PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT...

At least once a month, I try to go to the Beverly Center with Dobby so together we can practice working on escalators. Now the Beverly Center is a big mall with five levels of parking above ground and three floors of mall space on top of that. The mall was designed to be entered by escalators that climb up the side of the building to the sixth floor. There are elevators which take you into the mall and to get to them you have to work through the Macy's Men's Store on the ground level. Most of the time, I take the elevators to get into the mall where I can more easily prepare Dobbs for escalator practice.

Now for a dog, riding escalators can be a very dangerous thing; less so for a trained guide dog but it's still dangerous. A dog's paws can get caught in the collapsing steps, in between the steps and the grill which clears the grooves on top of the steps as they collapse and recycle to the opposite end of the device. In fact, just about two months ago, at the Beverly Center, there was a serious accident when a woman forced her small dog to ride on an escalator and it's paw got caught and mangled. Security tried to keep her from getting onto the device with her dog (who was resisting getting onto the escalator) however the woman ignored the warnings and forced her dog on anyway only to have the situation end in disaster. Dogs aren't generally allowed in the mall although in Los Angeles, little dogs have become a fashion accessory and people tend to carry them around in their handbags where ever they go. You'd be amazed at some of the places that Dobbs and I have had dog encounters but I'll leave that for another post. The point of me telling you all this is that, in spite of Dobbs' training, escalators can be very dangerous for him and there is a risk every time we ride them.

In order to keep Dobby as safe as possible, he has to wear shoes when he rides on escalators. Dobby has a set of four Vibram soled booties that protect his feet. He also wears them when the sidewalks are too hot during the summer and could burn his pads. Now, Dobby doesn't like his shoes all that much. He tolerates wearing them but prefers to not have them on. I guess it must feel kind of like walking on the moon for him while he's wearing them. Normally, he can feel the ground with the pads on his feet and when he's wearing his shoes, the ground must feel like it's disappeared. For the first five minutes after putting his shoes on, Dobby high steps around and tries to sit down off his feet. I take out my cane and heel him around the first level of the mall until he gets used to having them on his feet and then we head for the escalators.

The Beverly Center has at least 20 sets of escalators, probably more, I've never tried counting them but suffice to say there are plenty of opportunities to practice riding on them. Once Dobbs gets over sulking about having to wear his shoes, he actually kind of likes riding on the escalators with me. For him it's all a big fun game and another chance to earn praise and an occasional food reward for a job well done. Not to mention that Dobby enjoys doing things with me and riding on escalators is one of the many adventures he enjoys sharing with me and I with him.

Right after I first graduated from guide dog school, I avoided riding escalators with Dobby for about 6 months. Having to stop, put on his shoes, get him comfortable in them, etc. just to ride between two floors didn't seem to make a great deal of sense to me when there was a perfectly good elevator available. But as with anything we don't do regularly, our skills can become dulled if they're not practiced occasionally. As time wore on, this began to weigh on me and I realized that if I was forced to ride an escalator with Dobby some day because there was no alternative, I would be remiss if I didn't occasionally practice riding them with him to keep his training sharp. What I discovered was that I was the one who needed the practice. Dobbs knew exactly what to do. He's an incredibly bright dog and its situations like this that make me realize just how smart he really is.

I won't bore you with a step-by-step description of how we work on escalators but the key thing is to have Dobby moving when we get on and when we exit. One of the biggest worries is that in a crowed situation, people coming off of the escalator behind us can rapidly build up if we don't get out of the way quickly. It's that part of the process that is most nerve racking for me and it's good to practice the techniques in a real world, crowded mall environment. What I've found is that people are very understanding and realize why I'm repeatedly going up and down on the escalators. Actually, a lot of people are really surprised to see me riding with Dobby at my side. It's a fairly unusual sight. People aren't generally allowed to have things like strollers or objects with them so seeing me with my dog on an escalator causes quite a lot of double takes (or so I've been told). The security staff at the Beverly Center loves it when I bring Dobby by to do some practice. They think its good for the general public to see just how much effort it really takes to keep a dog safe on an escalator and they hope that by having me practice riding on them in such a conspicuous way that a greater sense of caution will hopefully rub off onto the general public. Let's hope they're right...

