Guide Dogs Australia calls for better ‘petiquette’

AMONG the celebrations during last week’s International Guide Dog Day on Wednesday, 28 April was an important lesson for pet dog owners.

Regional team leader for Guide Dogs Victoria in Bendigo Justin Marshall said the organisation is calling on lockdown puppy owners to familiarise themselves and their pups with proper ‘petiquette’.

“Petiquette is basically etiquette for your dog and what you need to do when you see a guide dog coming,” he said. “It is building on not distracting the [guide] dog.

“If you see a guide dog user coming towards you make sure you put your dog on a short lead [and] move off the footpath to let them go by.

“It’s just basic manners, that’s what we’re after,” Mr Marshall said.

Distractions like these happen “all the time” to 27-year-old Mel Stephens, who makes up part of the 40 percent of handlers who have experienced an increase in such situations while out with their guide dogs in the last year, as reported by Guide Dogs Victoria.

While Ms Stephens, her mother and her previous guide dog were lost at a train station, the family were approached by a member of the public who tried taking charge of the situation.

“We were travelling through Southern Cross Station in Melbourne one time and we were getting lost and someone actually came up to my mum and said ‘I’ll show you which way to go’ and grabbed her dog’s harness and tried to pull her by the dog,” she said.

“That happens all the time, people come up to you and start patting your dog. I used to work in the city and I’d be sitting on a train and I’d put my hand down to pat my dog myself and there’d be all these hands already on the dog.

“I’m very to the point and I think it’s important to make people understand that these are working dogs, these are not cute Labradors.

“It takes six months to train them and six weeks to ruin them, so I want people to know that when they see a person with a guide dog, talk to the person first.

“We get a lot less communication from the public when we’re travelling with our white canes than we do with our dogs. Learn to treat the dogs like you treat the cane, like it’s not there, because at the end of the day the dog can’t understand what you’re saying. We can.

“If we’re lost it’s us that need the guidance, not the dog.”