Run, Fido, Run!

29 Saturday Aug 2015

Tags

athletics, guide dogs, independence, running, sports, training

OK, I’m going to say something completely obvious: Guide dogs are bred and trained to be guides. Well, DUH! But in addition to being guides, they are dogs, with all the needs, desires and interests of other living beings. In honour of National Dog Day earlier this week, let me introduce you to several dogs – including mine – who have some pretty cool hobbies .

From the get-go, Jenny loved her new fashionable gear

Jenny loves her sports harness so much!

Jenny is a runner. She has a runner’s body with sleek lines and long legs. If it were up to her, we would run everywhere. Since six months of the year our sidewalks and streets are covered in ice, that’s a pretty scary proposition. But about six months ago, when the snow melted and we had both experienced a severely prolonged case of cabin fever, I decided to channel some of that running energy, get myself back in to running, and take her out for a short jog around the neighborhood. I had a harness made for her that we use exclusively for running, and as time went by we increased distance, ramped up the pace, and threw in street crossings and other distractions and complications. As of this writing, we have done two runs longer than 3 km, each a little bit faster than the one before, and I’m hoping to get up to 5 km before the snow sets in. I listen to myself and my dog, and we decide together what the pace is, when we’re done, and afterward Jenny gets rewarded with a whole bowl of water and – depending on her mood – a seriously good game of tug or an extended nap sprawled in the middle of the floor.

But I am by no means alone in running with my guide. Last week, Guiding Eyes dog Klinger became one of the first guide dogs to be trained as a running guide dog. This article made the rounds of social media, and while I believe it does have some representation errors (no guide dog is “certified”, they are trained; and this guide dog team was also trained as a running guide years before Klinger), I think it’s great that guide dog programs are putting in the work for athletes who wish to bond with their dogs in this way. As stated in one of the articles, many of us have trained our guides ourselves to run moderate distances, but if someone doesn’t feel safe, or doesn’t have the knowledge, skills or willingness to train their dog to do this safely, if trainers and schools recognize all the wonderful things that have and can come of safely running with a guide dog, the more independent a blind person can be.

But running isn’t the only “guide” sport that a guide dog can enjoy. My friend Rox has owner-trained several guide dogs, and has run with many of them. She has done agility courses with some and herding with others as a form of training, sport and recreation for the dogs’ “down-time”, and is currently laying the ground work to be able to go bikejoring and skijoring with her current guide, Soleil. The ground work for some of these activities builds on the skills that the dog already possesses, but changes some of the feedback that a guide dog team gives and receives.

My friend Brooke has several dogs, and has done tracking, field work, confirmation, and other activities with them. Due to a recent timing conflict, she found herself bringing her guide dog, Rogue, to a field lesson with Arizona (the “real” student), and decided to try fostering some healthy competition between the dogs. It went well enough that she decided to work with Rogue on this skill, alongside the tracking and confirmation shows (and I’m sure a million other activities) she already has on her resume.

Some of these activities are enjoyed with the support of traditional guide dog schools; some can only be enjoyed by owner-trainers or under the radar, as a traditional guide dog school may deem them against a guide’s training, or unsafe for the team. But at the end of the day, if activities can be enjoyed by a dog and its partner alike, can be performed safely with training either by a school or by the handler, and it improves the dog’s confidence and doesn’t affect the dog’s work, then let’s have at it! I have found for myself – and Rox, Brooke, and many others have expressed to me – that giving our working dogs these physical and mental outlets, the stronger our bond, the more focused and confident the dog’s work, the more training tools we have as handlers, and the happier everyone is. Now, if anyone can tell me how to keep every single neighborhood dog from barking at Jenny and I while we go running past…

Not devoted to Blind Devotion

22 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by blindbeader in blindness

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

blindness, independence, marriage, perception, relationships, trust, videos

I will be the first to admit that portrayals of blind people in books, movies, or articles tend to get my teeth on edge. Contrary to what many might think I don’t expect a perfect portrayal of who we are, because we are all different, just like sighted people. But perhaps even with the best of intentions, some of the worst stereotypes about blind people are perpetuated in these books, movies, or articles – that we are angelic inspirational beings for simply living our lives, that we require caretakers for everything from cooking to laundry to shopping, and if we do actually succeed at something it’s viewed as a miraculous feat tantamount to clearing tall buildings in a single bound. These ideas are frustrating to those of us who live with blindness – and others’ perceptions of it – every day of our lives.

That having been said, few books, movie portrayals, or articles have concerned me quite as much as this video, largely because it’s been shared around the world as a “sweet tearjerker that shows what true love and “blind devotion” really is.

I’m leaving aside here the main character’s perception of what she can and cannot do as someone losing her vision; the anger and denial process are entirely normal, given a diagnosis like hers. But the ending of the video infuriated me to no end. It is viewed as sweet, and beautiful, and yet I find it ugly. For those of you who cannot see (or just don’t feel like watching the video), this video ends with the husband following his blind wife to work every day without her knowledge. We’re not talking about driving her to work, waiting in the car and watching her get in to a building before driving away; we are talking about physically following her on her walk to work every morning because (I presume based on the video) he doesn’t think of her as capable enough to do it on her own. As a blind wife with a sighted husband, to me such behavior borders on stalking, and is not adorable and kind, but such a blatant abuse of trust that my blood is boiling even thinking about it.

