Blind Apertures

Training With Michener

2009-02-19T12:36:00.000-08:00

On January 11, I headed down to San Rafael, California, to train with my new guide, Michener. While the weather in Edmonton was nice, for Edmonton, it was a lot better when I stepped off the plane in San Francisco. Ben Cawley, one of the licensed instructors at Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB), met me by the luggage carousel, and we headed over to the campus with two other students, Larry and Scott both from Arizona.

The next day, I met Michener. Kathy Westling, the supervisor of Class SR691R, handed over the leash to me and gave me a bit of info about him. She told me he is 29 inches tall at the shoulder, that he is black and tan in colour (with the tan being almost white, and his black back being flecked with a bit of sable in places), and that he likes to play when out of harness but is very focused when working. After the handover, Mich and I spent a bit of time getting to know each other.

The next day, we got down to the business of training, and we worked hard for three weeks.

The training program at Guide Dogs for the Blind is rather intensive. Each day consisted of a combination of practical training and educational seminars / discussions. Topics of discussions ranged from caring for your guide's health / well-being to getting around obstacles, working at night and sidewalkless routes, dealing with the public, playtime for guides, what to do in an emergency, how to work an escalator without injuring your guide, riding public transit, reworking problems, clicker training, grooming, feeding and travel considerations. After each workshop / discussion, we hit the streets of San Rafael, San Francisco, or some other nearby community to work with our dogs, usually practising what we had discussed earlier in the day.

Right from the start, Michener and I worked together quite well. I had been warned that Mich travels fast and pulls hard, and, indeed, he does. However, I walk pretty fast myself, so I seldom had to reign Mich in. Our biggest problem was that I kept clipping obstacles on my right side. The trainers and I concluded that the clearance problem was due to my being quite a bit larger than Mich's trainer, Jennifer Ceia, and that it would just be a matter of time until Mich got used to my extra bulk and gave me extra room. That theory proved correct, and within a short time I only clipped an odd obstacle here and there.

My favourite part of the program was learning how to train my dog with a clicker. Using the clicker, I can teach Michener how to target walk buttons, empty chairs, doors to particular stores, etc. By the end of the program, I had used the clicker to teach Mich to show me where an empty chair is, and then lie down on the floor to the left of the chair after I sat down myself. Mich loves it every time I bring out the clicker because he knows that the "clicker game" means lots of treats are on the way.

When not in class or on a route, much of my "free" time was spent in optional seminars / discussions, doing laundry, grooming Mich, making coffee and comparing notes with other students. One evening, Michael Hingson, a GDB graduate who had been in one of the Twin Towers on the morning of 9/11 and lived through the tragedy, described the events of that morning. His story is incredibly inspiring. The thing I'll always remember about Mr. Hingson's story is that, immediately after the building was impacted, he didn't panic; he "knew there was no immediate danger since Roselle [his guide dog] wasn't scared."

If you are interested in Michael Hingson's story or would like to book him as a speaker at an event, visit: http://www.guidedogs.com/site/PageServer?pagename=programs_community_speakers_hingson

Believe me, his story is incredible.

On Sunday, January 18, a friend I had met over the internet, Paul Furman, picked me up at the dorm and took me to a nearby park area for a hike. He asked me if I wanted to do the easy route, or the more challenging one. He warned me that there is an abrupt drop off from the path down into an abandoned quarry, but it sounded too tempting to pass up. So, we took that way. At one point, Paul cautioned that I needed to be careful because the path was on a bit of a ledge between a wall on my left and a sharp drop off on the right. I told him it wasn't all that difficult for me because it's kind of like being Mr. Magoo: If you don't see it, it isn't as scary. However, I was very careful to keep checking the width of the path with my white cane (Michener had to stay on campus, except when accompanied by a trainer, until after graduation). This hike, at the end of the first week of the program, was a great way to relieve the stress of the most rigorous part of the program, and I want to thank Paul for guiding me through that incredibly beautiful area. Paul was great as a tour guide, since he is extremely knowledgeable about plants and an accomplished photographer. His description of the vegetation we visited was both informative and artful.

By the time we reached the last week of the program, we had covered most of the tough stuff, and we were fast becoming more comfortable handling our new guides, so our routes became more challenging. My two favourite destinations were the Golden Gate Park and Muir Woods. At the Golden Gate Park, we visited the De Young Museum. The museum staff were very helpful and allowed us to approach the various exhibits and check them out tactually. In addition, our ever present and incredibly imaginative GDB staff members gave us great descriptions of each piece. My fave was kind of a modern Stonehenge type construct with an inner room where the acoustics were fantastic. Mich's fave was the upside down apple exhibit where he tried to sneak a quick slurp from the water collecting on the top (bottom?) of an apple.

