On the Path: Technique, Movement, and Rhythm in Guide Dog Training

Abstract

The physical and bodily skills of guide dogs are socially and creatively developed through the relationships between dogs and people that take place in different environments throughout their first two years of life. During the socialization and training phases, both the dog’s body and its guide quality are developing together. The same process that trains the dog as a guide also trains human beings to a new social and professional identity - that of guide dog trainer and instructor. In this article I present an ethnographic reflection on the process of guide dogs qualification, an animal assistive technology developed to facilitate the mobility of the visually impaired person. Focusing especially on the training phase, I try to understand the trajectory of transformations, the unfolding of events and the changes of movement that make certain dogs able to “graduate” as guides. The guiding technique is understood here as the result of a certain relationship between movements and things, encompassing tools, human and canine bodies and their displacements in different environments.