Chair walks.

Oct 22, 2020 |

Emma came up with the name chair walks for these pictures that I’m taking. Speaking of Emma, she arranged all of the photo’s today. I took hundreds of them from different angles and she picked out a few that actually didn’t show my feet, or someone elses feet. :). Seriously, I modify the angle that I hold the phone at several times for each shot and she picks the shot that actually turns out right. She is really busy making things right now so I appreciate her time on this.

Come with me for another walk through Drogheda today. This morning the route was very different. I also used a different lense on the iPhone. It’s the 18 mm lens from Moment.

At the top of Mary’s street looking toward Gerard’s church
Steps to the old school house.. Someone said this could be an album cover.
The famous Millmount tower. Fondly refered to locally as the cup and saurcer. Or in Drogheda, the cup and sawsaw.
Autom is starting to show.
Going from the Dublin Road to Shop street
Looking over the Boyne toward Scotch hall.
More churches in Drogheda.
This junction is usuall packed with people. Today it’s just traffic unfortunately.
Bad timing!
The dominating land mark in Drogheda’s golden quarter mile.
It was a lot quieter here today.
Personally, I actually love all the hills in Drogheda. It makes the walk enjoyable.
Looking toward the council offices on Fair street. Where all the really really really important work get’s done.
I don’t know why I bothered taking this one. I suppose I took a picture from the other angle yesterday so I thought, why not. This is the least interesting corner / junction in the town. I don’t know what I was thinking.
ON nearly every street in Drogheda the old is mixed with the new.
Looking at Clarkes, one of the oldest pubs in Drogheda. Carberry’s is the oldest I think.
I managed to catch the dog while working again. Delighted with that.
This is a really lovely quiet area.
I think Kaiser loves this part of the walk. He knows I have no idea how to find the paths around htis area so he loves taking the initiative.
Just like that, we are out of John Paul Court and back to the busy north road.
Joe Reid runs Floor Style, a shop just to the left.
By this point, Kaiser is thinking “Ah come on dArragh! There’s no foot paths!!!”
Looking over at the Coffee box in the Fair green. I must pay this place a visit soon.
Fair green. It’s a busy spot in the centre of town but most people never go in here.
Imagine having to travel to work in the morning? I feel very fortunate at the moment.
There’s a park down there. Not like our children will get to use it much now until next year some time unfortunately.
I wasn’t really expecting this picture to work out. I’m glad it did.
Traffic around Drogheda is mad today but it’s light here for some reason.
I must find out more about this place.
I didn’t even know this path way at the bottom of the hill existed until earlier this year.
This is a really nice quiet area to walk through.
A horse lives in on the left. It regularly sticks it’s head over the gate to get some attention.
Lots of happy children in that school this morning as we walked by.
Delighted I got some pictures from Kaiser’s perspective today. I had been trying to do this for ages!
Probably thinking, “When are we finally going home?”
And just like that we are back on the main road and the tranquility is gone.
Emma said, “I didn’t know that Guide dogs came with a hinge! :). Kaiser is playing after a hard morning of work.

Come walk with me.

Oct 21, 2020 | ,

A few of my posts lately have been a bit negative maybe. So let me change things up a little. Come for a little walk with me around Drogheda. I walk about 5km every morning before work. Today took me a little further than usual. We walked just over 6.5km just because the mood took me and it was a very mild morning.

I have included pictures of most parts of this morning’s walk. I forgot to take a pictures of a few places but you will still have a few nice places to look at.

I tend to try to pick routes that take me off the main roads to areas that are a little quieter. The morning walk for me is a way of getting myself ready for the day. It’s hard to do that when the accompanying sound track si a constant din of noisy traffic.

A tranquil spot that is just a stones throw away from the middle of town.
Very steep steps into the Dale.
It’s so nice and quiet here.
Sometimes going under this, I feel like I’m playing chicken with the traffic that is queueing at either end trying to agree who is allowed to move next.
I love this part of the walk. It feels like I’m walking a path a little less traveled. Although hundreds of people going to school every day probably use it as well. 🙂
I like listening to the sound of Drogheda waking up from this vantage point. It gives me a kind of disconnected calm. Knowing that all that activity is across the river.
I went down this on a scooter before. It didn’t end well. 🙂
Visit www.musicatthegate.ie to see this come to life.
When I was very young, I lived on this road.
This was a very hard road to cross.
This part of town was always a dead spot. But over the past 10 years, it has been integrated very well.

NVDA really coming up in my opinion.

Oct 19, 2020 | , , , ,

I’m so impressed by NVDA at the moment.

  • It works really nicely with VSCode
  • It’s working really well with the new Terminal UWP app
  • It’s very responsive
  • I like the sound effects and to replace speech.
  • It’s settings interface is really efficient
  • The Plugins repository is absolutely fantastic.

