Rambling About Guide Dog Accessibility

   As a guide dog user, one of the most common questions I am asked by little kids is "does he get to come with you (insert place, usually school)?"   In Canada we have federal and provincial legislation that allows a licenced service dog and handler to enter any public building, area, and vehicle. No charge can be posed on the handler for accomidations made for the service dog. The only time a handler can be charged is if their service dog causes damage.
   Usually places are vary accomidating and have no problem. I have found West Jet to be the most accomidating airline here in Canada, I've never had any problem with them. In fact I just have to go to the ticket agent and say I have a service dog and they immediately put me in the Bulkhead seats and move one of the other passengers so I have two seats worth of floor room for my guide dog.
   I could go on a rant for hours about all of the businesses who have attempted to prevent my Guide Dog from entering, but here I'm only going to mention one.
   A few weeks ago I was in Timmies (Tim Haurtens) with a friend. We had gone to the offleash park with our dogs and were warming up with a cup of hot chocolate before heading home. My friend (who can see) went to the counter to order our drinks as it was vary crowded, and when she came back to our table she had a vary interesting story to tell.
   She had gone up to the counter, and one of the attendents had told her that there were no dogs allowed. My friend explained how my dog is a service dog and is allowed in public buildings etc. The attendent was skepticle but said ok. My friend, who was getting tired of this happening (another person had tried to kick us out of the same Timmies a few weeks before), decided to ask one of the police officers who were there  on their break.
   The officer who she approached said that it was the business owners decision as to whether a service animal is aloud in their business.
   This is not true. I couldn't believe that a Police officer who is sworn to protect us and our rights didn't know this fundamental law of accessibility that makes Canada such a good place to live.
   Sure this officer was one out of thousands, just as the Timmies was one of thousands, and they just don't know the laws. And it is offten my job to educate them so that another guide dog team won't encounter the same problems, but I never thought in my wildest dreams that I'd be educating our police officers about our laws.
   Ok, rant over.
Melissa

Hello World

   Ok, so that title is lame, and it reminds me of how in grade 10 I took a computer course. I hated this course because from the first lesson "How to Turn on Your Computer Because You Are All Ideots Who Don't Live in The 21st Century and Need to Know How to Push the Big Button Labelled "On/Power"", I was bored out of my skull. Side note, I actually don't know what the button is labelled (guess I shouldn't have passed that course).
   It was only in the last week of that course that I actually learned something I didn't previously know how to do. We started HTML programming. It was extremely basic stuff, but it is pretty cool when you manage to make those two words "Hello World" appear on a webpage. Ok, I can think of a thousand things much more cool, for example the invention of paper clips, but I digress.
   Anyways, this is the beginning of my ramblings, I know that its not much, but I can say with quite certainty it sucks to type with one hand.
   "Ah," you are all now thinking, "here's something enthralling. An interesting story perhaps." It really isn't that exciting.
   A week ago I broke my left wrist in two places while playing goal ball. It wasn't even while we were playing. I was warming up with the one other person who managed to show up for practice (well besides the coach). We were doing an excersise called Perfect Game where you crouch at your line (I play left wing), dive to the side, jump up, run to the High Ball Line, touch the ground, run backwards to the Goal Line, then run forward to your line and crouch again. You do all this in 15 second intervals for 5-7 minutes.
   I was running backward and had too much momentum going and tripped over the Goal Line (I know clumsy me), and landed on my wrist awkwardly. I'm not quite sure how I landed, I immediately jumped up again and kept running, but I ended up breaking two bones.
   So that is why this post is so boring and short. Guess the pain meds are making me loopy.
   If none of that section about goal ball made sense to you, I'll be writing a future post on what exactly goal ball is. It isn't a figment of my drugged mind I assure you...
   Anyways, the short and short of it is that I have a pretty blue cast on for God knows how long (I go for x-rays on the 20th), and thus it is hard to type.
   Thank you for reading... if you are reading.
Melissa