We're in the movies

Well Friday has arrived. This is the day where I have scheduled the team from TAC TV to come and shoot part two of our guide dog story series. I have to admit to being a bit anxious about the whole thing. I still am inexperienced at doing stories in the film format and having not worked with the Toronto team before there is a bit of mystery as to what that will be like.

""I began the day dressed casually so we could film me arriving at the school. Oh, this is a good time to return to the hair dryer story. I don’t think I gave an update on this topic. On Tuesday we were getting our pictures shot with our dogs so I wanted to look good. I borrowed Katjyia’s hair dryer. I brought it into the room and plugged it in in the washroom. Hey, it isn’t working. You can imagine the wheels Turning slowly in my head. “Hmm, maybe it wasn’t my hair dryer but the plug in.” What this reminded me of is that the plug in on the far wall where the computer is plugged into is turned off by a light switch by the door. But over the past couple of weeks I learned that this switch is down for on and up for off. Why you might ask? I have no bloody clue but figured it out when I thought I was charging my laptop and found the battery more drained than when I had plugged it in. so I tried both hair dryers in the plug in by the bed and surprise of all surprises, they both worked.! I feel better now. Of course, why it took me two weeks to think to ask any of the several teenage girls about borrowing a hair dryer one can only guess. 

I got a call from Stuart saying that they’d be arriving in about ten minutes. I decided to wait for them outside in the sunshine. When they arrived Stuart introduced me to Paula who dealt with the sound for him. John, from the Vancouver TAC office, had sent a list of shots that he wanted to have for the story. I talked with Stuart and said that we should get those shots but if there was anything else he saw that he thought would be good for the story to let me know and we could film it.

We began with the shots of me coming into the school dragging my suitcase behind me. Then I took them up to the room in case this is where we wanted to do our interview section. We decided to do it outside but we got some great shots of Bogart. I’d have him standing beside me and then Stuart would call him. After doing it twice Bogart totally got what he was supposed to do and would walk straight to the camera. The last time we did it I think Stuart had to deal with a Bogart nose print on the camera lens. With a name like Bogart it shouldn’t be a surprise that he is good on film.

I then had to join my class to do a group photo. I think we’ll have to do one more of these so Leah, who was sick today, could be in it as well.

Once that was done we decided to interview me while sitting on the bench in front of the building with Bogart at my side. This went well. I am wondering if we should have done more filming of me talking and if there are more things I should have talked about. I’m still new at this and have trouble straying from the offered scripts. Also, so much has happened in the past three weeks I can barely remember what would be interesting. Writing this blog will be a great help to recall what I actually did while being here.

The last thing to film in the morning was sidewalk obstacles. This is when the side walk is blocked for some reason and I would need to go out on the street. The school recommends getting the assistance of a sighted person if possible just like you would do when using a cane. If this is not possible then the dog is trained for this situation. The dog walks to the obstruction and then stops. We have to figure out what is going on so we don’t wrongly correct our dogs. Once we see it is something blocking the sidewalk then we tell our dogs “forward, find the way.” Once they head out on the road (after we’ve decided the traffic is safe) we immediately step back a bit from the dog and say over right, over right until the dog puts us back on the curb. When this happens we give our dogs lots of praise. Heading in the opposite direction we would say forward, find the way and then over left once the dog has gone onto the street. As we said over left we would step up on the dog.

We filmed this with Courtney and myself wearing microphones. I think it should make for some interesting shots.

After enjoying hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch I had Ian give Stuart and Paula a tour of the newly renovated kennels. To finish off the day of filming Ian and I headed out for a walk to the local grocery store while being filmed and wearing microphones. Ian was explaining to me that I need to constantly be communicating and motivating Bogart. He took me into the grocery store and got us going up escalators again. We walked around the store, showed me how to use the follow command and how to make sure Bogart doesn’t start sniffing up everything around him. We ran into Laura and Katjyia with the trainer Sunny at the store so walked back with them. Once back at the school, Ian sort of gave us a pep talk about how good we are doing. In a month, they are really trying to turn us into dog trainers. It is good that our dogs are having behavioral issues while still at school so we can use the trainers to help us through them. The skills we learn here will help us with our dogs once we get home


The last interesting thing of this very busy day was going for my first night walk. This is important since dogs see differently at night and so do I. I can’t see much of anything so have to totally trust the dog. We left at dusk for a 45 minute walk and it got darker as we went along. Bogart was pulling at first but soon, with prompting from me slowed to a nice comfortable walking pace for most of our walk. Very nice. At one point I was telling him to find the curb. I couldn’t feel a down ramp so I thought he hadn’t found it. I told him forward, which he did. This had me stepping off a big curb into the street. No worries, it was a quiet side street but I had to praise him and then turn him and get him back onto the curb, praising him again. He did great. At the second last turn before the school, I tested him by knowing that there was a light post right beside us when I asked for a left. He did it perfectly, taking me out and around the pole.

Tomorrow we are off to the mall in the morning which is good since it is supposed to rain