There are a few things stopping me using it right now.

  • I need remote desktop access out of the box
  • I’m nervous about pressing escape to get out of forms mode / get back into browse mode. Sorry. I’m mixing my terms. I also know that I can probably re-map this but I try to use it with the default keymap.
  • This is my own fault, but when in the terminal, it seems less efficient to copy and paste text when using the review cursor. Again, this is probably down to my inexperience with the application.

There is an NVDA remote add on available. But it’s not working with my current configuration while working from home as I’m using several machines with different VPN / routing configurations and as a result, although it get’s a connection, I never hear speech. I don’t have time to investigate further.

Oh, I also wish NVDA would not give me so much information when arrowing around message lists in Outlook. But that’s probably personal preference as well.

Feeling like an idiot.

Oct 19, 2020 | , , ,

There’s a thing that I think people have only started giving a name to recently. Maybe this name has always been given to it, but I’ve only come across it recently. It’s called imposter syndrome. It’s encountered when you try something new and you feel that you won’t ever get it and your questions are in fact stupid and really, you shouldn’t even try because there are millions of people out there who have been able to figure this out without asking questions. I’m in this rut right now but I’m finally coming out of it. I’m quite decent when it comes to coding in PowerShell. I can alway get the desired result. But there are people who live, eat and drink this stuff who write code that is in ways much more technical than mine. It could be argued that my code is a bit more readable, but that’s getting off the topic. The point is, I’m confident in my abilities in PowerShell. But a tool that I have been trying to use lately is absolutely knocking me senseless at every turn. I have finally come to the realization that it’s not me that can’t figure this out, it’s bad documentation. Here’s a quick eample:

There’s this thing in the tool called scripts. Think of scripts like a controller in the MVC world. The scripts handle all the dirty work. I have a module that pulls out the last log in date from active directory. Well, that script uses my module that does this and then it converts the date to a human readable format for use in the user interface. Seems simple enough doesn’t it? Well, although the scripts work really well, I’m completely unclear as to how scripts are called from within the UI. The documentation on scripts covers automation, scheduling, running from an API and running from a command line but no where in that documentation does it say how to run the scripts from the UI. AKA the dashboard.

Until I actually found a specific example of something that just wasn’t explained properly, I honestly thought I just wasn’t good enough to grasp the technicalities of this tool.

There have been other problems as well.

  • I spent twelve hours on something as it wasn’t working properly only to find out a few days later that it was in fact a bug.
  • I had problems getting intelisense working only to find that the version of the released module was for the previous version of the dashboard framework. That started a very frustrating hour where I was trying to get rid of dependencies so that I could cleanly install the pre-release version of the module.
  • Oh and the menu example in the documentation doesn’t work and the example it links to uses a different implementation of a menu.

I’m not mentioning the name of the tool here. I have asked the developers for some time with them to iron out a few of the issues that I have encountered. When that’s done, I’ll happily use this. So I don’t want to cause this small business any trouble.

But please let this be a lesson to you. If something isn’t working out, don’t default to the expectation that this is your fault. Sometimes, if you have given this enough time, consideration and research, it might actually be the developer that has screwed up.

That Damn Rabbit Hole Again!

Oct 12, 2020 | , , , , , ,

I’ve written previously about Tracking work and getting some kind of sense of achievement even when you fall down a rabbit hole but this post isn’t quite so positive. But it’s quite technical so if you are into that kind of thing, stick around. If not, please return to your regularly scheduled browsing.

Here’s the ultimate aim: Run PowerShell Universal to show some dashboards relating to information from active directory, azure, DUO and probably VMware as well.

Here’s what actually happens.