A SERIOUSLY CLOSE CALL…

It happened in a flash, without warning and came within a whisper of leaving Dobbs and I seriously injured and it wasn’t a traffic check.

Monday was a very hectic day and Dobbs was a real trooper. Somehow, I had appointments piled one upon another, back to back and without any breaks all day long. He must have walked nearly five miles before this incident happened and he had handled the entire day with his usual calm collected demeanor, never complaining, never loosing his focus or diligence. He was just enjoying spending the day on the road with me and I have to admit that I was really happy to have him along with me to keep me company in the midst of my hectic schedule.

It was the late afternoon around 5 o’clock and we were coming back from Hollywood where I had just had to return to my pharmacy to have them correct a mistake they had made earlier in the day when filling one of my prescriptions. It was hot, the bus was crowded and people were in an unusually crabby mood. An elderly lady had made everybody grumble because she had insisted that the bus driver extend the wheelchair ramp so that she could get onto the bus with her walker only to ride one block and then hold the whole bus up for 10 minutes while she got off again. She had made Dobbs and I get out of our seat at the front of the bus so she could get by us with her walker and she was rude about it. So needless to say the bus ride wasn’t going all that well to begin with but what happened next is unprecedented and I still can’t believe it happened.

As the elderly lady egresses the bus, a young man who had apparently been out getting drunk in the afternoon at a pub, got onto the bus. According to the bus driver he was so drunk that he couldn’t even get his dollar bill to go into the bus fare-collecting machine. She had waived him to just go and sit down because we would have been there all day waiting for him to pay his fare and the bus was already behind schedule due to traffic. The guy passed by Dobbs and I who was seated normally minding our own business. He nearly tripped and fell over my feet that I was using to protect Dobbs and keep people from stepping on him. He said “sorry,” and blundered on down the aisle deeper into the bus to find a seat. I could smell the alcohol on his breath he was so drunk. I was going to be glad when this bus ride was over.

The bus started up again and traveled for a minute or so when suddenly the driver had to slam the brakes to avoid smashing up a car that had cut the bus off in traffic. Everyone on the bus was thrown forward. Those of us who were seated weren’t too seriously jostled around and I had a good firm grip on Dobbs so he didn’t go flying off anywhere. However, the drunk guy who had just gotten onto the bus had apparently chosen to try to stand up rather than take a seat and he was thrown, through the air, from somewhere in the mid section of the bus all the way to the front of the bus slamming into the fare collection machine head first. As he flew past Dobbs and I, he brushed both of us with his body. Dobbs pressed himself up against me and I pushed myself back into the seat to try to avoid being injured but the truth is that by the time we had reacted to the situation it was already too late to avoid it. Had the man’s flight path been just a few inches more towards us he would have taken both of us out; potentially seriously injuring both Dobbs and myself.

Several people got up out of their seats and went to the man’s aid. He didn’t say anything. Frankly I’m amazed he wasn’t killed. The bus driver pulled over and rather than the man waiting around for help to arrive to check him out, he just fled the bus over the objections of the passengers and the driver.

Honestly, I consider myself lucky not to be in the hospital right now and not to have Dobbs lain up in the animal hospital with serious injuries or broken bones. This episode hasn’t put me off riding the bus. I really don’t have any other way to easily get around LA with my guide dog (given that Access Services can’t seem to figure out that I need a VAN and not a tiny car for transportation. But that’s another story) and so the bus is my only real option regardless of how I feel about it. I guess I should chalk the whole experience up to the idea that, hey, living in LA may be many things, but it’s never boring...

THE CURSE OF A HUNGRY LABRADOR…

As I've said many times before, Dobbs is a great guide dog. He’s smart, focused and really performs his job well. He rarely misses a curb or jumps the last step on a flight of stairs. He threads me through some of the most challenging situations without a hitch and almost never misses a beat, almost. Occasionally he has his moments where his halo slips a bit, when he’s hungry. When my Dobby is hungry, sometimes he can be a real handful. When he’s hungry, all he’s thinking about is getting home so he can get fed. He’s in such a hurry he practically drags me down the sidewalks. He occasionally doesn’t listen to my commands and his only interest is to expedite our excursion so he can get home.

