HERE IT IS BLOGGETS

So my Husband has employed a person to work for Guide dogs that I am sure will be rather controversial. I asked you a couple of days ago if you could guess her job title? Let me tell you firstly, she is blind. One of my friends and a faithful Blogget guessed

“A driver!”

I told her she was close, as one, drive she certainly has and two, she will be driving us, blind people. Not necessarily behind a wheel, but driving us to be motivated. Now then, when my Hub told me of this ladies job title, I was shocked. Wondered about the safety aspect and wondered more so, how on earth she would do this job?

After he explained that he has spoken to her at great lengths and been out with her to watch her at work, he is confident she is perfect, also she has had so many recommendations from blind people saying she is perfect for the job.

So what is it?

A mobility instructor.

Yep, you read it right. So she will go out with people to train them new routes to the shops, offices other places of work, hairdressers, Doctors, wherever we want to go.

Now those who have been out with guide dog staff before will know that the “Sighted” trainer, will drive around the route where we want to go firstly, then park the car, then walk it to try to find the safest and best way to teach us, sometimes when we are out with the trainer, they will ask us to stop, as on route, they may have come across a new problem, like the council will decide to dig up the road/path that day, so we need to learn a new way?

So how can this lady drive around?

Answer, she has a driver. She asks the driver to answer yes or no. She asks questions like is there a lamp post, is there a fence, are there any tactile paving stones or traffic lights?

Are there any trees or if there are steps onto the road, is there a part of the path that is more flat? Perhaps off the corner more? Away from turning traffic.

Then her brilliant photographic memory will remember what she has been told and get out of the car and walk the route. My Husband was shocked how much this lady could remember and the people who sent in their recommendations, said because she is like us, she understands us more than sighted people.

She knows how we listen, how we hear in what way. She knows more than what a sighted person will know, just as we don’t understand what it must be like to describe the colours of the rainbow or what new born calf’s look like if we have never seen them before.

She will be us in a different body, a calmer body and one with amazing confidence and mapping abilities in her mind.

My Hub said that there are so many factors to show she is absolutely perfect for the job but he didn’t go into it and I didn’t want to know, as long as he and others think she is OK and will work for us in her best interests and her reasoning for her applying for this position, is genuine and I believe she is, as she has worked doing this job for some years for another organisation. She just has a brilliant memory. She will calmly reason with us and has an open mind and is willing to listen to us she is not at all obnoxious or pig headed and for sure not and know it all.

So let’s see how she does? But if she will be beneficial for us, good on Hub for giving a blind person a chance to say

“You know what? I may be blind, but I can do this with bells on!”

OK, she may wear bells so we can hear her, haha. Though I’m sure there is no need for this. There are so many questions I have as a blind person and I’m not too sure I would feel confident as I walk a head and she is behind me instructing. I mean, my first question was what if I step out onto a road as I may have forgotten the path ends and the road starts?

Hub answered by saying one, her driver walks with her. Says nothing unless there is some danger, but in the trial walks Hub and his staff have done with her, no one needed to ever say a word. She listens and she does the walk/route over and over again so she knows it perfectly before letting us lose, also, she won’t be with us forever to hold our hands, we have to do it on our own she is there to teach us a new route and good on her. My friend Jo is blind and I remember she told a mutual friend of ours the way to her house or somewhere like that over the phone. My friend is also blind and he said she told him to listen and feel for things he never knew were even there when he did the route with a sighted friend. This time on his own, he got there without any difficulties and in fact, said it was the best instructions he has ever received.

So that is the answer, a mobility instructor. This blind lady/new employee, is what I call a super blind. The thing she has done is amazing. I won’t bore you with detail, but when I heard what her latest adventure was, I was left without words.

Don’t worry Bloggets, not for long….

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