Finally "Down Under"

Friday March 17th - Our flight from Singapore was about 7.5 hours and we arrived in Melbourne at 3:30 am Singapore time (5:30 am Melbourne time). Neither of us slept on the plane so we were pretty bleary eyed when we arrived. Cleared customs pretty quickly and met John Gosling from Guide Dogs Victoria. Once outside the airport we sighed with relief, NO HEAT & HUMIDITY!!! It was a bit chilly at 5:30am, but the day warmed into the mid 60s. We loaded up our vast amount of luggage (or as they call it here – gear) and drove to the GDV campus. John gave us a quick tour of campus (from the car) and then we went into the client residence and had some coffee. Apparently we couldn’t move into the residence until Monday and the rooms nearby were yet ready. So after coffee and toast, and meeting a few folks at GDV John took us into town to briefly observe some training. GDV currently has an intern from the school in Taiwan who is working with John. They worked two doubles routes in a light business area near the campus. The dogs we saw were about 4 weeks into training and had 15 to 20 workouts. Interestingly they were still not wearing harnesses and won’t until about week 7. The training we saw was very similar to our pattern training, with the handler creating correct responses with the leash. The routes were short, simple, and positive for the dogs. They leash relieve each dog on grass right before the route. For the most part mechanics are similar to ours with the exception of the left turns, they teach both the 270 degree left and the 90 degree left. The complete traing cycle is 20 weeks and dogs usually end up with 80 to 100 workouts by the time they go to class.

After watching training our rooms were finally ready, this was a relief as we both were starting to nod and drool and didn’t want to embarrass ourselves. We spent most of the rest of the day sleeping, doing laundry, and recovering.