[nagdu] Guide Dog Handler Bill of Rights

[Nicole B. Torcolini at Home]

Okay...I am going to give my opinions on these things. They are only my 
opinions and are by no means supposed to be correct.

I have mixed feelings about the ownership debate. I definitely agree that 
more than a year is too long. Regardless of whether or not you own the dog 
immediately, there are a few things that need to be considered. These dogs 
are not a dime a dozen. If you get home with your dog and after a little 
while find that it just is not working for you, I would return the dog 
rather than retiring it as retiring it would be a waste of dog. Please do 
not take this to mean that I don't think that people become attached to 
their dogs almost immediately. It would be a very hard thing for me to do if 
I had the choice, but you have to consider how much it takes to train these 
dogs.

It is true that things might be more likely to go wrong during the first 
year, but, regardless of ownership policy or how long a person has had his 
or her dog, I think that there should be a universal policy for taking back 
the dog. The two conditions under which a dog should be removed without 
investigation are if the dog has become so dangerous/aggressive that he/she 
is a threat to other people and dogs at almost all times or the user has 
neglected or abused the dog so much that the dog might suffer permanent 
health problems. In such cases, it is not the school but rather the local 
animal control that should take action, for these are conditions that I 
think that all dog owners, service dog or not, should be subject to.

The issue of guide dogs being "not used" is definitely a hard one. In my 
opinion, you could say that a guide dog is not being used if it has 
forgotten most/all of its commands. Also, if other members of the household 
(if there are others) have started taking care of it more than you for no 
particular reason (there are reasons that for a period of time other people 
might need to care for your dog) this might be an area of concern. However, 
to put a quantitative number on how often a dog should be worked or some 
other set criteria is too strict.

Nicole

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cindy Ray" <cindyray at gmail.com>
To: "NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users" 
<nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 8:00 PM
Subject: Re: [nagdu] Guide Dog Handler Bill of Rights


> At Blind, Inc. you are there for several months and you are learning 
> blindness skills, which include travel with the cane, Braille, employment 
> skills maybe, and a philosophy of blindness. So part of your training at 
> Blind, Inc. is to go and come in a more or less normal setting. At a guide 
> dog school you are getting to know a new dog who has been shuttled between 
> various homes in its life, has just had its raw training, and is taking 
> its final exams. It is learning to transition from instructor to you, and 
> you are coming to know it and at least some of its quirks. You are there 
> for 2-4 weeks with a rather prescribed set of skill learning, and it's 
> mainly about the dog. And believe me, I am ready to go home but a little 
> anxious, too. At TSE if you could come and go as you liked, you are out in 
> the country with no public transportation to speak of. Evenings there is 
> pretty much one instructor on duty after the first week. Sundays  you can 
> go to church but they take you there in the vans. The first Sunday you 
> don't take the dog; after that you can. But again, at Blind, Inc., it is a 
> whole different deal.
>
>
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