  • Day 1: Spend over ten hours trying to figure out why I couldn’t get VSCode to talk to the PowerShell Universal server.
    • During this I determined that NVDA was way more efficient than Jaws when using VSCode.
      • Realized I had to update NVDA finally and my old Eloquence plugin wouldn’t work. So, had to update that plugin too.
      • Remapped my keyboard commands in NVDA because the defaults annoy me a little.
      • Took some time to look at the new options in NVDA
    • Installed the PowerShell Pro Tools and the PowerShell Universal modules. But ran into anti-virus problems because part of the file name of one of the commands includes the letters c r y p t. With everything going on in the world around ransom ware, these letters are blocked from executing any action. Still, got around this easily enough by adding exceptions on the server side.
    • Uninstalled and reinstalled the VSCode plugins to try to get this to connect. Still, I was getting weird error messages. When I looked at the logs for VSCode, I saw it was trying to run a module called temp. I searched high and low for this but couldn’t find anything remotely useful. Finally, I Emailed the developer. I got a response back a few days later saying that there was a bug in the plugin and to try again. This worked finally. But I wasted a massive amount of time on it.
    • I should add that I also tried doing everything all over again on a second PC. I even uninstalled and reinstalled VSCode and VSCode insiders, the PowerShell plugin and I tried it with the PowerShell preview plugin as well. Nothing worked.
  • I converted all of my old PowerShell scripts into one module. I also modified that module to return objects for everything. This is going to feed directly into the dashboard. When I finally get to create it.
  • A week passed before I could try the Dashboard stuff again because of work commitments. But now, although the VSCode extension / plugin is connecting, there’s an error with a lot of numbers that mean nothing to me displayed when I start the service from VSCode. Fortunately, this doesn’t actually make a difference. But you’ve probably guessed it, I have spent over an hour troubleshooting this as well.
  • Oh, there’s a really annoying section in the configuration. It says, “Path to Service Executable” Now. To me, that includes the full path to the executable file. But no!!! It’s just the path to the folder containing the executable. This is incredibly frustrating. I encountered the error twice before I finally took a second to read the error message and realized my mistake.
  • Finally. I got the dashboard connected. Oh, and I can make changes to the dashboard files in VSCode! But guess what? Now on my work machine, I notice that the dashboards are not running. so, I swap over to the other computer and happily find out that the dashboards are running correctly on that system. I have now finally made some minor edits to a dashboard. I install my lovely new active directory module and get ready! But no! This machine isn’t domain joined. So, there’s two problems. 1. RSAT (Remote Server administration Tools) isn’t installed. And 2. Even if it was, this isn’t domain joined so the user context I would be running the module as isn’t going to have access to any domain resources. Yes. I should have thought of this without going all this way. But in my defence, I haven’t had a day off in over 3 weeks for various reasons and many of these days have been stupidly long.
    • This took me down another road. I decided that as I was going to ultimately run the dashboard from a server, I may as well just install the Dashboard on that server anyway and just get on with it.
      • Firstly, NuGet wasn’t installed.
      • Then I had a problem with PowerShell. It couldn’t look at the online PowerShell Gallery. The incorrect version of the Cryptographic libraries were running. To fix this, I ran the following two commands.
        Set-ItemProperty -Path ‘HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NetFramework\v4.0.30319’ -Name ‘SchUseStrongCrypto’ -Value ‘1’ -Type DWord
        Set-ItemProperty -Path ‘HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NetFramework\v4.0.30319’ -Name ‘SchUseStrongCrypto’ -Value ‘1’ -Type DWord
      • This let me download NuGet but again, because of Anti-virus, I’m having problems installing some modules such as AZ for Azure because it also includes Crypt in the name.
        PackageManagement\Install-Package : Package ‘Az.DataFactory’ failed to be installed because: Access to the path ‘C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\blpbm1k0\Microsoft.DataTransfer.Gateway.Encryption.dll’ is denied.
      • OH, I should also say that I tried all of this on another server as well. For some reason, I thought I remembered that PowerShell is broken on this first server. I remembered that incorrectly. But it was still a useful test.
      • So, I’m giving up on this for the moment because that crypt issue seems to be causing me other issues around running the Dashboards.
    • I decided to take my mind off this by trying to fix something else. I have 54 RDS session host servers but recently when I try to administer them over the VPN, I get WinRM timeout issues.
      • I decided to update the applications directly through PowerShell. This confirmed that WinRM was hitting a timeout of 30 seconds but nothing I do let’s that timeout increase.
      • ON the upside, I’ve written a very useful module that has some nice functions in it that when the WinRM issue is fixed will let me do a few normal admin tasks faster directly through the CLI.

There are a few problems here:

Firstly, I’m putting way too much pressure on myself. There are a lot of projects and problems in work at the moment. I’m focused on them for most of the day on Monday to Friday. Including outside normal work hours. But I have projects that I want to work on myself. Both because they are technically a lot more interesting and also will add value by decreasing overall administration time and will probably even reduce support calls as well. But so many things are going wrong. It’s probably a catch 22. I need to take more time off during rest periods. I.E. When I’m not meant to be in work, I shouldn’t be working still. But If I don’t put extra work in, I’m losing interest because the projects I’m currently working on are very dull and are not technically challenging.

That’s not all of course. I haven’t told you about the other things I’ve tripped over while doing this extra work. For example, during a meeting on Friday, someone asked for global admin access. I wasted a few minutes finding that person and checking their permissions only to find that they already have it. Or getting asked for a certificate without being provided a CSR. So, I have to generate the CSR as well as the certificate. Even though I know the system they will use to upload the cert has a native way of generating the CSR and associating the cert created with the key. Oh, and I have another computer sitting in the office in Dublin somewhere but it’s either been powered off or I can’t remember it’s IP or hostname. I think it’s been powered off. But I wasted about 30 minutes over the weekend trying to get back onto that. Because if I can’t sort the WinRM / WMI timeout issue, I know I will be able to work around it by connecting to a machine on a trusted network on site.

