# How useful is a seeing eye dog? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 5, 2013, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086 "2013-03-05T13:52:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/41 "2013-03-07T21:31:48Z")
> [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](#): > > Reminds me of a comment in Cecil’s column about [Why Is There Braille on Drive-Up Teller Machines](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/946/why-is-there-braille-on-drive-up-teller-machines): You can’t expect the dog to drive _and_ work the ATM. Or the old joke about the blind man at Macy’s who was holding a dog by the tail and spinning it around over his head. A horrified clerk asked what he was doing, and the blind man said, “Oh, just looking around.” ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/42 "2013-03-08T03:16:57Z")
Of the two blind students I knew who had dogs, one of the dogs was a yellow lab – a really fantastic animal and a good relationship between dog and owner. But the other one was this poor German shepherd that seemed to be mistreated. Apparently not intentionally, just out of ignorance. He was always scrawny and stank to high heaven. (The dog, although the owner was a bit scrawny himself.) Still did his job though, and the owner got defensive anytime someone complained about the smell. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/43 "2013-03-08T08:27:06Z")
I had a prof in college who had two service dogs, one older than the other. She said the older dog had kind of become a family pet over the years and the new dog was now the working dogs most days. ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/44 "2013-03-08T16:44:58Z")
Well, they’re certainly not much help if you need to look at twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/45 "2013-03-08T18:23:30Z")
A blind juror is a character in John Grisham’s _Runaway Jury_, IIRC. I’m personally very leery of having blind or deaf jurors - so much of a juror’s job is evaluating witness credibility, and being unable to see or hear the witness means you’re missing out on a lot. I suppose there could be cases where it’s not an issue, but those would be pretty rare in my experience. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/46 "2013-03-08T20:06:54Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > We had a patient whose seeing-eye dog started developing cataracts… So, the seeing eye dog went blind? :dubious: 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/47 "2013-03-08T20:42:41Z")
I know, right? Well, not quite legally blind by human standards, I suspect, but was certainly visually impaired. So she got to retire to the life of a hanging-around-home pet. Note that you can get cataract surgery for dogs, but I suspect that since cataracts were a symptom of the dog’s progressing age, it was in both of their best interests to just let her retire. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/48 "2013-03-08T22:41:14Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > …Also, I have no idea how you train a dog to disobey. It doesn’t seem possible. Oh I wasn’t expressing doubt that people can and do train dogs to do this. But still amazed at both trainer and dog when it’s done. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/49 "2013-03-09T07:29:05Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > We had a patient whose seeing-eye dog started developing cataracts, so he let her “retire” to a life as his pet and got a new seeing-eye dog. He said he was initially worried that his first guide dog would be jealous, but when he took both of them out together initially, his first dog apparently knew exactly what was going on and wanted no part in the actual guiding any longer; she let the newbie deal with that and enjoyed just trotting alongside her master for once. When I saw this post yesterday, I restrained myself from making the obvious but silly suggestion that the new guide dog could be a guide dog for the older blind dog. But Lo! today, I stumbled upon this: [Big blind dog and little seeing-eye dog are adorable BFFs](http://now.msn.com/blind-dog-friends-with-terrier-helps-him-to-walk-and-see)! ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/50 "2013-03-09T13:21:42Z")
That’s adorable! Who knows, maybe they did that at home. 🙂 I didn’t have the chance to work with this patient too often after “the changing of the guard” so perhaps the new dog did help the older one. I know it’d be tough for both of the dogs to be formally “on the job” at the same time due to space limitations, obviously. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086/51 "2013-03-09T16:54:13Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Also, I have no idea how you train a dog to disobey. It doesn’t seem possible. I think the key is that all of the dog’s behavior is training. A dog doesn’t have an instinct to obey a command like “walk down the street” or an instinct to avoid walking down the street if there’s a ball on the sidewalk - they’re both learned behaviors. So you’d have to train the dog that avoiding an obstacle is a more important behavior than obeying a verbal command. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-useful-is-a-seeing-eye-dog/652086.md?page=2)