Guide Dog Week Begins

Monday May 22nd – Before I begin telling you about today, I need to rectify an oversight. I haven’t yet mentioned our “classmates”. For the past week Sue and I have had the pleasure of sharing the training centre with the fantastic group of clients who are here to receive their new dogs! They are a fun and rowdy group and are keeping us on our toes. They have happily joined in with the translations from “Aussie” to “American”.

Today began “Guide Dog Week”, Yea! Mark Fisher is the instructor running the week. He began with a basic introduction to the development of the domestic dog, the human animal bond, and brief history of the use of dogs as guides. He quickly touched on the application process at GDV for a guide, the interview process, and client training with a guide. In the afternoon we went down to the kennel and got “our” dogs. We learned how to “toilet” them (what we call relieving) but having them circle us at the end of the leash on the grass and giving the command “Quick Quicks”. We the got a brief overview of obedience commands and did a bit of practice with our dogs. We then loaded them into the training van and went into a residential area of Kew for our first walks under blindfold. GD trainer, Lauren came to assist and Sue and I worked with her while Laura and Simone went with Mark. For our first walks we began with the instructor also hooking their leash to the dog to ensure that all would go smoothly.
As the dogs got more comfortable with us Lauren removed her leash and just gave verbal input. If felt great to work a dog after so long. My dog was pretty fast and willing and worked very nicely. Those of you who are familiar with how I am under blindfold will be happy to know that I was equally as uncoordinated and clumsy under blindfold here in Australia as I am at home in the US. Fortunately my dog was unfazed by the bumbling dork hanging onto his harness and just kept trucking. It was great fun and over too soon.
This evening we convinced Laura and Simone to join us at trivia night at the Skinny Dog. We had a good time and managed not to come in last place, despite our American handicap.