Learning to Trust

When I first was approached about getting a guide dog, I had no idea if I would even quality. I have some useful vision and I thought I had to much.

A lot of folks, like I did, believe that guide dogs are only trained for people who have no vision at all. That is not true as we know now. I am what is known as visually impaired, meaning I can see some but not all. I have 6% vision with correction and 3% without. To get a guide dog you need to be considered legally blind which is 10% vision or less.

Even though I have some useful vision I was still terrified of trusitng a dog. I can see objects but can’t tell how far away I am from them. That’s where the dog comes in. The dog lets me know when a curb is right there and weaves me around objects so I don’t run into them. To trust a person is hard enough, to trust a dog was even harder.

When I was learning to work with a dog I would stop at shadows thinking they were solid objects. I needed to learn to just let the dog guide me and trust them to walk through a shadow and not stop. Basically I was learning to trust the dog over my own sense to see. It took quite a bit of time before I learned to just lay back in the handle and just feel the dog move and follow that instead of my eyes.

Without a dog I have very little confidence going from poitn A to point B. I am constantly trying to guess how far I am away from objects, things like walls and fances are confusing. Doors are more so especially glass doors. I can’t always tell if htey are open or not.

Shopping is exhausting. To many people and objects on the move for me to make heads or tails of. My body goes tense and my attention to what I am doing fades. Just to much sensory over load.

Some blind people with good hearing can use their ears to help them out. I can’t do that. I am also hearing impaired so I can’t compensate. It’s all through guess work according to what I think I can see.

After many arguments in the beginning with the dogs I have learned to Just pay attention to the harness handle and let things fly by me as we walk. I trust the dog will take me around objects and even watch for over hanging branches. All I have to concentrate on is what direction we are going and directing the dog to go where I would like to go. We make a pretty good team this way.