Finally, then there’s the urgent meetings that I get pulled in because there’s an issue with authentication. Only to find that there’s nothing wrong with authentication at all, it’s something else completely different and if some basic testing had been done on the login, the company contracted to do this work would have noticed very quickly that user attributes other than the Email address were now displayed therefore, it’s logical to conclude that login was successful but there’s an unrelated problem with the application.

So many things going on. I’m so tired. But yet I’m up at 4am today and I’ve just wated 3 hours without making much progress and there’s still 2 hours before the workday even starts. Why am I up so early? Because my stupid brain won’t turn off at night if there’s a problem that hasn’t been solved. So, this PowerShell stuff that I should be able to do easily is really getting on my nerves because supporting systems / modules aren’t behaving correctly.

Here’s a few more accessibility things that have caused me major delays and more trips down this rabbit hole of pain and torture:

  • This morning, when I decided it would be a great idea to get the dashboard running on a server, I decided it would be a good idea to use NVDA remote on the server with a direct connection back to my computer.
    • The problem first was that I had multiple languages installed for some reason so the shift and caps lock keys weren’t working properly. Two reboots later, this was fixed. The problem here is I have a rather strong PC with a RAID array so a reboot takes well over 5 minutes.
    • Okay, So I got NVDA installed on the server and my local machine and thanks to some messing around, I opened a port on my home network to let the computer in work communicate directly to it. This isn’t as insecure as it sounds.  The connection is strictly ….. restricted.  The traffic is encrypted and it can only be initiated by me.  Unfortunately, when I’m connected over the VPN, NVDA want’s to listen on the new default IP which doesn’t use my home network connection route as all traffic is routed over the VPN.  Even when I start the server on one IP then connect to the VPN afterword, it still get’s it’s nickers in a twist and doesn’t work correctly.
    • Side note, There are some really useful NVDA plugins available these days. That took a good half an hour of my time but it’s my own fault I suppose.
    • Anyway, I couldn’t get NVDA remote to work in this situation. With the combination of PowerShell problems, NVDA not working as I expected and the anti-Virus blocking crypt, I’ve just given up for a while and have moved onto something else.   Such as writing this long and pointless blog post, creating that CSR for that person and in a moment, I going to wake the children, make breakfast for them, walk them to the bus, go take the dog for a walk before coming back to sit here in an hour and 40 minutes to actually begin my real working day.  FUN TIMES!

Find out the name of a process using a port and stop it if necessary.

Oct 9, 2020 | , ,

Just a quick one.
Here are a few useful commands to have in your toolbox to find the process bound to a port in Windows. Then stop it.
I’ve provided commands for both command prompt and PowerShell. The PowerShell way is much nicer in my opinion.

In command prompt:


# Get the process ID (PID) of processes listening on port 443.
netstat -a -n -o | find "443"

# Get the process name from a pid.
tasklist /fi "pid eq 1234"

#Kill a task with a given PID:
taskkill /pid 12344

Now in PowerShell:


#PowerShell get the process details listening on a given port:
Get-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 443).OwningProcess

# Stops the process that you found listening on the port with get-process.
stop-process -confirm (Get-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 443).OwningProcess)

Jaws scripts for Wireshark. I never thought I would ever see the day.

Aug 17, 2020 | , ,

This is amazing news. Doug Lee is an amazing script writer. He has scripted dozens of applications and has perhaps made more new applications accessible than the developers of Jaws have themselves!

Wireshark is a network analysis tool. It is basically a packet capture utility but it has been around for years and has so many features, I couldn’t even begin to explain them

Doug’s scripts for Wireshark can be found here.

Go explore around the rest of the DLE.org site using this link. If you don’t know that site well by now and you a are a screen reader user, you are missing out.

I cant thank Doug enough. This is going to make the odd time I need to use a packet capture application a whole lot easier.

Day 5 – Training with the chief, my new guide dog

Jul 25, 2020 | ,

Standard disclaimer.

Training with a new guide dog is hard work. Some days go really well. Some days go terribly. There will be times I think this is the best dog in the world and there will be days that I’m near the point of sending him back to the training staff in Cork. This is no reflection on guide dogs, Irish guide dogs for the Blind of Ireland, anyone else who uses a guide dog or even the long-term viability of this new partnership. I write this account of my training with the Chief, my latest guide dog mainly as a personal account that I can look back on but also for friends and family who enjoy getting a bit of insight into this process. I have also heard over the years that perspective guide dog users enjoy these personal and honest accounts. But please remember that what works for me, may not work for you. In the unlikely event I mention something here that verges on tactics or techniques for working a guide dog please be aware that these work or may not work for my situation. Every guide dog and handler partnership is different. So, your situation may be entirely different.