Take today for example. I needed to go to the store this afternoon to pick up a few odds and ends. Now Dobbs’ normal feeding time is at 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Around 2:30 p.m. we headed out to Gelson’s Market, which is about a mile down Santa Monica Boulevard from my place. I used to have a grocery store that was closer but it recently closed for renovation and so Gelson’s is now really the only option that I have for grocery shopping within a reasonable walking distance. In a way it’s great because I get to work Dobbs on a longer and more challenging route and he really loves to get out of the house and work. Dobbs often prances down the street as if to say to the world, “Look at me! See how special I am. See what I get to do!” He can be a character sometimes. But I digress.

From the moment we headed out, Dobbs was in a hurry. He wanted to get to wherever we were going and that was that. At first I wasn’t sure what was up with him. It was a bit windy so I chalked it up to that and put it out of my mind. Our route began normally enough. We had the usual number of dog distractions along the boulevard, which he handled with his usual calm, collected demeanor. He stopped me for a few cars pulling across the sidewalk in front of us and we pulled over at his usual favorite piece of grass to relieve en-route. Everything seemed normal and that’s when the trouble began. We approached a somewhat unusual corner on Holloway and Santa Monica Blvd. Now I wanted to do what is called a “curb to curb” turn in order to reorient myself to cross Santa Monica Blvd. rather than proceeding forward across Holloway and down the same side of the street. After stopping me normally at the curb, I gave Dobbs a right command to execute the turn and rather than listening to what I had said and paying attention to my foot work, Dobby tried to go forward to take me across the street instead of doing the curb to curb I had requested. I immediately called out a “halt” command, commanded him to “heel” and put him in a sit and a down to get him re-focused. It didn’t work.

By this point it was nearly 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon and I began to realize that Dobbs must have been getting hungry early. I got him up from the down position, got him into the ready position and gave him another “right” command. Instead of going right he again tried to take me across the street. He was bound and determined to cross that street. This time I had to give him a collar correction and a “No!” You have to understand, Dobbs rarely if ever needs to be given a collar correction since he’s normally such a well behaved dog that it’s always a bit of a shock to him when it happens. I again put him into a sit and a down hoping that the second time would be the charm and he would calm down and re-focus on the task at hand. Again, I got him up after waiting for a minute or so, got him into the ready position and gave him another “right” command. This time he did execute the turn but he leaped forward dragging me along with him nearly pulling me off balance (And yes, I was in the correct ready position. That's what kept me from falling).

What I’ve noticed with Dobby is that when these episodes happen, the situation tends to snowball and the errors begin to mount one upon the other in succession because he's confused and is trying so hard to do what he thinks I want that he ends up making more mistakes. Dobby just wants to please me so much that he gets frustrated and when he does the wrong thing he overcompensates and tries to take the initiative to prove that he’s capable of handling my requests and that he's a good boy. Dobbs is a sensitive dog and sometimes can be a bit needy and these kinds of episodes are the darker side of that yin and yan of his personality. He so much wants to know that I still love him that he becomes fearful that he's lost that love and gets overwrought. The only way to overcome this vicious cycle is to stop him, put him into a sit and shower him with all the love he can handle and then move on as if nothing has happened. Did I mention that through all of this I had a bag of dog poop in my hand the entire time? That’s originally why I wanted to cross the street instead of heading forward in the direction we were originally traveling because I knew there was a trash-can on the opposite corner where I could drop off my little white plastic bag of joy.

Dobbs and I finally crossed Santa Monica Blvd. successfully, he found the trash can for me with his usual diligence and then, when all seemed like it was relatively back to normal, Dobby showed he had other ideas. He wanted to head back to home and tried to take me back across the street rather than proceeding on to Gelson’s when I gave him a forward command. His "independent streak" went on all the rest of the way to the market. Once there, he behaved himself while we were inside but he started up again once we were back on the road towards home.