Committed relationships (marriage in my case) are beautiful, messy and sweet and heart-breaking and restorative. Relationships are not perfect, whether or not one partner has a disability. Even if everyone disagrees on acceptable/unacceptable behaviors in any given relationship, I can think of no one who would disagree that trust is a foundation for any successful relationship. It is one thing to stumble and fall, or be unintentionally hurtful, but to knowingly use your partner’s blindness or deafness to your own advantage – even while fooling yourself into believing it’s being done for their benefit – can shake a relationship to the core when your disabled partner finds out about it (and trust me, we’re not fools; we WILL find out). Creating an admittedly fictional video as a feel-good look at what “true devotion” really is makes those of us living with blindness choke on the phony sweetness it’s meant to portray. I have two questions for those who made, produced, and touted this video as sweet and romantic: How would you feel if your spouse went behind your back and, by their actions, showed the entire world – everyone but you – that they viewed you as incapable? And what if you found out about it weeks, months, or years after the fact? It isn’t so adorable and sweet now, is it…

On Not Hearing…

15 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by blindbeader in blindness

≈ 5 Comments

As is quite apparent from my blog, I am blind (visually impaired, if you want to be kinda politically correct). Because of this, my sense of hearing is used for many more tasks than by those who can see. Because I cannot see, my exposure to the deaf community around me, which I do realize does exist, is definitely limited…. and I got curious about daily life, culture, and hobbies of those who have limited or no use of the one sense that is so integral to my life. Just as blindness and its social structure, perceived limitations, and ways of adapting is far too much of a topic to tackle in one blog post, I have found deaf and deaf-blind culture, use of language, and social interactions far too broad to discuss completely here. So please don’t tell me how I don’t know anything… because I know I don’t have a clue… and I’m OK with wanting to know more.

It all started about fifteen years ago when I joined an email pen pal web site and began corresponding with a young deaf man (in Edmonton, no less( who communicated with the world around him using American Sign Language (ASL). We both ended up marveling that two people who would probably never have met in person – and couldn’t have communicated fluidly if we had – ended up carrying on a months-long e-mail correspondence with no problems. We lost touch after a few months, but I never did forget him. Over the years, with the advent of social media and more affordable technology, I’ve been able to correspond with many who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, or deaf-blind, and am constantly challenged to re-think my own ideas about what life is like, what hobbies can be enjoyed, and how those who cannot hear well or at all can communicate with the world around them. It’s a proverbial eye-opening experience, as I constantly feel I have to challenge those stereotypes myself. And yet I put labels and restrictions on those who cannot hear, just as many around me put them on me because I cannot see.

Earlier this year, a documentary was released about the lives of musicians who are deaf or hard of hearing. I was blown away by it, not because it was particularly well-done (though it is), but by how hard many of these musicians had to fight to break in to the music industry. Many of them faced skepticism and doubt, but kept on kicking and fighting until they got a spot somewhere doing what they loved, in feats eerily similar to what many blind people have to do in order to gain employment.

Coincidentally, over the past six months or so, I have done some reading – biographies by parents of deaf children, one of whom went on a quest to discover the science of sound and language. I have also read (or am currently reading) autobiographies of women – Rebecca Alexander and Joanne Milne – who have a condition called Usher Syndrome, which leaves them with both hearing and sight loss. Both Alexander and Milne have chosen to be fitted with cochlear implants so they can hear the world around them; Milne’s experience in particular was recorded and went viral on Youtube. Reading about this condition in general made me curious about deaf-blindness in particular.

Over the past year, I found myself befriending people through social media who are deaf-blind – some whose deafness is acute while others have been adapting to an ever-changing hearing landscape. When I posed the question to my friends, I received very different responses to my questions. Many whose hearing loss has been progressive after years as a blind person have expressed both publicly and privately their desire for a cure for these conditions. In a very eloquent response, my friend Bruce describes losing his hearing as infinitely scarier than losing his sight, and how he would jump at any scientific advances to improve it. But another friend of mine whose deafness was unexpected and fairly sudden has chosen not to hope for a scientific cure. She says that deafness is now just a part of who she is, “Deaf, red hair, short, blind, sarcastic,” and how she wouldn’t change it.

All of this reading, communicating, and learning leads me to a very uncomfortable place. I’ve unwittingly put so much emphasis on hearing in my own life as many around me do on sight. As I know I have just scratched the surface on deafness or deaf-blindness – communication styles, employment, daily life – I need to understand that my own disability is as foreign to others as deafness is to me. While patronizing language, rudeness, or presumptions are never okay, they are, at their core, born out of ignorance. Ignorance due to lack of knowledge is understandable; remaining in a place where perceptions refuse to change is not.

So for those of my readers who are deaf or deaf-blind, please accept my stumbling, my inadvertent insensitivity, and my seemingly nosy questions. It’s only because I care about you and your life that I want to know more. If I have presumed you are less capable than you are, or placed restrictions on your hobbies or career path or education choices, may I hang my head in shame, because I know all too well what that feels like. And if I have remained silent, or failed to ask questions you wish I would, may this post be a conversation starter that brings our shared humanity to the forefront.