Okay, I will bring forward what I have on blind dogs so we can build
a list of special needs situations and save to the files for future
usse. Below, please find the information we collected when we
discussed blind dogs some time ago.
Thanks to Deanna, Sandy & Judith for your contributions!
Anything anyone might be able to add will help to build a bridge to
more people and their dogs. Thanks in advance to this generous list
for their contributions! LJC
New Challenge: Blind Dogs and Freestyle deannaklingel
Sandy, I dance with a blind dog. Jessie is 12, a small golden, she
is blind in one eye and partial sighted in the other. She has
limited hip and spine mobility, hearing loss, and she came with a lot
of anxiety from her former life. And she loves to dance! Jessie and
I do not ever have an actual routine planned. We have music that
we've danced to a lot and have kind of gotten into the rythm of it,
but a routine isn't practical for Jessie. We just piece her moves
together; it just kind of unfolds. She has several moves that she
can do. But there are many that she can't do. Jessie can never walk
backwards, for instance. Her hips don't go in any other direction
than forward. So she doesn't dance backwards, I do. She can't do
any leg lifts because she has to keep four on the floor or she will
tip over. So we highlight her pretty smile instead. She can't be on
my left side, as in heeling, because she can't see me; that is her
blindest side. She heels on my right. She can't look up at me when
she is moving, so we stay pretty close. So there are a lot of
challenges. But you will learn how to make things work for your
dog. What has worked for Jessie is that most of what she does beside
me is done on my right side, where she can see me better. She faces
me a lot. Many of her "flashier" moves are always done in the same
sequence. For instance, if I ask her to go visit, as in go around a
prop, she will always end that move by coming to me and going through
my legs which will set us up for the next move. I'll decide what that
is to be when I see where she is and how she is moving. For Jessie,
Go Visit, means go around whatever is there and then go through mom;
it gives her a target. (Not a target in the training sense.) She
counts on it. I use a lot of props with Jessie because 1800 square
feet of nothingness is overwhelming to her. I suppose if I were
dropped down in the middle of a desert and could not see anything
around me but space, it would be as frightening. She needs to be
able to see something, or sense it, that she can move to. So we use
props, and me. If I skip backwards clapping my hands, she will
follow me in front position. She can weave well, but we usually do
this as a figure 8 so she can focus on my two legs standing still.
She trusts that they will be there and will fly through over and over
until I stop her. To do a walking weave, I need to go slower and I
snap my fingers where I want her to go. She can do it. Sometimes
she bumps into me, especially if I didn't time my leg move with the
figure click. Always handler error, right? It was my leg that was in
the wrong place, not Jessie's head. Jessie can spin, and she can do
it in almost any location around me. We don't worry about the
technicalities of ending it where it began or making it complete or
doing it counter or clock wise. They aren't beautiful or graceful,
they are Jessie's. When I ask her to spin she will do a spin to the
best of her ability, with great enthusiasm. Sometimes that means
that she will crash into the kitchen cupboard, or run over my foot.
But her tail is wagging wildly and proudly as she collapses and she
anticipates a treat as if she'd just gotten first place. What I have
to be careful about is where my hands are. If I forget or try to
help her too much by giving hand signals and she happens to glimpse
the movement, she freezes and studies and is ever so confused, "What
was that? I saw something. Where are you, what are you doing? Are you
there?" It's almost a panic with her, so my hands need to be always
beside me. If it is to be a hand signal it has to be very clean and
directly in her vision line. You will learn where your boy's vision
line is. It seems to me that glimpses in the peripheral are startling
to Jessie. Enjoy dancing with your dog and don't have any
expectations. Just do it. And don't worry. Let him show you what he
can do and then you will figure out where you need to be to help
him. No expectations. No worry. Some days are better than others.
But they are all good. That's not unique for handi dandi's! Jessie
responds well to the clicker and I often use finger clicks. She is
prone to ear infections and has some hearing loss and I think she
hears the sharp click close to her ear better than she hears my
voice from above her. When we are moving she seems to take comfort
in hearing my fingers next to her. You will figure out what works
with your dog. If you are coming on Sunday I can have Dave bring
Jessie over and we can show you our little Bag Lady "routine." Good
luck. Don't obsess over what his limitations are. He doesn't feel
as limited as you do. Celebrate what he can do. Dogs don't have very
high expectations. He'll be fine. Have fun learning the new language
together. Deanna.