The big Shmoke! I have not missed that place at all. I’ve also been quite hesitant about taking public transport for the past few months. Not because of Covid-19. No. Because I’ve been on and off busses now for 20+ years and I’m absolutely sick of them. I’m tired of sitting on smelly busses with smelly people. Yes. You with the perfume. It’s going to smell amazing in a few hours but right now, at 8am in the morning, 10 minutes after you stepped out of the shower, it’s just too over powering for an enclosed space where air is constantly circulated for an hour. And hey you, the person with the coat that smells like stale cigarette smoke, it’s revolting. Covid-19 of course plays a bit part in all of this. I’m genuinely concerned about putting my hands on the seats and the hand rails but of course, my hands are my primary method of sensing the world around me in such confined spaces so I don’t really have a choice. Wearing gloves is pointless. With the gloves, I’m going to touch the guide dog so it’s obvious that cross contamination is going to be a problem. All I can really do is sanitise my hands regularly and ware a mask. But anyway, the bus part of the trip came and went without much incident. I had been lucky enough to bring the chief onto a few different types of busses yesterday so I was quite confident he wouldn’t have a problem. With everything going on at the moment, the guide dog mobility instructors aren’t allowed to train guide dogs on public transport. Lucky enough for me, I have ample experience with getting dogs to do what I need on busses and trains. I walked to the bus station in Drogheda yesterday and was very fortunate to meet a fella by the name of David. David was amazing. Not only did he give me access to several busses, he also explained without any prompting the standard convention for social distancing on busses. This was incredibly useful as I wasn’t even aware that there was a convention. As companies have developed a standard that they are all working to, it’s actually quite easy to determine what seats are safe to use. This means that taking public transport is a little safer than I had expected. But by David giving us unhindered access to busses, it meant I could get the chief to get on and off busses, get in under seats exactly as I need and generally behave in a consistent way so that when the time came to catch a bus, I had no major concerns. The chief isn’t as natural at getting on and off busses as Nama was from day one. Also, he’s a little larger so getting under seats takes a bit more work but I’m very confident that given a week or two of consistent work and high expectations he will rise to the challenge.

We got off at white hall as normal but 20 minutes earlier than expected. Being the stubborn pain in the rear that I’m known to be, I decided to take matters into my own hands and walked to DCU alone. Fortunately the instructors are quite happy with the chief’s work and Collin’s avenue is very long and straight so as they could keep an eye on me from a distance while I approached, I think they were happy enough for me to proceed. This started quite an enjoyable morning of walking.

  • First, I walked to DCU from White hall.
  • Then I walked the 2.04km through Albert’s park.
  • Next I took a stroll over to DCU Sport. There, we tried out automatically revolving doors. Again, the chief hadn’t used these before but he took it in his stride.
  • Finally we walked back to white hall where we practised targeting a curb approach for a crossing where the path resumed at a point on the other side of the road. This was interesting. I’ll explain more shortly.
  • We walked back to DCU again just to make sure the chief was clear on the route. In total, we did about 8km.

The targeting part was something I really enjoyed. I had done this with Nama and it gave him a real sense of achievement. The chief is a little less delighted when he does something like this. It’s different for him. Every crossing point is a big win for him so although this was also a big win, he didn’t get the same sense of victory as Nama did for working in this unusual situation. The training method for teaching this was also a bit different. It involved more food rewards and less verbal praise . I also found it interesting that the clicker was used on the other side of the crossing during the last time he found that point. This actually really helped him make sense of why he was being asked to find a random crossing point.

There was one point today where he encountered a distraction level far higher than anything he had found before. A squirrel was see in Albert’s park. The chief hadn’t seen something like this before and he was absolutely transfixed. Commands, distractions, standing in his way. Nothing worked. This is something I’m certainly going to encounter again but I’m quite confident that a combination of massive positivity with a touch of firmness should help the distraction level reduce over time.

Let’s talk about poo again for a moment because I’ve gone a good few paragraphs now without talking about this topic. Unfortunately, the chief pood again at a time that was a little unexpected. I knew he would need to do it soon, but not as soon as he decided. These solid spends need to become more reliable. I’ll work on it tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday to try to help him get into a structure. Also, the training schedule next week is quite different so it may help him get into a different routine where this is more easier to handle mid afternoon.

Over all, and to this point, I’m very happy with the chief’s training. I find the instructors very easy to work with. They are providing me with good background information relating to training techniques. I hate just doing something. I like to know why something needs to be done. Because they are explaining the technicalities behind some of these new approaches, it means I am much more able to implement what they are asking me to do.

Day 4 – Training with the Chief, my new guide dog.

