea about which direction to head. Some blind people have a spatial sense of a room by feeling the airflow from doorways and hearing sound bouncing off walls. In large, open spaces with high ceilings, those clues are harder to read or missing. Some of the participants are traveling with friends or family, but many arrive here alone from around the U.S. and the world. The hotel staff is very professional, friendly and helpful, assisted by over 100 volunteers who are here specifically to help people get oriented, find meeting rooms, elevators, restaurants and people they’re trying to locate. The hallways and ramps are not particularly wide, so there is a lot of elbow-to-elbow coziness as people pass or even collide gently, guided by their dogs or using their canes. It pays to be very watchful to avoid getting swiped at by a cane or run over by a wheelchair. It offers a sighted person quite a spectacle…and all of us are unofficial volunteers too, helping people and dogs get safely into and out of elevators, giving directions or taking people to their destination.

Gigi and Mike both commented that more people are here with their guide dogs than at previous conventions, and for a dog lover, it’s a joyful sight. For someone who fears or dislikes dogs, I imagine it would be a bit of a nightmare to walk unsuspectingly into this hotel. In the early years, German shepherds were used almost exclusively which resulted in genetic weaknesses. Currently, approximately 70% of guide dogs are Labradors with about 15% each of golden retrievers and shepherds. Various mixes are also used successfully as guide dogs, such as Labradoodles and Goldendoodles, as well as some boxers and Chesapeake Bay retrievers. Gigi’s dog is a small blond lab/golden mix who loves to play and get a belly rub when off-leash. When her big, brown soulful eyes light up when she sees me, she makes me feel like I’m just about the best human being on the planet. When she’s in harness and working, we completely ignore each other.

Whatever the breed, these dogs are the cream of the crop. They are usually raised in families, who give normal puppy training and expose them to public places like malls and public transportation. Then at fourteen months, the dogs start focused training at one of the guide dog schools; they will not go into service until they are about two years old, and some won’t make the cut. The guide dog schools carefully match applicants with likely dogs based on human and canine size, strength, weight, personality, living and working situation. When the dog is ready, the applicant travels to the guide dog school to spend two to four weeks in training with her dog. Gigi was matched with a dog named Preston last fall but when they returned home, Preston would eat everything he could get his mouth on and almost swallowed a sock. So, even though he worked very well, the risk to his health was too great, and he returned to his puppy home. Gigi thinks he just didn’t like the guiding life; now he gets to run free. She had to apply, wait for another likely match, and go through training again with River.

The dogs’ estimated value is $60,000, and they may have a working life of eight to ten years before being retired due to age-related problems with joints, nerves and, ironically, vision. It is stressful work for a dog. When they are in harness, they must be on constant alert, as the safety of their human is in their paws. They have to be watching for stairs, walls, holes, uneven pavement, curbs, traffic, other dogs and humans that might be obstacles or dangers. They signal their owners in subtle ways that may not be obvious to the casual observer, stopping at a curb or the top of a stairway, even stepping back if the human is not getting the signal to prevent an accident. The dogs are trained to understand many commands: no, forward, right, left, left-left or right-right (take the first left or right), hup-hup (go faster), steady (go slower), come, sit, down, rest (stay), inside, outside, park time (toileting in a designated spot), go to your place (crate), leave it (kind of a correction, meaning “nope wrong choice”), pfui (a German word pronounced fwee that is a severe correction meaning “shame on you; worse than “no” as a correction.) Leash correction is most severe. For a new dog, particularly a young one, the convention is trial by fire. I’ve observed most people lovingly encouraging and praising their dogs with few corrections, making sure they have time to rest and play off-leash in the indoor fenced area provided by the hotel. I have been amazed to witness a dog take its owner through a complicated pathway from the restaurant, through the lobby, down ramps and hallways to the elevators and back to their room after having been through that routine only once on the way to the restaurant. River, who is a young dog and has only been with Gigi since February, was able to do this by the second day in the hotel.

It is one of the most upbeat environments I’ve been in for a long time. People immediately introduce themselves, asking who they’re encountering (human and canine), greeting and socializing, assisting each other in finding hotel amenities and laughing together when ending up in a dead-end by a window, offering a view they can’t appreciate. Canes click against each other. Dogs enjoy the buffet of doggy smells all around them, and everyone is experiencing a week that is rich with old friends, new friends, learning and just plain fun.