I ended up doing two obedience routines with him en-route to try to help him get his focus. It didn’t work. I did some traveling "sits" and "downs" (where you stop every 10 feet or so and put the dog into a sit and a down for a few moments and then repeat it again 10 feet later) with him to try to get him to focus on listening to me. That sort of worked but the closer we got to home, the more he was bouncing off the walls (so to speak). He blew through a curb (which he almost never does) and rather than re-work the entire intersection with him I figured the best possible thing I could do was keep heading for home so he could get fed. If I had tried to re-work the error by re-working the entire intersection it would have been a huge struggle to get him to focus and it wouldn’t have helped him to not make the mistake again in the future because his mind was elsewhere. Sometimes, you've got to know when to cut your losses and at this point, my Dobby had a one tract mind, he simply couldn’t think about anything else but getting home for dinner. I’ve come to realize that one of the strongest forces in Dobbs’ life is his stomach. He doesn’t behave this way every time we’re late getting home for a meal but when he does, he can be a real handful. I still love him to death. As his trainer Holly was fond of saying, “Dobbs is a really well trained dog but he’s still a dog,” a point which Dobby occasionally reminds me of in spades…

THE SUPERIORITY OF A GUIDE CAT OVER A GUIDE DOG...

One hot summers day back in late July of this year (2008), Dobbs and I had been waiting for a bus on Sunset Boulevard for nearly an hour. Buses on Sunset often run at irregular intervals due to heavy traffic but this bus was particularly late in arriving. When the bus finally pulled up I could tell there was something weird going on. The driver didn’t open the door right away and left us standing in the hot sun for nearly a minute before he finally opened the door and let us board. The heat is really stressful on Dobbs and if I hadn’t needed to be out traveling that afternoon I wouldn’t have been. I wasn’t sure what to make of the delay but I was glad to get into the air conditioning for both my sake and for Dobbs’ and so I didn’t think much of it and put it out of my mind for the moment.

As I boarded, I waived my bus pass in the air for the driver to see, got to the top of the steps on the bus and called for Dobbs to follow me on board which he did. As Dobbs scrambled up the steps the Driver said, “There’s a seat behind me on the right and watch out for your dog, there’s a cat on the bus.” “Huh?” I said, “a cat?” “Yeah, right across from you,” he said with no further explanation. Just then a droll woman’s voice began speaking, “Oh, now this will be interesting.” She paused. “This will be a chance to do some teaching and learning.” I just ignored her and got to my seat and got Dobbs into his sitting position, between my legs, so that the Driver could proceed.

Dobbs was very interested in the cat across the aisle from us but I didn’t realize that the cat wasn’t in a kennel. “He’s a beautiful dog,” said the droll woman seated across from me. “Thank you,” I said, “He’s my best buddy.” “I see he’s attentive to my cat,” she said, “I have a guide cat with me over here and I can see that your dog is very interested in him. That’s good. That means he’s doing his job.” Now at this point I’m thinking out loud and inadvertently blurted out, “Guide cat?” “Yes,” she said, “I have a guide cat which is much superior to a guide dog in both training and temperament.” I pulled out my monocular and looked at the woman seated across from me. She was rather disheveled with wild brown curly hair and draped over her shoulder was a scrawny, white, shorthaired cat. The cat was just laying there letting her run her hands over it but it was defiantly eyeing Dobbs.

Now to be fair, I had heard about this woman from several bus drivers who had asked me some very pointed questions in the past about what constituted a legitimate service animal and whether or not I had ever heard of a service cat before but I never figured that I would actually cross paths with this person. Apparently, the MTA management was trying to figure out if they could deny this woman access to their buses as long as she had her cat with her. I had previously told the drivers that I simply didn’t know the answers to their questions but I had never heard of such a thing and didn’t believe that cats were trainable and therefore would unlikely be used as service animals for that reason.