Jul 23, 2020 | ,

Standard disclaimer.

Training with a new guide dog is hard work. Some days go really well. Some days go terribly. There will be times I think this is the best dog in the world and there will be days that I’m near the point of sending him back to the training staff in Cork. This is no reflection on guide dogs, Irish guide dogs for the Blind of Ireland, anyone else who uses a guide dog or even the long-term viability of this new partnership. I write this account of my training with the Chief, my latest guide dog mainly as a personal account that I can look back on but also for friends and family who enjoy getting a bit of insight into this process. I have also heard over the years that perspective guide dog users enjoy these personal and honest accounts. But please remember that what works for me, may not work for you. In the unlikely event I mention something here that verges on tactics or techniques for working a guide dog please be aware that these work or may not work for my situation. Every guide dog and handler partnership is different. So, your situation may be entirely different.

We’ve all been locked down for months now. When you say four months, it seems like a short amount of time. But when you think of it in terms of weeks, 17 weeks seems a hell of a lot longer. I started it so well! For over two months, I worked to a schedule where outdoor activities were integral to each day. But then students finished exams and project work really started to ramp up. So I stupidly got out of that habit of getting out for really long walks each day. I’ll admit it. I’ve gained weight, I’ve lost fitness and I’ve generally become a lot less physically active. So the long walks since around this time last week have really been a shock to the system. The muscles on the outsides of my lower legs beside my shin bones are sore when I walk, my hips are tired and I’m finding that after a few hours, I’m actually feeling tired. Up to the beginning of lockdown, I would have taken all of this in my stride! But I’m loving this. Monday we did 8km. Tuesday we jumped up to 13km. Wednesday we did 8 again and today we walked almost 12km. Tomorrow is probably going to be back up to 13km as the routes are quite a bit longer. It’s not that the training is that long. Training walks are usually a total of 6 or 7km but the walks afterword push it up quite a bit. Having a guide dog during lock down is the motivation I’m going to need to take proper breaks during the day and finish on time in the evening. I know this as this isn’t my first time working for long periods from home. I know that with Nama, I maintained that motivation to maintain a high level of physical activity because I knew I had that dependence that required it as well.

The chief is doing remarkably well. There are a few things I love about his work.

  • Curb approaches are so solid! He sees them as a destination where he will get a high value reward so he loves finding crossings, ramps etc.
  • The chief is brilliant at finding things. Bins, traffic light poles and shops that he has been to before. It’s like he can’t wait to show you that he’s found something.
  • Obstacle avoidance is just amazing. He shows such willingness to slow down and navigate around things. We’ve encountered some quite complex situations and he has done exceptionally well. That’s not to say everything was perfect. He brushed me off a bush yesterday and he brushed me off a bin today. But when he was corrected, he showed increased awareness to similar objects and maintained a good distance afterword.
  • Even when he encounters situations where I can let him be a little social, he’s quite quick to jump back into work mode when we resume walking.
  • He slows down just a little when one of the children are holding my hand while working.

Of course, there are a few things we need to work on.

  • There’s some sensitivity when getting the harness on first. Also, for the first minute of working, he’s a little uncomfortable but once he has a bit of a shake, he’s happy to proceed with his normal happy attitude.
  • Every day this week, he has spent on a walk. This is really not good. It’s very possible that this will work it’s self out but in the back of my mind, I have a very firm opinion about the ultimate outcome if this isn’t solved. I’m very satisfied though that with some more work and the continued establishment of a good routine that he can get past this. I’m also very fortunate that going back to work isn’t something I need to be considerate of for a long time so with all of these factors in mind, I’m not overly concerned. But I’ve had issues with dogs spending in the past and I would be lying to you if I said that I wasn’t afraid.

We’ve done so many monstrous routes in Drogheda. We’ve walked from the area of Tesco right up to the outskirts of Drogheda on the north side. This includes well known places such as the cottage hospital, over all of the bridges, down by the quays, over West street, Laurence’s street, shop street, Peter’s Street, Duke street, Stockwell street, the north road, Thomas street, the Chord road, the Donor road, Marlies lane, Duleek street, Priests lane, Mary’s street, John Paul court, Sundays gate, Ashfield and Balls grove.

