Last Updated on: 27th September 2013, 05:45 am
Here’s another one for the Joe Public is a total dumbass when it comes to guide dogs files. Yesterday, I was having a particularly difficult day walking. I don’t know why. Maybe it was too hot. Anyway, at one point, I stopped and pulled over to the grass to let Trixie have a wizz, because I thought maybe she needed one. She was peeing, and everything was good and a lady came by. “Excuse me, your dog is going all over the place. What seems to be the matter?” she says. I explain to her that I stopped to let her have a wizz. She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then says, “Oh! Could the problem be that she has her harness thing off?”
I will let that blank line serve as the 10-second pause that I took while I attempted to process what she had just said. Did she think I didn’t know the harness was off? It was on my friggin shoulder! Did she think my dog had put it there and I somehow didn’t notice? Or, did she even bother to listen to what I had just said? Did she think that maybe guide dogs don’t have to pee too? What the hell did the words she just said truly signify?
Seldom do I actually snap at folks who say completely stupid things to me. Usually they realize the stupidity of what they just said, or when I explain things in a civil manner, they come to realize it. But that case was so tempting to snap. I looked at her and said, “I took the harness off, so she could pee, like I just said. She’s going all over the place because she’s looking for some grass to pee in.”
She didn’t want to make me snap nearly as much as another woman yesterday who asked me repeatedly if my dog had figured out signals yet. I don’t mind getting that question asked once, but when I answer it, and get it asked again, I get a little testy. Why should I bother to speak if noone listens?
Ug. Some people just drive me bonkers. They just yell stuff, they don’t look around at stuff that’s right there, like street signs. If I’m trying to cross a street and I’m at the intersection of that street and a big main one, 9 times out of 10, the people I encounter don’t know what I’m talking about. Please, please, use the senses you have.
And why is it that some family members are the ones who least understand what a guide dog is for? They know what your cane is for, or at least they should, but when you go to bring the dog with you somewhere, like in their car or in a restaurant, they freeze and go “Oh, you’re going to bring the dog too?” Well yeah, sparticus, I did get the dog for mobility purposes, not just to have around to be cute.
Grrr. Why is this stuff bugging me so much today? Oh well, hopefully it makes someone else laugh, or think, or something.
