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From: William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org (William Wilson)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: hot topic
Message-ID: <16404@handicap.news>
Date: 25 Jun 91 13:42:27 GMT
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[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

 DD>  other adjectives I won't mention.  I personally don't care for
 DD>  "sighty" either but have you noticed people who think "Blink"
 DD>  is wrong think "Sighty" is all right?

Diana,
    Yes, I think you may have missed my message to Christine Marie in
which I pointed out how her discomfort with the word "blink" but her
almost casual use of the word "sighty" seemed ironic!
     Funny, but at least to my ear, the word "blink" doesn't have any
negative commotations built into it, thus the need for them to be taught
by someone who sees it that way.
    "Sightey", on the other hand, is obviously meant to be pejorative to
anyone who hears it, although of course it doesn't really mean much if
it is one wink talking to another I suppose.  I'll test out my theory
later, but I suspect that if a blink calls a sighted person a "sightey"
with negative inflection, they will respond with "blindy",
cause for sure, they would assume most naturally that it be the
corresponding slam to a blind person, not "blink"!

 DD> I have one other question.  Venture asked me to inquire if
 DD> Leeroy is allowed toys.  I think more and more of the schools
 DD> are frowning on this practice, but Venture has always had
 DD> toys-- not tons of them that he could get at whenever he liked,
 DD> but a couple of little things.

Actually, one of the things that surprised me about Seeing Eye this time
when I went to get LeeRoy was how they had changed in the opposite
direction on this one!
    In 1979 when I got Strider, they didn't really say much about toys,
neither encouraging nor discouraging them.  This time, however, one of
the instructors actually had a catalog of dog toys which she read to us
and took our orders, almost every one of us getting at least a couple
for our partners.
    In fact, I am opening this up as a challenge to anyone here with a
dog, be it guide dog or regular mutt, in a tugg of war battle with
LeeRoy!  He is, I am willing to bet whatever I have in my wallet at the
time, the meanest mother of a tugger this world has ever seen!  He can
literally drag all 160 pounds of me from one end of this appartment to
the other, and scarcely work up a pant doing it!
     In addition to his tug toy, he has one of these heavy rubber toys
they call a "kong", and after giving me my daily workout dragging me
around the appartment, he usually rewards me by dropping the quite heavy
toy on my crotch till I scream out in soprano, which for some reason
gives him great joy!
     I honestly don't know if there is a tendancy towards toys for guide
dogs or away from toys by the schools, but I can't even imagine Lee B.D.
without his toys, and he will always have a tug toy and a kong in his
life so far as I am concerned!  I don't even want to hazard a guess as
to what he would do with all that enthusiasm if he were without them!
                                                        Willie

... Like a bat out of Bellevue!

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