I’m back to work today after having the Easter weekend off work.  I had planned some long walks with Sadie, completing one of them, when my unstable pelvis made its presence felt once again.  Sadie shone on the new route we walked on the Friday, even although most of it was new to her and its been around two years since I walked the route so was a little unsure of part of it and residents and visitors alike to our town were out in their droves making sections very busy.  Saturday became a rest day courtesy of said pelvis with a family visit on the Sunday and a short bus trip to access another new route for Sadie on Monday, again which she shone on….I love to see how she takes in new environments and makes sense of them.

Today we set off at lunchtime to negotiate the path works that are still on going on the route to Waitrose, although they have moved further along the route.  I’ve had the privilege of having guide dogs for around 4 years and it still amazes me how they make sense of the temporary fencing put up to protect pedestrians and how they negotiate moving off the pavement and back on again so fluidly all the while keeping us safe.  Another one of a guide dog’s core skills is traffic awareness and knowing when to either ignore an owner’s command to cross the road if they detect a moving vehicle too close which could cause harm or to react appropriately when a previously clear crossing becomes unsafe because a vehicle unexpectedly moves on to the road.  Because of the way part of the temporary path has been set up, there was no indication of us having come to the end of the what would have been pavement and reaching a kerb point.  Had I not known where we were on the route, and asked Sadie to wait, we would potentially have walked straight into the path of oncoming traffic.  Had I not known to ask Sadie to wait so I could check for traffic, I would have been entirely reliant on her ability to make appropriate decisions to keep me safe around traffic.  It did make me grateful for having a guide dog by my side as a long guide cane can never replicate the safety Sadie affords me.

While making decisions and problem solving are core skills for a guide dog, I did smile at Sadie’s use of her ability to do so to avoid the wobbly temporary ramp from the roadside back up onto the path on our return trip to my workplace as she really does have a dislike of wobbly surfaces.  She choose to take me to the smaller, but wide enough, step back up on to the pavement rather than use the temporary ramp on her left side, pausing briefly with her front paws on the pavement edge to indicate to me that I needed to step up.  I’m not sure that my trainer would have said it was acceptable guiding from Sadie but for me it was one of the occasions when I need to decide what is acceptable behaviour from Sadie and on this occasion she kept me safe and alerted to a step appropriately so for me her decision making and problem solving skills were put to good use.  Its also another indication that Sadie and I are well matched and are becoming an ever more successful working partnership….I allow her to slightly bend the rules but trust her all the same to keep me safe.