The first guide dog trainers devised a rolling cart which they dubbed the “artificial man”. They attached it to dogs in training and, given its essential dimensions, the cart was believed equal to the height of a man and to the width of a man and dog. Pulling these rolling machines, dogs would learn what “not” to do–not to try and pass through spaces too narrow for a team, not to walk beneath a low hanging branch, never to navigate the edge of a ditch.
I picture the dogs, mostly German Shepherds, and their trainers, German officers fresh from the trenches–a terrible earnestness to their shared activities, and that strange machine like some remnant from the Ardennes.
From What a Dog Can Do: A Memoir of Life with Guide Dogs
Stephen Kuusisto
Forthcoming from Simon and Schuster, 2014
Planet of the Blind 