[nagdu] A disaster of an SD program here in Kansas

[cheryl echevarria]

Gail:

My head would be blowing off also, how dare they.

Cheryl Echevarria
Independent Travel Consultant
C10-10646

http://Echevarriatravel.com
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Affiliated as an Independent Contractor with Montrose Travel CST-1018299-10


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gail" <deerskin at oct.net>
To: <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 6:52 PM
Subject: [nagdu] A disaster of an SD program here in Kansas


> Hello!
>
> Just got a call from my new IL caseworker, who wants to come tomorrow to 
> do
> the usual yearly onceover. When I asked if she had found any O&M 
> instructor
> for me (I had called there a couple weeks ago, asking if they could help,
> and thought this was a response), she goes, 'oh, I know a wonderful 
> program
> where you can get a guide dog in just a week or so!' My jaw 
> dropped....there
> is only one reputable program in Kansas, and I knew it wasnt in Concordia.
> After I got off the phone, I looked up CARES http://www.caresks.com/index
> htm  and I was right. OMG, I wish I wasnt....
>
>
> I've known about this disaster since the time the SD laws were changed 
> here
> in KS. The owner of this program raised a stink to get a new definition 
> put
> in-"Professional Therapy Dog", and despite what you see on their site, 
> these
> people *do not* know how to train either dogs or people. For years I've 
> had
> their 'graduates' besiege me when I was out with my own service dogs,
> pleading for help. You see, CARES 'Professional Therapy Dog" is no more 
> than
> a pound pup, with no temperament testing, no task training, and absolute
> minimum of obedience basics, that they hand out to kids with problems like
> autism. The training the handler gets is only for the Public Access Test,
> and only a week or so at that, max. By law, a TD is supposed to be handled
> by an adult trainer, for the benefit of others. If it is working for one
> person, it is no longer a TD, but some kind of halfbaked SD at best. One 
> of
> the Board of Directors is a person who was thrown out and banned for life 
> by
> the American Kennel Club, for abuse of her dogs. The owner and head of 
> CARES
> is a person I spoke to several times at the time of the hearings, who was
> trying to pump me for info on how to train dogs! Several members of my own
> SD group got dogs from there, and all returned the dogs, and trained their
> own, because the dogs were problems from the start, with no task training
> whatsoever.
>
>
> I was shocked when my caseworker told me so cheeirly, "oh, we can get you 
> a
> guide dog from Concordia! I have a blind gentleman who is in a wheelchair,
> who has a dog from there. And you dont need to bother with a cane, to get 
> a
> dog from there." Yeah, uh huh. I look at the site....no where have I found
> that they even list training guides...but they sure train for a lot of 
> other
> junk, supposedly even bomb and narc dogs.
>
>
> Guess I'm going to be doing a lot of reeducating of this caseworker 
> tomorrow
> ....d***, I had hoped that place had gone belly up years go, and here it
> still is.
>
> I'm hotter about this than the weather outside, I can tell you!
>
> Gail
>
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