I thought I’d post some info about guide dogs for those who don’t know much about them.
Guide dogs are dogs who are trained to assist blind and visually impaired people. In Australia you must be legally blind to be able to use a long cane or guide dog (your sight must be worse than 6/60). Guide dogs are trained and certified by schools around Australia. They are usually bred by the schools from dogs that would be suitable to be guide dogs themselves. They are raised by puppy raiser families who do some basic training and socialise the dogs (eg. take them to shopping centres and places like that to get them used to them). When the puppies are returned to the school the trainers test them to see if they have what it takes to become good guide dogs. If the dogs pass, they are trained in all of the guide dog tasks they’ll need to know. Once the dogs have finished their training, the school will match them with a person on their waiting list. They try to match people with dogs who have the right personality, walking speed and energy level for them. For example, my Cindy doesn’t have a high energy level because I live in a small town and aren’t going to be walking to twenty different places every day. She also has a medium-to-fast walking speed that matches mine (though she can be rather slow when she isn’t happy with where we’re going).
Once matched up with a person, both the dog and new handler go through about three weeks of training together. The instructors usually go home with that person and dog after the training is finished to do more training in areas where the new team will be travelling. That usually lasts for about a week. The instructors check up on the guide dog teams every now and again to make sure everything is going well and they aren’t having any problems.
In other countries the schools do things a bit differently and some people even train their guide dogs themselves. I haven’t heard of anyone doing that here so far, though.
Some Guide Dog Tasks
- Taking directional commands (eg. “find left”, “find right”).
- Indicating changes in ground level (eg. steps or curbs), usually by stopping.
- Going around obstacles and giving the handler enough space to go around without bumping into the obstacle. If there is not enough space the dog should stop.
- Waiting at road crossings for the handler to tell them to go.
- Intelligent disobedience (eg. if there is a car coming and the handler tells the dog to go, the dog should not go until there are no cars).
- Finding people, places and objects (eg. doors, counters, certain shops, bins, seats).
Contrary to popular belief, the handler makes most of the decisions for the guide dog team. The dog does not look at traffic lights and decide when to cross the street, though they should decide not to cross if a car is coming.
Guide dogs also cannot be used by just anyone. I could not use my friend’s guide dog, and she could not use Cindy. The bond between handler and dog is important. The dog and handler have to get used to each other and it takes some time before they can work really well together.
When You Meet Someone With A Guide Dog
- Talk to the person, not the dog. It’s best to totally ignore the dog. Don’t talk to it or make eye contact.
- If you want to pet the dog, ask first. Some people won’t want you to pet their dog because it might distract the dog too much.
- If you have a dog, make sure your dog is on a leash. Call out to the person and tell them you have a dog. That way they can be prepared to keep their dog from being distracted by yours.
- If you want to help the person, ask them if they need help. Don’t just assume they do. It really annoys people if you suddenly grab them and try to drag them across the road, especially when they didn’t want to go that way in the first place!
- Don’t touch the dog’s harness or the harness handle. (My mother has done this a few times and it’s very annoying.)
A term often used for guide dogs is ’seeing-eye dog’. That is only correct when referring to a dog from a school called The Seeing Eye. The universal term is ‘guide dog’.
I hope that clears up most questions about guide dogs. If you have any other questions, feel free to comment on any of my entries and let me know.
