[nagdu] Guide Dog Handler Bill of Rights

Cindy Ray cindyray at gmail.com
Mon Jan 31 01:02:28 UTC 2011


Well, here are problems I see. There are issues about puppy raisers communicating with alums, ownership, removing dogs without just cause from a persobn. There are other issues. What is the tone of the appliation material and class material. All of it used to be way more custodial than it is now, even telling you what to bring for clothes and some other stuff. TSE used to have more of a dress code than they do now. My first trip there I had a war with the nurse because she would check out the key to the organ to me to unlock the thing, and when we ordered pizza we didn't dish up our own. Things have gradually improved. There are a lot of schools in the country, and mostly they are good, reputable ones. One school will be doing something that you are not happy with. A school will make you so mad that you may decide to publicly blast the school to kingdom come; you can choose another school and get most of what you want by way of doing so. Jordan hates The Seeing Eye now because he went there once and had a bad experience for whatever reason. He switched to GDB, with whom he is more compatible. I wouldn't go there because I don't like the kind of relationship that seems to exist with regard to puppy raisers or ownership. We can pretty much choose what we want. So I think legislation doesn't make sense. Because there are lots of options, and people are not on the same page, you will have trouble gtting people (and I mean the users) to agree on what we are working on. If one could get the Federation of Guide Dog Schools to have pretty much the same policies on certain issues, that would be the route to take. One very important issue would maybe be ownership, and certainly one would be how they determine if a dog should be removed from you. I think the removal of a dog without ause would certainly be a unifying position. That might require some definitions, but within those there would need to be some flexibility to be sure. 






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