At the beginning of this year, I completed the final part of the assessment in my application to get a guide dog and I am now on the waiting list. I had many reasons for applying, but primarily I had a professional motivation for deciding that a dog was right for me. It's to help me getting to work, day after day..
My mother had a guide dog called Deva in the 1980's, a beautiful golden labrador. This was my main inspiration for signing up for a dog - just how much of a difference it had made to my mum. Deva enabled her to live on her own, meet my father, get married and Deva was even a bridesmaid!
I think about where I work at the moment and how much easier the walk along a main road, through a park and up the huge hill would be with company, particularly during those dark winter nights. Travelling on public transport on your own can be daunting for any young woman but knowing I'll have a dog with me to guide me will make such a difference when I'm deciding whether or not I can face a train journey to work for example. At present I only work part time, and the main barrier to working full time is difficulty travelling home during the winter.
On a lighter notes lots of my friends have said to me that the dog better be a girl or otherwise a very fashionable male, a gay best friend like Carrie's Stanford in Sex and the City, to enable me to still go clothes shopping all the time.
Another incentive for me is the sociable nature of a dog. I am the friendly sort, talking to whoever will talk to me and the guide cane just isn't working for me anymore. I find it pushes people away, and I want to talk to people.
My final reason is that there seems to be a growing trend for people to keep jumping over my cane, which is ever so inconvenient, but it'd be a very brave person who'd jump over a dog!
If you have a dog or are thinking about it, I'd love to know your thoughts about what made you make the decision between a cane and a dog, or even why you decided a dog was not for you.
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