Sadly not everyone who is blind is eligible for a guide dog or suitable to own one. The reasons for this are many and varied.
As mentioned before, a poor sense of direction is one reason why a blind person may not be suitable to own a dog. If you cannot tell where you are going then the dog will have you, not up the garden path, but everywhere it wants to go as opposed to where you need to go. You can get spectacularly lost with a dog even when an experienced owner and this is especially true when you first come home and you realise too late that you’ve erred from your usual route. You walk much faster with a dog than with a cane (well I certainly did) and you can cover a long way before you know you’re lost and because things are never seen in total or as a whole as is the case with sight, only the bit you know is familiar to you and you can be just yards or feet out of your way without being able to understand how to get back to where you need to be.
Another reason why some blind people may be unsuitable to own a guide dog is an inability to follow the dog’s movements. You have to be able to interpret the dog’s movements and follow what it’s doing and it’s a funny feeling, being guided from below the waist. After all the dog can’t say:
“There’s a lamp post in front of us so we’ll have to manoeuvre round that and someone’s carelessly abandoned trolley too”.
If you’re trying to go one way while the dog is trying to go the other, this could result in a nasty accident. Also falling up and down kerbs because of an inability to react to the dog’s movement up a step or down is also something which needs to be avoided and for some blind people it is impossible to accomplish.
Of course too some would-be owners live in unsuitable accommodation and still others have allergies to dog hair. There are dogs being trained now which have been crossed with poodles which do not shed hair. I thought it was a joke when I first heard of the Labradoodle but it’s perfectly true.
Yet other blind people have extra and severe disabilities (not that blindness is a walk in the park because it isn’t) but add to that such things as severe physical disabilities; mental impairment or difficulties with knowing one’s left from one’s right and all kinds of other problems for blindness rarely comes alone then this makes guide dog ownership much more difficult though it has to be said that Guide Dogs has now extended its remit and trains many more people with extra disabilities but one instructor said to me not long ago:
“Dogs like Esme don’t come along every day”.
A dog is a big responsibility
It’s hard for people to understand, when they see a blind person and guide dog walking the streets, why all blind people don’t have or want them but the facts are that not all blind people are suitable for dogs and not all want them. Some don’t want the heartbreak of parting when their partnerships end and others don’t like animals just as some sighted people don’t. A dog is a big responsibility and nobody thinks of the fact that the blind person has to do all sorts for the dog and care for it, sometimes without any sighted help. Many people don’t mind helping you across the road or telling you what bus is coming if there’s not a talking satnav thing on it but you try asking someone to come and clear up a load of Labrador sick or, cringe cringe! Things from the back end if the dog has eaten something disgusting which Labradors love to do. Luckily Esme was very clean and she didn’t spend in the house but she was periodically sick with no warning. Wheat, on the other hand, had a fondness for rolling in other dogs’ mess and that was a nightmare for me I can tell you. There are those who just don’t want this kind of thing in their homes or lives, seeing them as difficult enough and as one blind man once said to me:
“You can just hang up a cane when you get home and forget about it”.
Before I applied for a dog I sat down and wrote down the pros and cons of guide dog ownership, just as I have regarding moving so I can be nearer shops and perhaps have another little hairy horror like Esme! Even if I don’t I still need to be nearer shops. So there you have it folks. Not all blind people are suitable for or want the responsibility of a dog and not all, including me, have any volunteer support when it comes and in my case came to free running Esme so she was often a handicapped dog just as I am a handicapped person. However, for those of us who do and did have dogs, the pleasures of ownership and the freedom they give, not to mention the loyalty and love you get even if it is “doggy love” which soon transfers to the new owner, is so much better than no love at all though I do have to admit to a certain amount of relief at not having to keep saying:
“Busy Busy girl”
While Esme frolicked in the snow and I get frost bite.