I was at an event this weekend where a group of blind/VI people went
out to
stay on a sort of outdoor/game farm a bit out of town.
We stayed in dormitory bungalows with around 6 people in the one I was
in,
with my dog, Inzi's, bed next to mine, and I did bench/chain him there
at night, and
occasionally during activities it wouldn't have been good for him to be
present during.
Anyway, while it was a brand new environment for both of us, and one that
didn't necessarily have real paths to follow from one building to another
all the time, he was generally leading me in/to groups of us, and he
seemed
mostly alright in terms of guessing where I actually wanted to go, and
getting me there alright most of the time.
There were though one or two times when, for example, after a longer
outdoor
walk along some paths in a sort of stretched out group of people, when we
got back to the cabin area, he literally walked past my cabin, and all
the
way around the area at least once before someone else helped me to
correct
him, but I suppose he was just a bit too distracted by a brand new, open
environment, and he wanted to go looking around, since, for example,
quite a
bit of the time, we just let our guide dogs run around and play with each
other in the large grassy area, and this also included playing with
one or
two other smallish domestic dogs that live around there normally, and
they
seemed very happy.
This was generally with around 5 other guide dogs there, FWIW.
Lastly, this was an event by a group called higher ground:
http://higherground.org.za/
and there was also an american woman called Jackie there who's apparently
linked to a similar group in the USA, and I'll just say that apart from
community activities like singing campfire songs, playing trivia and song
lyric competitions against each other, they also let us try out a
bunch of
different activities with sighted volunteer companions helping us out,
like
a bit of rock climbing, archery, paintball, as well as bringing us
some real
fully grown horses to pet etc.
Was all in all a very nice outing/weekend - thanks Kerneels!
Stay well
Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
'...fate had broken his body, but not his spirit...'
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