I saw something new today: an ill-behaved seeing eye dog

[Dookus]

While driving through town, stopped at a light, I noticed a beautiful german shepherd and his owner, a young woman, waiting at the light. The dog was sniffing intently at the bottom of a lightpole, and the owner was yanking yard at it to get it to stop, but it ignored her entirely. I could see she was getting angry.

Then I noticed the dog had a harness, and as she fumbled to hit the pedestrian crossing button, I noticed she was blind. She yanked the dog at least five times (he wore both a harness and a choke chain) but the dog just ignored her entirely. Alas, traffic started moving so I didn't get to see how she finally got the dog to get back to work.

It was odd, because I've NEVER seen that before. Every seeing-eye dog I've seen has been super-attentive while the harness was on. It must suck mightily to have an inattentive canine assistant.

[Southsideirish]

1. I have seen blind people be very cruel to their dogs, even kick them.

There may be some unresolved issues of anger there.
Last year I offered to walk the dog of a blind woman at school as the dog obviously wanted to relieve itself but she rebuffed me saying she knew when the dog needed to 'go" or not. Other times I've seen the dogs being ruthlessly pulled and yanked hard which can be very confusing to them, I imagine.
On my commuter train a blind man would make his dog lie in a wet puddle by his feet even in inclement weather and never would give him a friendly pat or a kind word or show any concern for him.

I think some of these dogs lives are a living hell.

[Dookus]

2. I've never seen such things.

But this woman was in no way being cruel to the dog - he was simply not doing his job, and she was trying to correct him. He just ignored her and all corrections.

[Southsideirish]

3. Sounds to me like she was yanking him around quite a bit. Maybe some

kind or encouraging words would have been more effective. I know with my own dogs, a kind word goes a ton further than a harsh gesture or command.

[Dookus]

4. that's nonsense

a leash correction is not abuse, and a working dog shouldn't have to be sweet-talked into behaving properly.

You seem to have some odd ideas about dog training.