[nagdu] TSE and Guiding Eyes comparison

[Toni Whaley]

Hello! 

I've been to both schools. Both schools make several trips to New York City.
They work on subways as well as other interesting places in the city such as
Central park. For GEB, most of your urban training is done in White Plains,
New York. You cross all kinds of intersections and ride buses and do
escalators and elevators. You also travel on commuter trains. SE does the
majority of its urban training in Morristown, NJ. Here again, you cross all
kinds of intersections, ride buses and trains, and do escalators and
elevators. Both schools take you to shopping malls and park/college
campuses. You also get practice going through revolving doors. Both schools
both cover travelling on rural routes. Finally, both give you a lot of
practice handling "traffic checks." For the
 uninitiated, a traffic check is a situation where the dog has to respond to
a moving car, whether coming out of a driveway/garage or turning the corner
while you're in the middle of the street. Some of these traffic checks are
staged by the school's trainers. However, many occur naturally by rude or
unobservant drivers.. Finally, both schools attempt to expose you to
situations which you might see at home. The two major differences I noticed
between the two schools is that SE's routes tend to be longer, and many of
their traffic checks involve the hybrid cars, Prius.

I just finished reading Marion's comment regarding training. SE does give
you full ownership of your dog upon completing training. GEB offers
ownership after two years. I've had seven dogs from GEB and have never found
the ownership problem to be an issue. In all seven cases I never asked for
ownership. Two of my last dogs from GEB had to be retired prematurely, one
for cancer after eight months of use and the other for burnout after a
little over three years. In both cases, I mmade the decision as to where the
dogs retired. The respect to the dog with cancer, the veterinarian assistant
on her case at Penn and her veterinarian husbad chose to adopt the dog. The
school had no problemm with that. Neither was there a problem for my
daughter to adopt the other dog. 

Toni whaley

-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Tamara Smith-Kinney
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 3:27 AM
To: 'NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users'
Subject: [nagdu] TSE and Guiding Eyes comparison

Hey, all.  A friend was asking me some questions about guide dog schools,
and I had no clue to the answers, so I thought I would ask.  She wanted to
know how Guiding Eyes and TSE compare when it comes to urban training for
both dog and handler, since both are near NYC.

 

Has anyone been to both schools?  How would you compare the two?

 

Tami Smith-Kinney 

 

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