After the De Young Museum, we took a winding walk. Along the walk, Ben took some pictures with my camera (see attached). Michener REALLY likes the out of doors, so he couldn't sniff things up fast enough throughout the whole walk. Still, he did an awesome job of guiding me over some rough terrain, with only a couple of light brushes of my right shoulder against some low-hanging branches.

I don't like to compare my guides to each other, since each animal has been different, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. But, the question is often asked of me. What I tell people is that Bonner, my first guide, was the best at remembering routes; I'd show him a route once, and he would always remember it. But, he wasn't into problem solving. If we encountered an obstacle, he showed it to me and let me figure out what to do next. Dima, my second guide, on the other hand, didn't always remember a route, but she wanted to solve all of the problems we encountered, herself. At first, I thought she was like Bonner and was waiting for me to figure out what to do, so I would quickly start probing with a foot or stretch out a hand to check for an overhead clearance problem, but, Jim Dugan would quietly say, "Wait, she's thinking..." Then, I'd feel a tug of the harness handle, and off we would go. Dima had figured it out.

As for Michener, it's a bit early to say where his strengths and weaknesses lie, but, as I pointed out to Ben and Jenna, this is the best start I've enjoyed with a guide, yet. I'm not sure if it's because I've got more experience handling dogs than I had with my previous guides, or whether Mich really is the embodiment of all the good qualities of both Bonner and Dima, with virtually no drawbacks (which is how he appears at present). Maybe, it is just because the GDB trainers are, themselves, more experienced, and the program has improved through a natural, evolutionary process. It's hard to say for sure. But, regardless of why we work so well together (the real reason is probably some combination of many factors), I want to thank everyone from Michener's puppy raiser, Ellen, to the trainers and other GDB staff members for giving me the greatest gift anyone can receive, years of independant / carefree travel.

If you can afford a donation and would like to help someone like me get a guide like Michener, please, visit the GDB website and click on the "Donate" link. I can't think of a better organization to support, and the school is not funded by the government -- just donations.

http://www.guidedogs.com

Knowledge, Faith and Loyalty

2008-10-11T21:02:00.000-07:00

Standing on the corner with my dog,
I wait for the lights to change.
When lines of vision stop.

Nothing moves for half a second.
I know the time is right,
So I bark my command to move forward.

No colours gave permission.
So difficult to comprehend.
Knowledge, faith and loyalty,
These are the keys to another challenge met.

Remind me, why did I get a guide dog in the first place...

2008-03-20T01:34:00.000-07:00

After banging into the corner of a brick building while out walking with my white cane, I worked my way back home with blood trickling down my cheek. It took me twice as long to walk the four-and-a-half kilometers than it normally does with Dima's help, so I had a bit of time to think about why I got a guide dog in the first place.

"It all boils down to injuries," I thought and my mind back-tracked about twenty-some-odd years.

I was walking a sidewalk I travelled everyday. In fact, I had walked that very sidewalk earlier the same day, and nothing had been out of the ordinary. I had just crossed the railroad tracks on the mainstreet of Leduc, Alberta, and I was approaching the Bank of Montreal's parking-lot..

Off to my right, I could hear a truck idling. It was a large truck, some kind of diesel, but that wasn't unusual because the parking lot of the bank was often used by people who wanted to stop for a few minutes to have a chat, walk the couple of blocks to the drugstore where parking was tighter, or maybe stop into the Waldorf for a drink. If the truck was a diesel, the drivers just let them run.

So, as I approached the idling truck, the last thing on my mind was danger.

That is, until I stepped into nothing.

Now, I had walked the sidewalk earlier that day, as already mentioned, and I hadn't had a problem, so I knew the hole I was stepping into couldn't be all that big. But I was surprised at how deep it was. I was actually falling forward, and my right leg was probably already almost parallel to the ground, and there was no sign of the bottom. I knew I had to do something, or I was going to get seriously hurt. The only thing that flashed through my mind, no not my life, was the idea that the whole couldn't be that big, so I threw myself forward and hoped I could catch hold of something to keep from being swallowed by this crazy hole that had just opened up to swallow my left leg.

Surprisingly, my waist hit cement, and my outstretched arms were able to grab hold of the sidewalk and kept me from falling into the open manhole that a construction worker was working in, but who hadn't put any railings around. I guess he thought it was late enough in the day that nobody would be coming along (it was about 11:00 pm).

Climbing out of the hole (I had dropped about as far as my waist, but no further, I groped around and found my cane. Then I hobbled farther on down the street to meet the friends I was supposed to have coffee with. They drove me to the hospital because my leg was bleeding quite badly. I was stitched up. No major damage had been done. I just ended up with a sore leg for a week or two, and the haunting thought that I was REALLY lucky.

