[nagdu] owner trained dogs

Fri Dec 10 04:28:09 UTC 2010

The dog needs to have proper identification, tags, identification on the
harness, etc, and as with anything else with a dog, the i.d. card, and other
things will be an expense unless you get the dog from a school, but not
going to go there.
Jordan

-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Tamara Smith-Kinney
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 10:12 PM
To: 'NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users'
Subject: Re: [nagdu] owner trained dogs

Oh, goodie!

Can they help pay for it?  All of it???  

Still not sure how making me get a proper i.d. for my dog witll cut down on
fraud or protect people from bad behavior of legit sd/gds or fake ones.

I repsect other people's opions, honestly, I do.  But when people are
getting together to do something to crack down on a problem I am not part of
in a way that will cost me time and money if they have their way...

Can we please look at another option?

Speaking for the other owner-trainers on this list as well as myself, can we
please remember that we spend more than our time to come up with a guide
dog?  We pay for travel and acquisition of a guide dog prospect.  We pay for
exams to ensure our chosen prospect is healthy.  We pay for vaccinations
from the get-go, for spaying and neutering, for every single puppy issue
that crops up.  We pay for training supplies.  If we don't happen to have a
driver handy for car training, we pay for cabs to teach our dogs to have
manners in a car.  Some of us, by which I mean this one of us, even
volunteer to pay the "drunk fee" a coupld of times as well as ridiculous
tips, even the cab driver insists we don't because, well, anxiety and motion
sickness are hard on a cab.  Ugh!  Nice cabbies every time, but that's their
business and it was my pup, so I didn't take a pass on helping with the
cleanup expense even when they tried to insist.  We will not talk about the
period of chronic diarrhea some breeds with builds like my poodle are prone
to if their organs grow too fast for their skeletons.  You don't *know*
that's what's going on, and you spend a lot on the vet to make sure it's not
serious.  Not to mention cleanup costs and effort.  Yuck!

Puppy chow, puppy supplements, vet consultations, consultations with
nutritionists....  A second harness because your pup outgrew her training
harness.  A few collars, leashes the puppy chewed, other things the puppy
chewed....  Tums for the human acid stomach caused by the extreme stress of
not doing in the puppy...  /smile/

Clickers, training treats, more clickers, other training supplies....

Transportation to and from more advanced training venues to expose the dog
then introduce working concepts, then work that environment.

And on.  And on.

Nobody paid for this but me.  Nor paid for my time.  No volunteers to raise
my puppy until a paid professional could take over until somebody paid my
airfare to and from, along with my room and board for 4 weeks so I could
bring her home as a trained dog with a good set of handling skills somebody
was paid to teach me.

Nobody taught to give my dog a bath without getting shampoo in her eyes.  I
just did that because there was no one to show me.  I was nervous about the
possibilities, but we seem to have figured it out with no damage to the
poodle's eyes or anything else.  Nobody worked out her fedding schedule and
needs and told me how to put food and water out for her.  Well, as a ranch
girl, I didn't need that.  Had I gone to a guide dog program for a dog,
though, I'm pretty sure someone would have taught me exactly how to do all
of that, whether I needed it or not.  Sigh.

This isn't something I thought I would ever feel compelled to bring up on
this list or elsewhere, but will someone, for pete's sake, just once
demonstrate that nobody *gave* us owner-trainers our dogs?  Nobody *paid*
for us to come get them, or to teach us how to use them or anything else.
Honestly, the lowest cost of producing a guide dog by a program recently was
$60,000.  Per dog!  Last I checked, the two guide dog programs I would
consider applying to should the need arise for me spend much, much more.
That's what it would cost them (aka their donors) to provide me with a
freshly trained green dog.

I would, I assure you, start training the dog the second I got home to bring
it up to the skill level Mitzi had at that age.  She had the same lack of
maturity then this imaginary program-trained dog would, but she had some
pretty advanced skills, and has learned more.  In other words -- and I
mention my two top-list schools because of many aspects of their quality of
training and professionalism -- would not be up to snuff by the standard of
my owner-trained pup at that age.

So now I'm supposed to go through a bunch of extra hoops, spend a bunch of
extra time and spend a bunch of extra money to prove that my dog is as
legitimate a guide dog as those so many in this group were *given*?  On the
theory, which I have to say I absolutely do not get, that this will prevent
people who had their dogs *given* to them from having access issues in the
future at a place where I've no doubt never been?

Don't get me wrong.  I think it is just gum dandy that there are so many
programs to choose from that will freely provide a gum dandy guide dog to
any qualified person who chooses one of that programs guide dogs as a
mobility option.  From the donors to the puppy raisers to the underpaid
trainers who do it because they love it to everyone else involved, it just
the most amazingly fantastic thing.  It really, really is.  I love it that
there are people just going about in the world who make such an incredible
resource available to folks they will probably never meet just because they
want to.  Wow!  Huh?  Choosing to take advantage of that gift and make the
most of it honors those people while improving the life experience of the
handler.  Win win.

It's just as legitimate a choice to take the gift of a guide dog from a
training program as it is to provide that resource for yourself.  Llike I
did.  /evil grin/  Wonder who has the program dog I left available because I
changed course and decided to train Mitzi.  I only meant her for a pet and
was going to get a "real" guide dog from a program in what would have been
the past couple of years, unless Mitzi "turned out to have the right stuff."
Boy, did she!  So someone somewhere had a shorter wait time and has the dog
I would have gotten if I hadn't owner trained.  I know it's at least 2 with
Julie, whom no one will question is qualified for a program dog.  How many
for Rox by now?  She's no longer out based on multiple disabilities, I
think, but still choses the do-it-yourself option.  Haven't heard from Ann
lately, but her Panda is worth 3 guide dogs right there because mini-horses
live so much longer.  Am I missing anybody?  Anybody want to grab a calendar
and draw up some charts and graphs to see if we can guess whose dog here an
owner-trainer doesn't have instead?

Oh, I was getting on my horse about several themes impacting owner trainers
in general and forgot to whose message I was ranting...  Hi, Rox!  /grin/

Still, I keep getting a feeling of people wanting to get together to do
something about requiring owner-trainers to be required to have a valid i.d.
in order to keep frauds from impinging their access rights....  I've been
through a number of rounds of philosophical discussions on the subject of
how to prove a service dog is legit, and I've been really happy and proud
that NAGDU has officially come out against the notion of certification for
owner-trainers.

Since somebody did (before I fell even more behind writing this monstrosity)
mention the problem of readily available harnesses:::  Are you going out of
business as we speak for the safety of all of us?  Gosh, I sure hope not!  I
just now got my shiny new purple Laveau style harness to supplement my
fire-engine red sports harness from On-the-Go, and I'm just getting started
on my list of interchangeable harnesses.  I could make one my ownself if I
really wanted to, but you guys are just so much better at it!  /grin/

Shutting up now.  Maybe.

Tami Smith-Kinney

-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of The Pawpower Pack
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 4:05 PM
To: NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users
Subject: Re: [nagdu] owner trained dogs

Jordan,
Do you know how many program dogs have lunged at, growled at, or  
otherwise posed a threat to my guide?  Several.  If I am forced to  
undergo some kind of "certification" then I will do my level best to  
make sure that every assistance dog, program or owner trained does as  
well.

Rox and the Herbal HenchHounds:
Bristol (retired), Mill'E SD. and Laveau Guide Dog, CGC.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm  
not sure about the universe."-Albert Einstein
http://www.pawpowercreations.com
pawpower4me at gmail.com
AIM: Brissysgirl

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