[nagdu] Dogs at NFB centers

Wayne Merritt wcmerritt at gmail.com
Tue Nov 4 00:00:48 UTC 2008


Greetings all. When I attended the Colorado Center in 1999 with my
first guide, they had more of an open policy, where the student could
choose to use their dog or not. From what i understand this is no
longer the case, which is unfortunate. The student can work their dog
to and from the Center, but during class time, the dog stays in
someone's office. This is a better solution, since at least the dog is
at the Center, but not a complete one since they're in someone's
office for the 8 hour day, 5 days a week. Having been at a state
training center for nearly 3 years, I can understand a little more of
the issue. And, in fact, I think that our center has more of a
progressive policy. We have students use their dogs 4 hours of the
day, and leave them in their rooms the rest of the day. The 4 hours
can be any of the classes. I believe that they are asked to use canes
in O&M initially, or for a period of time, before they are allowed to
use their dogs in class. This makes sense though. Since I've been
working at the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center in Austin, TX., there
have been several guide dog teams that have come through and I haven't
heard any negative affects about not using their dog during the 4
hours of the class day. I don't know about policies at other centers,
but our policy seems to make more sense than some of the other ones,
since it offers a compramise between using and not using the dog.

On the issue of time, this has been discussed before in different
areas of these lists. The 9 months is a set amount of time. Not
everyone stays the full 9, for whatever reason. Sometimes the reason
is that the person may not have a work related vocational goal, in
that, they're not going directly back to work. Perhaps they're
volunteering, which can change the type of training they receive.
There was a time when this wasn't the case, but the Center was under a
different model or philosophy then as well, the medical model. Now
they're under or they follow the empowerment model, of building skills
and confidence, and having students find solutions rather than the
teachers doing it for them. There may be options in your area or on
the Web for taking pieces of this whole puzzle, but at the training
center, we can't just break up the puzzle and give you individual
pieces; you get the whole pie, the whole pizza.

Incidentally, those interested in attending Criss Cole can contact me
off list. We're now accepting people nationwide, verses just in Texas.
We've already had someone over the summer from Florida, who
incidentally was a guide dog user.

Wayne

-- 
My blog:
http://wayneism.blogspot.com
My websites:
www.wayneism.com
www.whitecaneday.org




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