At this point, I became concerned. There’s no such thing as a guide cat and so I knew that this woman was either working the system or more likely was a few bricks short of a full load (if you know what I mean). While I knew Dobbs wouldn’t get out of control or go after the cat, I had no idea as to what the cat on the woman’s shoulder would do. I was growing increasingly worried that if the cat sprang at Dobbs or attacked him in some other way, the woman would have no way of controlling her animal and Dobbs could be injured and/or refuse to work afterwards if attacked. Pets aren’t allowed to ride the bus unless they’re in a kennel because of health and safety concerns for the general public and for the safety of service animals like Dobbs. I also guessed that the reason the driver had not opened the door was likely because he wasn’t sure what was going to happen with my dog and this woman’s cat. As it turns out, my guess was close but more on that later.

I decided that I had no choice but to act. One of the things that become very apparent while you’re in guide dog school is that the welfare and safety of your guide dog is paramount. Ultimately, an individual person’s safety and well being depends upon your guide dog and anything that could erode or jeopardize the dog’s well being is by default jeopardizing a person’s personal safety. This woman was placing my dog in jeopardy and thus my safety in jeopardy, unintentionally perhaps, but her behavior was by definition reckless nonetheless.

I realized that directly confronting her and demanding that she leave the bus with her cat was beyond my authority and only the bus driver or the police could remove her from the bus so I took another tact, I began to barrage her with questions about her “guide cat’s” training. Questions that I knew she would be unable to answer because her cat had no training because there’s no such thing as a guide cat. My hope was that the bus driver would be listening and would hear enough to realize that this woman was lying to him in order to bring her pet cat with her on the bus.

I asked the woman which school she had attended to learn how to perform guide work with her cat? No answer. I asked her whether or not a cat used the same kinds of commands that a guide dog used. She reacted. “No, you need to read the ADA,” she said. “I’m allowed under the ADA to have my guide cat with me on public transportation. You need to learn about the ADA.” I said, "Madam, I’m blind. I know all about the ADA. I’m trying to find out how much training you’re guide cat has and who did the training.” “No, you’re not allowed to question me. You need to go to ADA.gov and read the rules about access for service animals,” she said. “I know all about the rules for access,” I said, “what I want to know is what proof you have that your cat is a legitimate service animal. I’m concerned that your untrained cat might attack my dog and harm him. For me this is a safety issue. I’m merely asking you questions which you should have no trouble answering.” All she could repeat was that I needed to go to ada.gov and look up the rules. By this point the driver had heard enough. Just as we pulled up to the stop on Sunset and Highland, the bus driver spoke up and told her that if she wouldn’t answer the questions I was asking then she could answer some questions he had for her about the legitimacy of her “guide cat.” Well, she suddenly realized the gig was up and said, “This is my stop anyway. Next time maybe you’ll all be aware of what ada.gov says and won’t be so ignorant of the rules and will be more considerate.”

She got off the bus (with her cat thank goodness) at which point everyone around me let out a collective sigh of relief. Apparently, she had been torturing people with her endless talking about her service cat prior to me getting on the bus. During the time that the driver had held me on the curb before opening the door, he had warned her that I had a dog and that she needed to keep control of her cat or he would put her off the bus. It seems that when I started questioning her, she had become extremely nervous, as I had hoped she would, but not because I was challenging her but because she knew that the bus driver was already suspicious of her cat.

To be honest with you, I don’t feel bad about doing what I did. My guide dog is the most important thing in my life and his well-being comes first above and beyond the feelings or desires of other people. I have a contract with Guide Dogs for the Blind which clearly states that I agree to advocate for the safety and well being of my guide dog should the need arise. The school retains ownership of the dog. Dobbs is merely on loan to me from the school. If I don’t live up to my end of the bargain, they can, at their discretion, remove Dobbs from my possession and reissue him to someone else in order to protect their investment in his raising and training. By trying to scam the system, this woman had forced me into a position where I was required to intervene for the well being of my dog. Clearly, she hadn’t though through what would happen if someone else got on the bus with a legitimate service animal. I haven’t seen the woman since that day nor have any bus drivers asked me about service cats. I can only hope that this means she is no longer trying to scam the system or has been permanently barred from riding the bus.