Not all dog guide handling students need practice working at night with their canine partners. The exercise is most useful for handlers who retain some amount of usable vision. Dogs trained to guide can’t be taught to comprehend the idea that humans see differently than they do, let alone that humans may see differently than they do both in daylight and at night. THe dogs are just trained to execute behaviors. So it’s imperative that handlers behave the same in all levels of light in order to avoid confusing the dogs about when or whether or not they’re supposed to be doing their job.
At the time of this post I was just two years out of being rejected by another dog school because I had too much vision. They chose to devote their resources to students who didn’t need to be taught to let go of their habitual use of low vision, whereas The seeing Eye developed a program to help partially sighted students adapt to working with dogs. See this post for an explanation of the occlusion program. And here for some mindful reflection inspired by occlusion.
Original Post Date: 06/17/2009
Today Prada and I got our night work lesson. It had previously been postponed due to a storm, but I’m really glad I got this experience. Prada works beautifully at night! Our communication was seamless and we moved much more quickly and confidently. Prada even forwent her habit of soliciting affection from a row of occupied tables outside restaurantsa long our route.
In the original post I hypothesized that Prada’s focus and confidence at night were at least partially attributable to my improved ability to trust her when the option of using my limited vision was taken away from me. Even then, I had no night vision and it was easier to focus on Prada than on trying to split my attention between her and my instinctively developed navigational habits.
With years more experience, knowledge of both human and canine psychology, and my own experimentation with self-occlusion, I still agree with my original hypothesis. As my vision has deteriorated, I’ve had to learn to read information from my cane much better, too. I think I may experiment with occlusion while using my cane in the weeks leading up to my as-yet unscheduled future dog guide training for Juno 3.0. Besides being a fantastic exercise for improving mind-body connectivity, it would be useful to prepare myself for the challenge of surrendering more control to a dog again.
Prada and I also visited Solo, TSE’s’ resident feline. Apparently it’s common for most dog guide schools to have cats on staff to help de-sensitize the dogs to their presence. Unfortunately, the cats get de-sensitized to the dogs, too, so I won’t consider Prada properly cat-tested until we get home. Our own household demigod, Mittens, will have that pleasure.
Today your favorite blindfluencer asks what lesson have you chosen to brush up on lately? Share well-worn wisdom in the comments below.
Look on the Dark Side 