Unfortunately this is going to result in a significantly shorter series of blog posts relating to training a new guide dog. Training from home is so much more relaxed, easy going and comfortable. For someone who is quite experienced with working with guide dogs, training in an area that I know very well has made the process much more approachable compared to when training in Cork. There’s an easy way to explain this. I have a really bad habit when training with a new guide dog. My right side feels really exposed and I’m not quite sure yet if I’m going to feel where the curbs are. So I hang back just a small bit so that I can be sure that I give myself an extra second. You might think this is perfectly reasonable. However, for a guide dog this is a terrible thing to do. In all situations, you must fake it until you make it. Even if you think you are about to walk off a cliff, you must trust the dog to do the job correctly but more important than that, you must show the dog that you trust it to do the job correctly. No, I’m sorry. There’s something even more important than that. You must never let the dog know that what it is doing is of critical importance so even though you might be terrified that there’s something near you that you’re about to smack your face off, you must approach it as if guiding you around this frightening and potentially dangerous object is the most fun thing in the world for the dog to do at that time. Of course, you can do this with body language and your voice. Also, every experience the dog has to this point has lead the dog to think that this kind of thing is a very positive experience so actually, once you can “Fake it until you Make it” and remain positive in your body language and voice, the cumulation of positive experience up to this point will actually do quite a lot of the work for you in making the dog think that this is such a great and fun thing to figure out. Especially with Nama, I learned that when work is fun, work is easy and enjoyable for both the dog and the handler. Nama was honestly a joy to be around. Because work for him was fun. Because work for him was fun, he did things during work that I also found a bit of fun too. For example, pulling my coat sleeves when we had been waiting on a bus for a little too long. Listening to the sniggers of people around me while Nama would pull the toggles of my rain jackets if my hand wasn’t in easy reach. Or going for coffee and someone I was with commenting that he was having a good role around under the table wagging his tail. I walked him onto a building site with impossible things to guide around and he still came out of it a happy dog. I’m not saying I have all the answers. I have only scratched the surface. One thing I’m loving about this training currently is the instructor is really interested in the technicalities of working with a guide dog and is quite happy to share some of this knowledge with me from time to time. I love learning about the technical side of working with a guide dog. The more I can understand how their minds work, how the training helps them to figure stuff out and how they become motivated to do something, the more I can help the dog by supporting him in the right way.

That’s all for tonight. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. I’m hoping my legs let me walk at a good speed, that the rain isn’t too heavy and that I don’t catch Covid-19 from being on the bus to Dublin!

If you have a comment, go on. Leave it here. Don’t leave it on twitter or Facebook. It’s much nicer to look back years from now and read what you are thinking.

Day 2 – Training with the Chief, my new guide dog.

Jul 21, 2020 | ,

We’re now six days in and it has been a roller-coaster with the chief. Let me start from the beginning. A lot has happened and if you stick with me for a few minutes, I think you will find it quite interesting.

Standard disclaimer.

Training with a new guide dog is hard work. Some days go really well. Some days go terribly. There will be times I think this is the best dog in the world and there will be days that I’m near the point of sending him back to the training staff in Cork. This is no reflection on guide dogs, Irish guide dogs for the Blind of Ireland, anyone else who uses a guide dog or even the long-term viability of this new partnership. I write this account of my training with the Chief, my latest guide dog mainly as a personal account that I can look back on but also for friends and family who enjoy getting a bit of insight into this process. I have also heard over the years that perspective guide dog users enjoy these personal and honest accounts. But please remember that what works for me, may not work for you. In the unlikely event I mention something here that verges on tactics or techniques for working a guide dog please be aware that these work or may not work for my situation. Every guide dog and handler partnership is different. So, your situation may be entirely different.

The chief arrived to my home here in Drogheda last Wednesday 15th July at about quarter past 1. He was a bundle of energy as he had just spent about three hours in a car traveling from Cork. The instructor and an apprentice came in and we sat down. For about thirty minutes we discussed the structure of the next three to four weeks and we covered some of the basics of obedience training. Of course, this is my fourth time training with a guide dog so the obedience training is something I’m very aware of however a bit of a refresher was welcome. Within what seemed to be no time at all, the instructor left and the chief was alone with me at last. Here’s the thing that’s really important that I need to explain to you. On the 15th I was launching a massive change in work to over four thousand people. So I was insanely busy. I had to fit in getting a new guide dog in with something I had been preparing for in work for over four months. So at a quarter past 2 I was back on a Zoom meeting with people and the chief was asked to independently entertain himself for a while. In fairness to him, he wasn’t any bother at all. A few times he introduced himself to the call by placing his head on my desk but overall, he was very well behaved. I finally finished up at 5pm and could then really get out and play properly with the chief. Of course, with it being such a busy day in work, I was still getting the occasional call until about 7pm but I still had plenty of time to keep the chief active and playing.

I learned very quickly that the chief loves play. A good game of tug of war really get’s him going. Like Nama, he gets very vocal during playing. He’ll growl ferociously. Unlike Nama, he also barks when pulling from side to side. I like when dogs feel comfortable to express themselves when playing. I encourage it to an extent. Playing is a great time for the dog to just have fun. It’s also the perfect time for obedience work to start. For example, the dog must sit before throwing the toy. If I say thank you or leave it, the dog must let go. If I say stay, the dog must wait until I tell him he can go. These commands are integrated into play time for maximum impact. For example. I’ll sometimes tell the chief to sit and stay. Then I’ll go to another room and loudly drop the toy. I’ll then tell him to come. This enforces the sit, stay and come commands all while he thinks that it’s great fun to find where in the house I’ve gone this time.

