Day 9: Working My Dog to Work

Today, I got a preview of what it’s going to be like to take my guide dog to work. 

Angie, our instructor, took another student and me to Berkeley to work our dogs.  We took turns chillin’ while the other student worked.  I drank iced tea and listened to a novel at Starbucks while the other student worked. 

When it was my turn, we rode BART from Berkeley to Oakland’s Lake Merritt station.  I got to use the escalator instruction I received the other day.  I learned how to take Chase through both the narrow fare gates and the wide gates for the disabled and bicycles.  I learned how to heel Chase down the stairs.

He was stressed on the first BART ride of the day.  I petted him a lot and fed him lots of treats.  But I think he was reading my anxiety.  And that continued when we walked from Lake Merritt station down Oak Street to KTVU.   I think it had to do with me walking the same route I’ve followed for 27 years without a guide dog.  I rushed Chase and it was hard for him to do his job.  Angie got me to slow down, and that made things a lot better.

At KTVU, we didn’t go in the building.  It probably would have been too much for the dog his first time there.  So instead we worked in the parking lot, patterning the safest way to go from the walk-in gate to the building. 

Chase did much better on the ride back to Berkeley, and on the round trip in the afternoon.  He was pretty mellow as he lay between my feet with his butt under the seat.  He also did a great job on the afternoon walks to and from KTVU. 

In the morning, I corrected him when he walked me too close to a four by four wooden upright on some scaffolding against a building on Oak between Third and Fourth.  So in the afternoon, he stopped at every four by four upright in that block to show it to me and make sure I was safe. 

When we returned to Berkeley in the afternoon, he lived up to his nickname, “High Speed Chase”.  We walked up Center Street to Oxford, and then on Oxford.  The more crowded the sidewalk, the more Chase seemed to enjoy the challenge of navigating around the people and sidewalk tables.  He cruised along, and when someone was going too slowly in front of us, he appeared to look for the passing lane on the left.  He would slow down when the passage narrowed because of trees or bikes or tables. Then he would speed up again when he had chance.  It was really fun walking with him on a street like that.  I could never navigate that sort of situation so fast using my white cane.