Day 16 of GDT

Today we took Odene on the journey to my St Albans office working in harness. As we had been cleared to work by the vets we were watchful of her limping but knowing that to harden her paw pads we should get her out and about. We saw a dog up in front and that seemed to make her forget about her poorly foot completely!

She remembered the route from when we last did it and went straight to the traffic light signal box when asked and the same for the bus stop. Here I experienced a truly silly question, 'How do Guide Dog's read the bus numbers?'. I'll start at the beginning, we arrived at the bus stop, yay lots of praise. We then took her to sit within the shelter but before quite managing to do this a fellow (who turned out to be the bus driver) tried to start making a fuss of her. This is where I had to be quite firm as Odene shouldn't react to people fussing her, unfortunately she turned towards him so I said 'no' and corrected her. Once ignoring the fellow I gave her lots of praise again, it's all about balancing the bad girl with the good girl you see. I thought my 'no' was enough to scare off the guy from speaking to me again but instead as soon as I sat Odene down he started coming towards us to give her a stroke again! Kelly acted as a human shield and was like 'seriously, you can't pet a working Guide Dog'. He still didn't really get it so Kelly started answering all his questions, to which he asked 'How do Guide Dog's read bus numbers?'. I was looking at him disbelievingly but he was adamant that they could. He had seen Guide Dogs either waiting at the bus stop, letting a bus go past if it wasn't the right one and other Guide Dogs trotting right up to the bus when it's the right one. Kelly explained rather tactfully that, no, Guide Dogs can't read numbers and that either the passenger with the Guide Dog has some remaining vision and can see the numbers, or another person waiting at the stop would have told them. I think the driver saw sense in the end and at least we came away knowing we had educated someone about Guide Dogs. I'm tempted if asked by someone again to just say 'I get her to read the timetable every night to practice'. Mike said that someone had actually said that to a reporter once and it got printed in the local newspaper... I don't really understand how anyone could've believed it but there you go!

It made me think though that it's a real shame that so many people aren't aware of what that do's and don't are with Guide Dogs and businesses aren't making more efforts in making employees aware of the Equality Act. I actually ended up writing to my local bus company late this afternoon to ask them about their views on the 'talking buses campaign' but also to ask if they gave all their drivers training on the Equality Act and what to do if a Guide Dog owner came aboard. We'll see if I get a response!

Once at work I took the harness off and got Odene settled again. Kelly and Mike left me for 15 minutes to see how she would be. I acted as I would normally in the office, got on the phone, checked some emails and opened filing cabinets. I didn't even get a lift of the head from her! Liz my St Albans work colleague was amazed at how well she behaved and to be honest so was I!

Mike returned for me as Kelly was fetching the car and I put the harness back on and we went back downstairs. Going outside towards the car I made my first boo boo of the day. I was saying 'find the car', which she did but then didn't stop at a curb. Kinda both our faults I guess but seeing as she had done so well we just let her get into the back of the car. Kelly and Mike brought me back home with news that I'd be doing it all again tomorrow but this time would be having a return journey by bus as well!

It's becoming real now, I'm not getting as many instructions from Kelly or Mike with them now just following behind me and only giving the occasional point to improve on.