If you have read any of my posts about training with a new guide dog, you know that I’m going to talk about toileting. AKA spending. Spending / letting the dog relieve himself is a big part of establishing a reliable routine. Guide dogs go on command but regularity is key so that the dog isn’t asked to work when under pressure to have a wee or poo. So one of the things we try to do right away when a dog comes home for the first time is to spend. The Chief was having absolutely none of this. It took until sometime after 3pm when he finally had a wee. Luck wasn’t on my side though and unfortunately he didn’t spend in the defined dog toileting facilities. The place where the dog spends is called the run. I have a reasonably sized run a few metres outside my back door so that each dog I’ve had has a very easy place to identify. Of course, the chief is a bit of a stubborn hound so he decided that he would venture somewhere else and do it there instead. Fortunately, this hasn’t been persistent. In fact, he’s only spent outside the dog run once. Unfortunately though, he held off having a poo until about 5pm on Thursday evening! Pooing is something I’ll talk about later on. Again, there’s a few paragraphs devoted to toileting because having a reliable guide dog is really important.

As you would expect, the chief has been my shadow constantly from Wednesday to well, today! Everywhere I go, he is sure to follow. That’s fine though. It’s a good sign that he is attached to me and looks to me for reassurance. That bond is growing. He’s becoming very comfortable around me. But my good mood today hasn’t been there all along. On Saturday, he spent twice at unexpected times while out of the house. See? Spending / toileting is something that I’ll go back to from time to time. But the reason I’m mentioning it here is because unfortunately that meant that on Sunday, Saturday’s late pooing incident meant that he didn’t poo for me on Sunday morning. So I was restricted to the house until about 5pm when he finally relieved himself. He is very stubborn. I knew he needed to go so walking outside the house wasn’t an option. The stimulus of walking would have triggered a poo while we were about half way down the road so it was important I didn’t help him set a habit. So I was quite frustrated on Sunday. I was here on my own so not being able to get out even for a quick walk made me feel very restricted.

Although I was working on Thursday and Friday during normal office hours, I wasn’t as pressured so I regularly took the chief out for quick bouts of very active play time. I also began doing more structured obedience sessions. I have a standard method of ramping up the difficulty level of obedience sessions. I used it for Ike, then again with Nama so I’m using it with the chief this time as well. I start in a quiet room with no distractions. I spent some time there and make sure he listens to every command. I treat regularly and give plenty of praise. Then I move to somewhere like the kitchen. More smells and sounds here so without fail, the first few times we go in there, the obedience levels dip slightly. Each time he doesn’t do something, I walk away. Then I go back again and I try it a second time. If it doesn’t work, I completely change what I’m asking him to do. When he’s as consistent in the kitchen as he was in the first room, I bring him outside to the back garden. This ramps up the difficulty level even more. There are many more things to distract him but he starts to get the idea by now. Rewards become more interesting as well. A tiny bit of cheese, some play time and grooming out here all serve to show him that obedience is a really nice thing to do. Finally I bring him to the front garden. I use an extra long flexy lead and try commands like come, stay, heal, sit, down etc. I do this when he’s right beside me, a metre away then several metres away. Each time I reward well when he has done something right but I ignore him if he does something bad. Then I complicate things further. I wait for people passing the house or cars moving by and I ask him to comply with another command. When he does this, I go way over board with praise and a treat. Finally, I take him off the flexy lead and I do some obedience in the front garden with no lead at all. This is risky and once, it went quite badly for me but it’s in controlled environments where risks like this can begin to be taken.

On Friday 17th of July, I finished work for four entire weeks! I’m delighted! I have been storing up leave since the beginning of the year. I really need a break and this time training with a new guide dog just couldn’t come fast enough.

The instructor arrived on Monday. Since then the chief has really settled in. We walked 8km on Monday and a massive 13km today! Currently the chief is under my feet fast a sleep.

Work is such a pleasure. His curb approaches are fantastic, finding traffic light poles is a breeze to him and his right shoulder work shows that he has top class awareness. I feel so comfortable walking with him. He feels so confident and so sure of himself that I don’t feel that I need any hesitation when following him. We actually had a meeting to attend tonight. So I worked him to it. It was a route we had done earlier today with the instructor. It was so nice to arrive to that meeting as confident, assured and independent as I was back when I had Nama up until the beginning of 2020.

We have an issue with spending in the afternoon to sort out. I’ve already spoken about spending in this post and it has been quite long so I’ll explain that in more detail in the next post.