ABC27 News: Guide dog handler talks about experience
Guide dog handlers share tips
ABC 27 talks to VisionCorps employees about the importance of dog guides, and the do’s and don’ts of interacting with any service animal.
LANCASTER, Pa. (WHTM) – Martha Hoover was born with very little vision. A bike accident when she was 23 damaged her sight even more. She was fully blind by 30.
“I had lost everything,” Hoover said. “Then I was in a dark world.”
She learned how to use a white cane, but having a guide dog is what she truly wanted.
“It feels so good to have this fuzzy four-legged companion right next to me,” Hoover said. “It is great walking with him. I don’t feel so alone.”
Now, Martha has Higgins. He’s a yellow golden retriever trained in New Jersey. Those walks aren’t always easy for folks using a guide dog with other people trying to get a pet in.
“It’s like a piece of medical equipment,” Jennifer Eaton, the orientation and mobility specialist for VisionCorps, said. “We don’t go up and touch the back of somebody’s wheelchair. We don’t go up and pet a pair of crutches. I know they’re furry. I know they’re adorable, but we have to remember to keep hands in pockets and eyes focused somewhere else and not on the dog.”
“It’s very frustrating,” Hoover said. “People do not realize they should not be doing anything with these dogs.”
A dog in a harness is working. When you see a guide dog and its handler moving together don’t try to grab or direct the handler.
“If that harness is on and that handler is not giving you the okay, we need you to remember eyes and hands off,” Eaton said.
If you are talking to the handler and find out the dog’s name – don’t make eye contact with the dog and say its name when it’s working. That can distract the dog.
“It is like me taking control of your vehicle,” Hoover said. “That is how it is when you talk or you pet a service animal.”
Hoover has worked at VisionCorps for almost 24 years. Other guide dogs assisting workers at the company include Rebel from Florida and Yoshi from Michigan.
For Hoover, having Higgins and other guide dogs in the past have filled a void.
“My dogs have given me back my life but in a different way,” Hoover said.
For tips on how to interact with guide dogs and their handlers, see below.
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