What had happened?

Well, for those of you who don't know, there are two basic ways to use a white cane. You can tap it to the left and lift it while swinging it to the right to tap down again. Then, lifting it up a few inches, it gets swung back to the other side again. This is the usual tapping motion that is associated with blind persons and white canes. If anything is protruding from the ground and is more than an inch or two tall, the cane will hit it, and the blind person will either move off to one side or the other to avoid the obstacle, or stop quickly to avoid banging into it. (I didn't stop quickly enough this afternoon when I smacked into the brick wall.)

The other mode of cane use is to drag the cane across the ground, back and forth, without taking the tip off the ground. This method will not only help you to find protruding obstacles, but it will also help to locate dips and depressions. A sighted person might think, "Hey, that's a no-brainer. Drag the cane so you can find the holes! Idiot!" But, it's not quite that straight forward.

You see, white canes have a hard, plastic tip that can wear out quickly and must be replaced, especially if you drag the tip back and forth across a cement sidewalk. Also, dragging the cane tends to be slower than tapping because the tip can get stuck in cracks. Also, the cane itself vibrates more this way and your hands can start to ache before long. Therefore, when travelling along sidewalks that the blind person knows quite well, the tapping method is often preferred.

In my case, I had been tapping that day. My cane had touched down just to the left and in front of the open manhole, and then had been lifted up and over the hole to touch down on the far right side. Only, it never made it. My tapping technique actually ended up endangering my safety.

I think it was Sheila, one of the trainers I worked with at Guide Dogs for the Blind when I trained with my first guide, Bonner, who summed the hole thing up like this:

A white cane is an obstacle finder; a guide dog is an obstacle avoider. With a cane, you have to actually come into contact with an obstacle before you can do anything about it. This includes overhead obstacles like tree branches, low signs, and the ends of canoes strapped onto the roofs of small cars parked in too short driveways (God I hate those). You can also add holes to this catagory as well.

On the other hand, if you are using a guide dog, most of the time you travel along without ever knowing what you missed, because the dog takes you around the problem.

How true her words are.

Anyway, I didn't just drop everything and run out and get a guide. I had to have many more bumps and bruises, and I had to find a number of parked canoes before I decided to try a guide. I went that route because a friend of mine, Ike, had decided to get a guide from GDB first, and he liked it so much, I couldn't resist going for one myself.

After losing my first guide, I wasn't sure if my physical safety was worth the emotional investment, so I waited five years before going back for a second. But continually deteriorating sight convinced me I should do it again, and Dima has made me glad I did.

When Dima retires, I won't wait another five years before going back for a third.

The photo attached to this post shows a typical obstacle I am faced with as I travel the streets in my community. Somebody just decided to dump a bunch of large tree clippings in the middle of the sidewalk. More than likely, the person never anticipated that he / she was creating a hazard for the blind. The sidewalk isn't travelled that often; there was room to either squeeze around one end, or to step off into the street and go around the other. Unfortunately, both approaches are quite hazardous when you can't see very well.

One of the drills that a dog and handler team has to prove proficient at at GDB is to work their way around such an obstacle, and many others. doing so is much safer than doing it without the sighted assistance of a dog.

Take Care and think about supporting Guide Dogs for the Blind.

http://www.guidedogs.com

or,

1-800-295-4050

Dima Goes To The Food Court

2008-03-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

The other day, I decided to go for a walk with my guide dog. We ambled through the
falling snow to a local mall and stopped in the food court for a coffee.

Well, I had a coffee, but Dima (pronounced Deema) spent the time sightseeing.

I took this picture with my Fujifilm E510 camera in BW mode at 1/10 second shutter
speed and f/2.9 aperture, ISO 400. I just attached the camera to a small table-top
tripod, set the controls and placed it on the floor under the table after starting
the camera's timer.

My goal was to snap a picture of what it's like for a guide dog during a typical
excursion. You see, most people think that guides spend the vast majority of their
time shepherding us blind guys around, but that's not entirely true. Indeed, guides
spend a lot of time working, but it's usually in a destination-to-destination context.
Once the destination is reached, the dog tends to have a lot of time on it's, er,
paws, so it needs to find something to do to pass the time away.

In this case, Dima was exchanging a moment with a young fellow as he was passing
the time waiting for his mom.

While the picture falls short in many technical areas, it does a great job of conveying
a small chunk of my life, and my guide's life, to you the viewer. And, after all,

that is the main reason why I still take pictures. I want to show others that there
can be beauty in blindness, as long as we strive to find it.

Thank you for any comments or critiques you might care to share.