OT and More Guide Dog Talk

Monday May 1st – Happy US birthday to my honey!
We spent the morning with Shane the Occupational Therapist and talked about some of the clients he sees and the different goals and therapies for each. We then went with him to a low vision clinic and looked at all the different aids for people with visual impairments. There were lots of adaptive watches, clocks, gadgets to use in the kitchen, and games.

We spent the afternoon with the guide dog trainers again as a follow up to our presentation about some of the training techniques we use in the US. It turned into a fun round table type of open communication about different techniques. Sue and I also used a couple of dogs to demo some clicker techniques for food refusal. Here’s an interesting story; one of the dogs we used was a female golden names Stacy. She has come from the Seeing Eye in the US a couple of years ago for breeding. She lives with the breeding manager Dave and he loaned her to us to demonstrate how to “load” a dog on the clicker. This means simply to teach the dog to associate the sound of the click with a food reward. Sue started clicking and giving treats and Stacy gets it so fast it’s obvious she has played this game before. We look over at Dave who says to his knowledge she has never been taught the clicker, then he remembers that the Seeing Eye does clicker work and possibly she was exposed then. That was a minimum of two years ago! Pretty amazing how strong that association is and how long it lasts.

We went to dinner with Pete, Leslie, and Bobby again. This time we went to a baked potato bar which was delicious! We are really enjoying their company and a few glasses of wine at their place after dinner was a perfect way to end the day.