[nagdu] What trainers don't know

[Tamara Smith-Kinney]

Tracy,

Well stated.  The division of duties amongst various staff and volunteers
over the course of a guide dog's young life is necessary for any program
producing a quantity of quality dogs while maintaining a functioning
business structure to support their ongoing activities.  It's an inevitable
result of that necessity that no one individual has a truly comprehensive
knowledge of every pertininent detail of every single dog, even the
dauntingly small percentage of pups that successfully complete the training
and go on to successful careers as guides.  When you're contemplating
training your own dog for the first time, which means you get one shot and
are hopting therefore for a 100 percent success rate, the statistics from
the programs are downrighht terrifying.  /smile/  There are enough
differences between your circumstances and theirs that the correlation is in
no way direct or even statistically relevant.  At that point in the
owner-trainer process, though, it is impossible not to be painfully aware
that a key point of difference between them and you is that they know what
they're doing.  And you don't.  /lol/

Having done it, I've come to recognize many of the advantages of working
with a signle dog that is my own dog to train for my own use which increased
my chances of success enough that I did, in fact, end up with a working
guide despite the apparent odds at the outset.  

Er...Whatever else I was going to add to pull that together and make it make
some sort of sense is now gone due to the report on the news about a kid who
had his wrong eye operated on, so the doctor just finished up that surgery
and went ahead to operate on the eye she was supposed to...  Her explanation
to the child and his parents when he came out of anesthesia included the
phrase, "I lost my sense of direction."  Um....  What I didn't get from the
report, which means I now have to listen again in case I missed it somehow
-- or something like that -- is whether this means he is now blind in both
eyes instead of just the one or what...  It's not the facto of blindness
itself that upsets me about this kid I never heard about in my life, it's
the fact that he's here in Oregon...  Okay, I'll get over it and see if I
can write someting to somebody that's informative enough to be helpful and
spare his parents finding out along with him, the hard way, what that
actually would mean for him.

I lost my sense of direction.  Honestly!  



Tami Smith-Kinney

-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Tracy Carcione
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 7:24 AM
To: nagdu at nfbnet.org
Subject: [nagdu] What trainers don't know

I suspect trainers don't know much about a dog's house behavior, because
they don't see the dog in that setting.  During training, the dogs are in
a kennel setting.  No beds to lie on, no counters to jump on, no socks to
chew.  The trainers might take a dog into the house for a bit, if the dog
is having trouble with kennel life, but I don't think that happens too
often.  So, unless the raiser mentions something, I don't think they
really know.

I'm not sure they would know if a dog could start emptying on route,
either. It's my understanding that, before going out for training, that
part of the dog string has a chance to run and play and do their business.
 If I had ten dogs for Ben to run and play with for a while before going
for a walk, he might get enough stimulation to go before we go.

Not to make excuses for a trainer not mentioning stuff, but I think there
are things they just don't know.
Tracy



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