[nagdu] Seeing Eye Class Length Shortened

[Cindy Ray]

The thought on that comes from the fact that a dog is usually anxious to please. Some take longer to adapt to new people than others. The dog is placed in a home with people who have raised it and cared for it, exposing it to socialization situations for its first year. or so. This is where the dog went from its mother pretty directly. Many of the people who raise the dogs take them to work, to meetings, even to church in some cases, and the dogs go to schools and a variety of places. They spend a lot of time with their people. Those people and whatever animals are in the family are their pack. Then they are hauled back o the school and must adjust to kennel mates and a life in the kennel. People start training them to do new things, and they gradually attach themselves to their instructor. There are dog walkers at those kennels who feed them on weekends and the like, but often during the week the trainers perform that. They want to please, and so they are learning because they want praise. Then enter blind person. This is a new experience. Suddenly they are alone with this person they do not know. Often they are still seeing the person with whom they are working, but they are a little troubled. Those early days if you spend a lot of your time with them playing with them, soothing and cuddling them, and working with them, praising them for the stuff they learned to do before you came on the scene, their work with you will get better faster. Any anxiety they are feeling will be erased more quickly. I am sure that you can work it out if you don't spend a lot of time early on, but i have a sense it goes faster. With moms, that is why you spend as much time at the hospital with the baby as you can if there is a problem preventing you to be with that child. Even if they are not able to be with you, often the mother is encouraged to come there and hold the baby and feed it if at all possible. The bonding will still happen, but it might not be as quick. That's just my feeble attempt at explanation as I understand it.

Cindy