From: Pete Donahue 
Subject: Re: Levi Strauss ad
Hello listers,
I too have experienced a slight increased difficulty in getting folks to
keep their hands off of my guide dog when I am working him.  Just
yesterday I had to get my sute out of the cleaners, and do some grocery
shopping.  While in the store I was waited on bya courtesy clerk who kept
laughing while she was pulling my groceries.  I also noticed that Tim was
sniffing an awfull lot, and on a few occasions I felt him stop and pick
something off of the floor.  Twice I had to remove paper from hi smout6h,
and I was constantly corecting him. I finally figured out that someone was
throwing treats of the floor, and he was picking them up and eating them;
paper and all.  Finally I angrilly stopped the game, and let the folks
whom I believed weredoing this that this was not funny, that it put mylife
in danger, and that if they saw the Levie Strouce Commercial they needed
to know what what they saw was not the proper protocol to follow when
encountering a blind person with a guide dog.  On another occasion last
week I was in the same store and an old lady stopped me and asked me what
my dog's name was.  Knowing the game by now I told her his name, but that
that didn't give her a license to talk to him, and otherwise distract him.
She wasn't too happy about that, but I did what I had to do under the
circumstances.
I wonder what the National Association of Guide Dog Users is doing to
counteract the missinsormation put out by that add.  It seems to me that
if we're agressively going after Mr. Magoo, and all he stands for with
respec to blindness we need to fight this kind of trash with as much
vigor.  WE must not on the 0one hand appose the antics of a cartoon
character, and let missconceptions, and mistaken ideas of guide dog
ediquet go unchallanged as this kind of thing can put our veryylives in
danger.
Peter Donahue
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