I lived with a completely blind Chesapeake for many years and it is
truly astounding how adaptable they are. Once she adapted to her
other senses and learned a level of trust with me, most people were
unable to tell she was blind. We kept her active with the things she
had always loved to do and, while there was a bit of adaptation on my
part, there was not as much as one might expect.
With my freestyle cap on, I will note that it was easier for her to
retrieve or catch a ball if it had a bell inside, though she
retrieved sticks from the lake simply by listening to where they
landed. I imagine small bells sewn into the handler's costume,
perhaps a different size on each side so they didn't sound alike,
could be helpful in aiding the dog to learn to work easily on both
sides of the handler as well as functioning as an aid to locate the
handler if you wanted to do any distance work. A style of music that
lent itself to some stomping by the handler could also be a subtle
cue to the dog for handler location. Our Chessie would also gallop
across the yard for a cookie that may have been dropped by my
daughter so I imagine you could consider using different scents on
different sides of the handler in addition to scenting distance
locations.
I would think you might also want to have a collection of verbal
directional cues in addition to those for common freestyle moves,
similar to what you see in agility when the handler has some physical
limitations and needs to direct the dog from a distance. The beauty
of freestyle as a sport with the blind dog is certainly the ability
to talk to the dog. I would be interested to learn if the volume of
the music limited the hearing capabilities of a blind dog. Our
experience was that the remaining senses became much more heightened
when she lost her sight. I wish I had known about freestyle when we
had my Chessie, it would have been fun and easily successful for us
both.
Deanna, your post about Jessie tripped my memory from a Kay Lawrence
seminar I went to several years ago. She was commenting on the
effectiveness of different cues and said that her Gordons were more
accurate if the cues were scents than the Border Collies were with
verbal ones. It occurs to me that maybe if one wanted to have the
dog work a little farther away and it couldn't SEE the target props,
that maybe they could be scented with different scents... orange,
clove, cat litter... <g> I'll be it would work! JudyS
Yes, Judith, I did think about the scenting thing. I tried to scent
a little fire hydrant with peanut butter. Oh yeah, she found it just
fine. And stopped and licked and licked! So, no, we don't do that
anymore. But the whole point with her using the props is to have
them close enough that she CAN see them. Her panic occurs when she
can't see anything in the big space. Putting it so far away that she
couldn't see it would totally defeat the purpose for this dog who is
partial sighted.( The purpose is to put something in that space.)
For a totally blind dog, the distance wouldn't matter since he isn't
going to see it anyway. In that case, scenting would work but it
wouldn't have to be anything other than the handler handling it; the
dog would know it was there and would gravitate to that scent. For a
partially sighted dog who is still in the habit of relying on that
sense, it is important to have something where they can see it to
give them a positioning base. Dogs, like people, who have partial use
of any sense, will use that sense to whatever degree they can. It's
only when that sense is totally gone that they (we) will stop relying
on it.
Yes, Judith, I did think about the scenting thing. I tried to scent
a little fire hydrant with peanut butter. Oh yeah, she found it just
fine. And stopped and licked and licked! So, no, we don't do that
anymore. But the whole point with her using the props is to have
them close enough that she CAN see them. Her panic occurs when she
can't see anything in the big space. Putting it so far away that she
couldn't see it would totally defeat the purpose for this dog who is
partial sighted.( The purpose is to put something in that space.)
For a totally blind dog, the distance wouldn't matter since he isn't
going to see it anyway. In that case, scenting would work but it
wouldn't have to be anything other than the handler handling it; the
dog would know it was there and would gravitate to that scent. For a
partially sighted dog who is still in the habit of relying on that
sense, it is important to have something where they can see it to
give them a positioning base. Dogs, like people, who have partial use
of any sense, will use that sense to whatever degree they can. It's
only when that sense is totally gone that they (we) will stop relying
on it.
"Loren Jensen Carter" <lorenjc2004@
you care to share in this regard? Michele? Nan?
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