The Incredible Ear and Puppy Sponsorship

Tuesday April 4th. I began the day with a short bike ride on the path near the school. It is a beautiful area to ride or walk, right next to the Yarra River and the bike path goes for a really long way. There were lots of other cyclists and walkers out as it was a beautiful, crisp morning. What a great way to start the day!

This morning the consulting audiologist, Helen Paton, gave us a lecture about hearing. We learned all about the anatomy of the ear, some different types of hearing loss, how to read an audiogram, and how hearing and vision work together. What an amazing and complex piece of equipment the ear is! We will work with Helen again next week, tour the onsite clinic and do some hearing test ourselves, which should be interesting

In the afternoon we got a chance to see one of the fundraising programs at GDV, puppy sponsorship. For as little as $12.50/month or $125/year a person can “sponsor” a litter of puppies. Sponsors receive a birth certificate, a copy of GDVs “pupdate”, a bi-annual newsletter reporting the litter’s progress, and an invitation to the twice yearly functions to meet the puppies. There are different levels of sponsorship, bronze, silver, and gold with different benefits. The program being held today was one of the meet the puppies sessions. GDV had a litter about 5 months old, and a litter about 9 months old. People could pet them and ask questions. They had a table selling GDV logo merchandise then gave a short presentation about the puppy sponsorship and the guide dog program in general. This was followed by a guide dog demonstration. For the demo, they put up a large obstacle course and showed dogs at different levels of training working through the course. One of the GD trainers narrated during the demo explaining what was happening. At the end of the demo they picked a volunteer from the audience and let her walk under blindfold with a retired guide. Of course a trainer was right there holding the leash as the lady did not know exactly what to do. It was an interesting presentation and Sue got some video tape to show once we get back home.
Later we headed back into town and did some practical work with the monocular. As always, we role played with each other first by being student then the teacher.