What did he have to know, that first guide dog trainer? He had to know a thing or two about the blind, not just dogs. He had to know blindness is like an ocean span. When it comes suddenly it’s the division between a man and his country, a woman and her nation. He had to know that it steals books, maps, stairways, street signs, faces. Had to know that blindness is made up of a thousand worries, hundreds of misapprehensions. That it splits a person into subjective parts–there’s no longer any illusion that you’re master of the street–you’re a drifting boat, almost helpless but not quite. He had to know exactly how the blind use language–that nouns matter more when you can’t see. That nouns are images, that they blossom inside your head. Oh and he had to know that unclouded time is the reality when you can’t see anymore, that time is harder and that it’s a field of study that requires mastery. Yes it takes longer to get places when you walk.
Yes he had to know about cars and horses and new patterns of post world war traffic. Streets were like the wild west–no right of way laws were enforced and in any case, laws were local and obscure. Even sighted people could die when crossing roads. By the end of the first world war pedestrian life was forever changed by the inventions of Mr. Daimler, Mr. Benz and Henry Ford. Imagine the loss and absence of the world that blindness represents to sighted people. The first guide dog trainer had to look beyond the complications caused by motor cars and the abstract fear of blindness that so often suffuses the public’s view of vision loss. The first guide dog trainer had to believe that blind people belong in public, that they needed to go places, that their disability was not insurmountable. He had to believe in mobility, conjecture and memory. Had to believe that blind people still knew the world and could solve problems. This is where the guide dog begins. A guide dog is not an accommodation for walking–it is a team mate borne of consciousness and instict, the dog is a co-investigator and problem solver. He had to see that. And he had to know that because he’d walked in other fields, assisted by the glow and love of a dog. He had to know this because it was the legacy of his own boyhood.
Planet of the Blind 