Responsibility is probably the biggest part of effective mobility in my opinion. When training with a guide dog, it’s important that you portray confidence all the time. If you’re not confident then the dog won’t be. In my experience it’s as simple as that. If you’re not confident and you’re the leader of the pack between you and the dog then how can the dog be expected to be confident? After all, you’re the dominant one. You’re the stronger one. You’re the one that always has to be in control. That’s how the pack works. Taking responsibility for this is vital.

How can you be confident though when you’re entrusting your safety to a four legged hairy mutt? Let’s face it, at the start, how are you meant to trust that this dog isn’t going to have a brain wave one day and figure out that if he knocks this fella out he won’t have to walk me everywhere. I know. I know. They love working and they love doing what their trained to do. I’m just making a point. How can I be expected to implicitly trust this animal with my safety and mobility when to me, it’s little more than a trained pup. I can’t do it. Well, more accurately, I can’t and won’t do it right away. It takes time. For me, that’s what the three weeks training in Cork are for more than anything else. I won’t trust the dog; I’ll trust the trainer who is walking behind us. If the dog makes a wrong move, I may not detect it right away until I become use to its little subtleties. The three weeks training in Cork will help begin to create a bond between the dog and me. This bond is by far the most important part of the dogs training with me. The bond builds this pack mentality for the dog and probably more importantly, it builds a trust for me with the dog so that I believe it’s able to do what it’s been trained for.

As I said at the start, it’s important that I take responsibility for my own mobility. Life doesn’t stop just because my situation changes therefore it’s important that I don’t stop either. When I return from training in Cork and I have had some training at home, I will need to launch back into work with the dog at my side. I know from conversations I have had with the trainer that this is going to be a particular challenge with this dog as it would probably be more comfortable for it if I ramped up slowly to my usual routine. I will have to take this into account in a lot of situations however unfortunately the most complicated routes that I do from the perspective of a guide dog are unavoidable. This is where the responsibility for confidence comes in. If I am very clear and concise in my instructions to the dog it will hopefully be able to keep its concentration focused on smaller tasks. With this more granular breakdown will come an increased number of milestones. With every milestone comes praise for the dog for doing it right. With smaller tasks, more praise more frequently the dogs confidence should remain high.

I can only do this if I am confident in the routes myself. For that reason I have begun analysing every route that I walk every day. From home to the train station, From the station to work, from the work to the park, from the park back to work, from work to the train station, from the train station to home and all the other routes in between. I am walking each one both on my own and with friends to ensure I intimately remember and understand every stage.

The aim is that I will be able to use these routes as a foundation for the dog for a number of months. They are challenging as they contain a lot of crossings, off curb obsticals, crowds of pedestrians, noise, barriers and distractions. Once we master these routes I will be able to slowly increase the scope of the dog’s routes steadily over the next eight months to a year.

In conjunction with this I am also revising material I received in the pack given to me when I qualified with my previous guide dog to ensure I clearly remember all of the different commands. I am attempting to ensure that this entire process goes as smoothly as possible because I know that as soon as training begins it’s going to be an uphill battle. Things that I never expected to go wrong will crash down around me. It’s inevitable that the dog will probably get sick, the weather will go against us, I’ll have habits to break or something else will happen to set us back a little bit. Hopefully the more prepared I am the better I will be at getting back on course afterword.
So that’s it in a nutshell. The preparation for the training is ongoing but even though I’m trying to cover off anything and everything that can go wrong, I know that nothing is certain. Hopefully I can prepare for that uncertainty too?

During the training I will attempt to document each stage, each set back and more importantly each success. If this interests you, look under the new guide dog category for these posts.