Down with the Old Guard

Woah! Exciting stuff is happening in the world of Guide Dogs.

If you’ve read my blog long enough, you know that despite being very happy and appreciative of having my guide dog, Mara…I bitched and moaned at every chance about how much I despised the training.

Just as a barometer to go off of, keep in mind here that at my previous guide dog school I was not allowed to leave my dormitory at all without a staff person to escort me. This includes even leaving my dog at the dorm and going with my white cane. I was not allowed to walk to a garden a block away ON CAMPUS without permission. I was not allowed to enter Big N’s room under any circumstances. All of my time there was monitored. Even when I slept, there was a staff person there. Ok, remember this.

So, I was prepared for more of the same this time, but I knew what I was getting into and was willing to pay the price without complaint. All seemed to be going well, until several weeks ago when I was told that I would not be able to go to guide dog school. The admissions committee had DEEENIED my application.

Why?

Because, I was told, getting married to N and moving to Toronto was too much of a transition for me to go through while getting a guide dog. Now…keep in mind, I never TOLD THEM I was getting married or that I even knew N or that I was moving. Someone ELSE (uh-hem) did. I knew that they would figure out that we knew each other because we went to the same school at the same time for our first guide dogs. But I was all about how things should be on a need-to-know basis. If they asked me about him, I wasn’t going to lie, but to me it seemed irrelevant. I just wanted to get my guide dog and go on with life. No need for the blind soap opera.

And, not only did they deny my application based on unverified information that they never even asked me about, they didn’t think getting married and moving would be too much of a transition for N. He was all in. Can anyone say sexism?

The amount of furious I was for weeks cannot be over exaggerated. One thing I had going for me was that they thought that I was moving to Toronto right away (see were unsubstantiated rumor will get you, admissions committee?). There is a question on the application asking whether you will be moving in the coming year. I honestly answered, “no.” I knew that the immigration stuff would take at least that long. This year seemed like a perfect time for me to get used to my new guide dog while waiting on paperwork. So, I appealed (making sure to go off on not only how I wasn’t going to move, but how getting married to N was no big deal. Hell, we’ve known each other for years, we aren’t teenaged honeymooners…I mean, we don’t even like each other that much) and waited. And heard nothing for weeks.

And I went to Toronto and met a nice enough guy there that had a guide dog from that school. And HE knew all about our application process because apparently there is NO CONFIDENTIALITY at this school. And he defended them. Telling SOMEONE who couldn’t keep his MOUTH SHUT that he shouldn’t have told them about the marriage, but also telling me how I had to see it from their point of view and not all blind people are like N and I and they are used to the lowest common denominator and we just had to accept that. (To which my reply was, well, why don’t they deny THEIR applications, then.)

I’ll interject here to say this on behalf of blind people. There are many, many highly competent, intelligent, capable blind people in the world. And then there are many that have had really, really sucky educational experiences and a serious lack of opportunity and low expectations. After years and years of going through life with really no training or education, the effect on what they are capable of is really dramatic. I don’t blame them for this, I think they are a product of a society who in general discriminates against them by denying them any opportunity to learn how to be independent. Nevertheless, sometimes we all (the rest of the blind people) pay the price for those who were not afforded the opportunities to reach their potential. Its sad to know that you are one of the ones who was incredibly lucky to be taught and told that you could cross a street by yourself, get a job by yourself, fix a meal by yourself, and do any one of a thousand normal things that are easy for blind people to do with a little bit of adaptation and training.

So, the point was, was that I was being punished for the poor expectation of what guide dog schools tend to think blind people can handle (and I’ll argue still, sexism. Since I was being punished for what someone figured women could handle as opposed to men.)

So anyway, all this went on and I would see a guide dog and it would almost make me cry. To be denied at a school makes it all the harder to get into another school. Was it really this? Was it because I have been pretty open about my complaints about the training? Would I ever get a guide dog again? I was very, very disappointed.

When I got back from Toronto and still hadn’t heard anything for a month, I finally called them. And it was like I was talking to a whole new staff or something. Now everything was fine. Yes, they wanted me and it was all doable. It was as if the previous stuff had never happened, and I went through a month of anguish for nothing. An instructor would be calling me in a day or two. That was that.

So then, just yesterday I had a conversation with an instructor that had me absolutely FLOORED. This very progressive guy who treated me like a person, not a blind person wanted to know if I (and N and two other students) wanted to be in this new pilot program that he was trying to put together. It is only a two-week (verses a four week) training program. Instead of going to the actual campus on the outskirts of town, they are going to put us up downtown in a college dorm. We get our dogs the first day (rather than the third), the instructors will meet us at the dorm in the morning, do training throughout the day, then leave us alone in evenings and weekends. They then! want us to spend our evenings ON OUR OWN working the dogs in downtown Portland BY OURSELVES and report back the next day. They either want us to do routes they’ve already taught us, or take our cane (with dog on leash) and figure out our own routes. They aren’t going to make us go to any of the stupid lectures, but are going to give us all the lectures on CD beforehand to review on our own time. They are going to “tailor the program to what we need out of our guide dog instead of making us do everything the way they want us to do it.” We can eat meals at the dorm cafeteria or anywhere we want to, anytime we want to as long as it doesn’t interfere with our training schedule. Our instructor ratio will be 2:1 instead of four or five to one, so there will be less waiting around for your turn, more working, and more individualization and time for us to give feedback! And not only will I be allowed to enter N’s room, if we want to, WE CAN SHARE A ROOM!

If you are not blind, you just may not get the momentousness of this. The reasonable amounts of confidence and respect in us! The logic! The actually acting like we might have an opinion in what our dogs do! The recognition that some of us live in quite urban environments and need that kind of training rather than your basic suburban training! The treating us like competent human beings!

I think someone is trying to punk me or something.

So was I interested? Yes! Yes! I’m interested! Is N? Yes!

I might even be able to run out and see my kids now and again.

I mean, what the FUCK is going on out there? I think maybe the old guard is being replaced by some new, fresh, more enlightened people who actually see us as people!

Mr. Labrador and Co.—eat your heart out! I’m getting my N, and my dog and my freedom all at the same time!