The guide dog schools in America (there are approximately a dozen) are nonprofit organizations and they advertise “independence” for the blind as we love that word in the US. Appeals to potential donors usually include a phrase about giving independent lives to blind people. I understand why they do this. But I often wish they’d advertise “culture”–something like, “we give blind and visually impaired people a culture of safe travel and support” or maybe just “Welcome to Dog-ville!”
I think if I had tons of dough I’d start a new service dog school with just that name. There’d be no divide between dogs and disabilities–we’d have veterans getting dogs to assist with PTSD; children and adults with autism; people with spinal cord injuries; deaf folks–all together with the blind. I’m a dog and disability utopian. I also think separating people with disabilities into medicalized “camps” is problematic. If you think about it in “service dog terms” this Balkanization means people with dogs trained to help with PTSD are often at a disadvantage when they try entering a hostile shop or restaurant with their dogs–they don’t “look” disabled. In turn they don’t always know how to be tough minded advocates for themselves. The blind are good at this. The blind have a history.
**
It’s early and I’m at O’Hare in Chicago, catching a flight to New York. My dog is by my side.
“Oh, it’s a service dog,” says the ticket woman, clearly flustered, even a wee bit panicked. It’s possible she’s never seen a working dog. Political correctness and unfamiliarity are colliding in her head. She doesn’t know what to do.
Before I can say anything the woman disappears. Poof! Its like old Scandinavian magic–someone put a spell on her and she’s vanished to the underworld. We have the power to make people go away. Right now she’s in the back room asking a supervisor what to do. “Do we have to take the dog away from the man?” “Do we charge extra for a service dog?” “Does the dog get crated like cargo?” “Does it get a seat in the cabin?” “Can the man sit anywhere or does he get a special seat?” I know all the questions being asked behind the curtain.
**
The creature beside me is known in English as a “guide dog” and sometimes she’s called a “Seeing-Eye” dog since the first school in the United States to train dogs for the blind is “The Seeing-Eye” in New Jersey. But the technical name is guide dog.
What does a guide dog do?
Why is the appearance of a guide in public still so surprising?
**
When the woman comes back she’s all smiles. Her supervisor has assured her guide dogs fly on airplanes, that they lie at the feet of their human partners, and that no extra charge will be applied for the dog. Perhaps the supervisor also said it’s nice if you give the guide dog team a bulkhead seat–though this isn’t required. The only thing the law says is that people with disabilities cannot sit in an exit row.
One thing’s for sure: guide dogs are still relatively unfamiliar to the public, even 80 years after their introduction in the United States. People know they exist, but they don’t know what these dogs and their partners can do.
**
Guides were the first service animals, and for more than forty years they were the only ones. They offered a success story, one with real answers for their blind partners. Now, the training of dogs to assist people with other kinds of disabilities is common. Service dogs and animals are, in the strictest sense, animals trained specifically to help those with disabilities manage one or more functions of life that are otherwise impossible.
In fact, that’s what disability is–a function disjunction, no more, no less. Forget the myths about disablement, the old fashioned idea that physical or mental impairments are symbolic, representing deeper deficiencies–disability is nothing more than an obstacle or series of obstacles. The Americans with Disabilities Act makes it clear that the definition is centered on the elements of life function: “The term “disability” means, with respect to an individual (A) a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual; (B) a record of such an impairment; or (C) being regarded as having such an impairment.”
Under the ADA major life activities include, “but are not limited to, caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working.”
Major bodily functions also means: “functions of the immune system, normal cell growth, digestive, bowel, bladder, neurological, brain, respiratory, circulatory, endocrine, and reproductive functions.”
The range of disability is broad, not because bureaucrats have expansive imaginations but because the ways of having a disability are almost uncountable. In turn, when thinking of service animals, I’m reminded of a slogan from our current digital age: “there’s a dog for that”. (Of course there are other kinds of service animals–monkeys, and miniature horses most notably.)
Just as the public has trouble absorbing the scope and variety of disability, it also has difficulty understanding what a service animal is.
Nowadays dogs are trained to help wheelchair users who are both paraplegic and quadriplegic–picking up objects, opening cupboards, handing money to cashiers, helping to balance their owners, just to name a few of their capacities. Dogs can be trained to detect the onset of seizures or help hearing impaired people detect audible signals. Some dogs help their diabetic owners by detecting changes in their blood sugar. And all of these skills reflect the amazing capacities of dogs and the pioneering vision of the guide dog movement.
But what exactly is a service animal? The most important thing for the public to understand is that it is not a pet. According to a pamphlet from the New York State Attorney General’s Office: “the ADA defines a service animal as any guide dog, signal dog, or other animal individually trained to provide assistance to an individual with a disability. If they meet this definition, animals are considered service animals under the ADA regardless of whether they have been licensed or certified by a state or local government.”
A service animal doesn’t have to have a license. Nor does its owner have to carry official papers certifying the animal’s authenticity. The simplest way to tell if an animal is a working animal is by its professionalism.
In fact it’s the professionalism of a guide dog that really matters–not simply in traffic or in crowds, but in businesses or classrooms.
**
I think of all the guide dogs in all the airports, for whom the world’s suitcases are thrilling. The man with a Green Bay Packers jersey holds a duffle, and hidden among his socks is a German sausage, smuggled all the way from Wiesbaden. And the tall woman with the “Gibson Girl” hat, who owns a vintage clothing store in upstate, New York, has a sachet of lavender in her tiny handbag. There are too many smells! The baby with ears moistened by kisses! The nourishing smell of shoes!
I’m standing in a line of air travelers and my dog knows everything. The security man smells like fragments of a meteor; the backpack on the conveyer says its owner just slept with a perfect stranger. My dog may, or may not know I can’t see, but she surely understands the wonders around us.
Dog-ville is a complicated and enthralling place.
Planet of the Blind 