Stairs-Up, Stairs-Down

Bingo gets some daily practice with Stairs-Up and Stairs-Down. When he was younger and fearless and believed he could fly, we would carry him up and down the stairs, and that suited him just fine. He would hold out his paw (with this dainty, helpless look on his face) to make it easier for me to pick him up. Soon (I reasoned) he would be ready to learn, but in the meantime the paw thing was pretty cute.

Then one day I saw him and Cheryl walking downstairs as if it were the most normal thing in the world. She laughed and said they had been doing it for several days--while he still was holding out his paw to me. Sneaky.

Chuck, one of our SEGD coordinators, said recently that guide dogs must be able to distinguish between Stairs-Up and Stairs-Down. If, for example, a blind person is approaching a down set of stairs but mistakenly says Stairs-Up, the guide dog should disobey and actually move in front to stop the person from continuing. Wow. But that type of training starts when Bingo goes to school at SEGD--Cheryl and I just work on the basics, to expose him to situations he will encounter in his career.

He still thinks he can fly, though, so we keep a close watch.