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Watch: What Life Looks Like From a Seeing Eye Dog’s Perspective

by Beth

Click on the video to take a walk with me from my Seeing Eye dog Whitney’s point of view. 

I’m working with my fourth Seeing Eye dog now, and I’ve loved — and marveled at — each one. In order:

  1. Dora, a female Black Lab
  2. Hanni, a female Black Lab/Golden Retriever cross
  3. Harper, a male Yellow Lab
  4. Whitney, the 8-year-old female Yellow Lab/Golden Retriever cross who works with me now

I’ve long wished that everyone could see these heroic dogs get me past the tricky, nuanced things we come across every single day. Like getting in just the right position to let me buckle the harness, finding elevator buttons in our hallway, weaving through crowds on sidewalks, slowing down ever so gently when there’s a broken sidewalk or a heave in the pavement, those sorts of things.

And now, you can!

About a year and a half ago, a friend showed my husband Mike how a GoPro Hero camera works. A GoPro camera? “Yeah, people mount them on their heads when they do things like hang-glide, you know, or ride a motorcycle, whatever,” Mike said, explaining how GoPros can be mounted on drones, too. “They make really cool videos.”

As Mike explained all this out loud to me, it occurred to him that he might be able to mount the Hero on our hero dog Whitney. “We could get a dog’s eye view of what it’s like to be a guide dog!” It only took a little Googling to discover, sure enough, Hero sells a harness to attach a GoPro to a dog collar.

Our friend John was generous enough to loan us his GoPro Hero, and in 2016 we mounted the camera on my Seeing Eye dog. Whitney didn’t like wearing it very much, and the camera rocked back and forth as Whitney walked. There was no way to stabilize the camera, so we kept the walk short.

The video spent a year-and-a-half sitting on Mike’s laptop. He ran across it again over this past holiday break, and when he popped it open, the video was a lot better than he’d remembered. He did some editing, added some explanatory captions, and now, here it is, for you to admire!

The video covers a typical walk Whitney and I take around our neighborhood. It ended up longer than we thought — 14 minutes, to be exact — but I hope you’ll give it a look.


 

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  1. Bree Peters Says:

    February 6th, 2018 at 3:36 pm

    Awesome video, Beth! That was so cool to watch!