Getting A Guide DogYou’ve been accepted for training at a school of your choice. What next? What is it like to go away for training? What sorts of things do you need to bring? Once you’re there what is it like day to day? Hopefully this article will give you some idea what it is like to go off to school. I will try to keep this as general as possible but will be using my experiences at Guide Dogs for the Blind to fall back on when telling about getting a guide dog. I have found, from talking with others, that the basic school experiences are more or less the same… Getting your acceptance letter. This, for me was a very memorable day in my life. October 6, 1995 I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was just another average day. That is until the mail came. I had been watching the mail for weeks for news from GDB (guide dogs for the blind). I walked out to the box, expecting that I would not get any word today, just like the day before and the day before that but my heart nearly stopped when a largish package with the GDB logo on it. My first though was. “Oh surely they’ve found me unfit…” but I reasoned on my way back up to the house, “They wouldn’t send such a big package if they found you unfit…” I ran in, dumped the rest of the mail on the table and tore open the package. Out fell several papers and an audio tape. These papers were the list of things to bring to class, the guide dog user’s contract and my letter of acceptance. In this letter they told me that my class dates were to be November 12 to December 10 1995. They also said who my instructors were and generally welcomed me to the program. I was getting a guide dog! The thing I did next was to go out and get the things I needed that I didn’t have on the list. Some of the things you’ll want to think about bringing with you to class are: Clothing/Personal • Enough clothes for a week’s worth of wear. Pack for the weather for where you are going. • Rain coat/boots • Comfortable (this is important) walking shoes. I suggest taking 2 pair so you can trade them every other day. • Nice dress or suit for church or graduation/dinner out and dress shoes • Night clothes • Jacket or coat • Toiletries, shampoo and conditioner, body wash, razor and shaving cream, deodorant other personal care items, Medical • Medical or insurance card • All medications *check with your school to see if there are guidelines you must follow for diabetic medications, some schools have guide lines that must be followed • Enough medications to last the time you are in training. You may need prescription information if you need to refill your meds while in class. • Contact information for doctor(s) For Personal Time • CD, walkman personal MP3 player • CDs and or audio books • Camera and film • Laptop computer or personal note taker (many schools have internet services and computers for student use but you can bring your own) • Spending money for trips out, other personal use. • An extra bag for packing up all the extra stuff you’ll collect, and you’ll collect it, while in class.
A few weeks after I got my letter I received my airline tickets. Now GDB will also send along bag tags in case your bags are lost. In the packet of tickets it tells you both going to and return trips and gives you a printed out schedule of what flight you’ll have. The three weeks or so between my getting my tickets and the time I was to be getting a guide dog seem like a blur… When I went to train with Fleming, my second dog, in 2000, my instructors called me prior to class to talk with me. I thought this was a very nice touch because it helped me put a voice to a name… I do remember that I did a lot of shopping and reading and generally trying to pass the time back in ’95 and finally the day came to leave for class! The flight was uneventful. I had to change planes but the guide dog school had set up ground help to help in the change and it went off without a hitch. I think most schools will do this. Once I landed in San Francisco I was met at the gate by one of my instructors, we collected my bags and I went to wait on the school van. It was a bit of a wait and the school provided a bag lunch. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the other students joined me and we went off to the school. Once there we got our room assignments and were taken to unpack. While in our rooms we were given an orientation to what was where and took some time to unpack and unwind. After that we met in the meeting area and went over the rules and introduced ourselves round. The instructors also went over the schedule for the next few days and gave an overview of what the process was for getting a guide dog. After dinner we had the rest of the night to ourselves. Our first few days were spent on what is called Juno work. Juno is the name of a fictional dog played by the instructors. They do all sorts of things that our real dogs would do from listening to our commands to acting up thus requiring a correction. We also got our dog’s equipment, well the lead at any rate so we could soften it up. We also got an old harness to check out and would get our new harnesses at the same time we would be getting a guide dog. We worked on obedience commands and corrections and working with an empty harness to work on our following what Juno was telling us. We also met with the instructors so that they could do a final interview with us so they could be sure of their dog matches they picked for us… The Wednesday after we got there (we arrived on Sunday) we had a long morning of lecture, then after lunch we were given the information we all had been waiting for, our dog’s name, gender and breed. We went off to our rooms to wait to meet our dog. One by one the instructors would come and get a few of us, we’d go off to a room by ourselves and our dog was brought to us. In some schools the instructors bring the dogs to the student’s rooms and some meet their dogs in a group. It just depends on the school. We spent the rest of that day and evening getting to know our dogs and learning to care for them. That next day, Thursday we had our first workouts with our dogs. The workouts start out simple, a straight line walk, or a walk with right turns and as time goes on we progress to more complex routes with instructors and other students, to working on our own, to working at night, then finally in the last week of class to working in San Francisco. By the time we are at the end of our time in class we will have had many different experiences in working our dogs from sidewalkless work to working on and off escalators. Guide dog training can be exhausting emotionally and physically. Here is an example of GDB’s daily schedule; most other schools have near to the same schedule… 6:30 a.m. Wake up & dog relieving 7:15 a.m. Breakfast 8:00 a.m. Obedience session / lecture 9:00 a.m. Morning training workout 12:30 p.m. Lunch 1:30 p.m. Afternoon training workout 5:00 p.m. Dog feeding & relieving 6:00 p.m. Dinner 7:00 p.m. Free time dog’s final watering 9:00 p.m. Dog releiving As you can see this looks like a pretty busy schedule. It is, and it isn’t. You’ll have a lot of down time when waiting to go out on your travels. I spent this time playing with and grooming my dog, reading or snoozing and talking to other students, not at the same time though. I snoozed or talked to other students… Emotions can run high, especially as class progresses. There are several people, from all walks of life and from all across the country, of many different ages and there is bound to be some tension sooner or later. It’s important to take time for yourself to unwind and relax if you need it. Near your time for graduating you’ll take your class picture and your I.D. picture and visit the vet where you’ll be given your dog’s medical history. You’ll also start talking about going home with your dog and in your final lecture you’ll be given a going home packet of information which contains your school picture(s) I.D. access cards and booklets, a hard copy of your dog’s medical records and a copy of your guide dog user’s contract. Finally graduation day! GDB does a formal graduation; other schools handle this differently or do not have any sort of graduation at all. At ours we get to meet our dog’s puppy raisers and have a chance to speak a bit about our time in class. This can be fun and a time to reflect on things. It’s also a day where you pack up and get ready to go home to start your new life. Some students leave right after graduation to go home, and those who don’t might go out to dinner with their raisers and leave that next day. The trip home from guide dog school is surely different because you of course have your dog. And for me when our plane landed and I picked up that harness and told my first dog “forward” I knew the first steps we were taking without instructors standing by were to be down a long road of guide dog use that has gone on for me through two dogs and over ten years of working with these wonderful canines.
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