July 25th, 2023

On this day, I got up at the same time as I always had, and completed all my morning tasks, including feeding Eve. After doing all of this, I headed up to breakfast.

Once breakfast concluded, we grabbed our stuff to head to a coffee shop where we were going to sit while each person completed their route for the day.

On this day, our roots consisted of crossing streets, getting around obstacles, dog distractions, and much of the same as we’ve been doing for the past two weeks. The new challenge was we were going to work on train platforms. This is one of the most challenging and scariest parts of guide work as our dogs have to exercise intelligent disobedience in order to keep us safe on the train platforms, since train platforms in themselves are an extreme hazard for those who are blind or have low vision. Eve did amazing, not making me fall off the train platform. This was also great practice as we were going to be taking the train the next day. In addition to working on the train platform Eve and I got this picture taken in front of a local church. 

Eve and Lindsay standing in front of a church in New York.

After getting back to the coffee shop, we all loaded back up into the van in order to head back to campus for class photos. These class photos consisted of one group photo and individual headshots. 

Lindsay and Eve headshot.

Entire class photo.

Once the class photos concluded we headed to lunch. After lunch concluded each instructor's students had individual tasks to work on, so as a class we split up. My group really needed to work on trusting our dogs, so myself, and the other student completed routes blindfolded. The most challenging part of this for me was ensuring that I kept my orientation while under blindfold because had I not done so I could’ve lost where I was in space or ended up in dangerous places like an intersection. 

Once this portion of the exercise was completed, we went into the mall where we did more escalator and elevator work. Not only did we do all of this, but we also went into the Dollar Tree that was in this mall in order to see if we could get the silly string that we had been looking for. Thankfully, the dollar tree in the mall did have the silly string, so this plan could continue. When the silly string was acquired, we headed back to campus as we had to feed and take our dogs out soon.

Before taking Eve out, we met with another instructor to give her information for custom tags that we all wanted made for our dogs. Once this finished, I stayed back to speak with my instructor as we needed to make a plan for the next day, as I was going to go into the city to work roots that I would be more accustomed to at home.

After this was done, I went back and gave Eve food and water before taking her out. Once she was taken care of, I had some downtime before dinner. 

After dinner, I took Eve out two more times before going to bed.