[nagdu] New guide dog school

Mardi Hadfield wolfsinger.lakota at gmail.com
Mon Nov 21 05:12:52 UTC 2011


I just had to reply to this post about husky guides.Frandi, Mardi here and
my first 2 guides were Siberian Huskies. Lily my first guide was a pure
white husky. She was trained as a service dog as I needed her to pick up
things and open doors ect. She also pulled my manual wheelchair. Lily could
pickup a dime off the floor and hand it to me. She new many words and I
could ask he to bring me any object by it's name.When I got my new power
wheelchair, Lily could trot next to it all day without getting tired. She
loved it when I would open up and go full speed a head and she could run
with me. When I was diagnosed as legally blind, I trained lily to leash
guide me. Then I found a trainer willing to work with me to train her to
harness guide me. She was a good wheelchair guide. I had to retire Lily
when she was 8 years old due to valley fever. She died unexpectedly from
complications of the valley fever one month later.I tried to train a Border
collie as my next guide, but he had been abused before I got him and could
not handle being out in public. He wasn't a total loss as he turned out to
be able to predict my seizures. I did get another Husky. A dark gray and
white. Her name was Nala. It took only 4 months to train her with the help
of the same trainer. She was so smart. You asked her to do something once
and she never forgot it. She was as close to perfect as a dog can be. She
was the best guide I ever had. If I went to a place once,she new how to get
me there again. I could just say to her," we are going to the mall today"
and she would take me there. I never got lost with Nala guiding me. I went
to a friends apartment by bus and we had never been there before. I screwed
up and missed the last bus and had to roll it all the way home.About 7
miles. I was not sure of the way home but I put my trust in Nala and she
took me home. I tried to retire Nala when she was 9 years old. She did not
want to retire. I could not find another husky to train and ended up with a
Belgian Shepherd. When Nala saw me harnessing Shaman, she would bring me
her harness and beg me to take her.I would attach Shaman's leash to Nala's
harness and work the both dogs together. This is how I or I should say we
trained Shaman to be a guide. I only had the help of a trainer for a short
while this time around so I did more of the training of my current guide.I
used Nala at a blind convention last summer,because I did not think Shaman
was ready for that kind of work yet. She was perfect as usual. I got many
compliments on her guide work and how well behaved she was. Even some guide
dog instructors complimented her. Nala was never really retired as I would
use her once in awhile just to keep her happy. She was always happy and
ready to work.She was the best guide dog I have had.Nala died unexpectedly
this last August from an internal tumor that went undetected at her last
vet check up,4 months earlier. She had taken me to the grocery store 2 days
before her death.She never showed any signs of illness. I miss Nala so
much. I don't think I will ever find another dog like her.My Belgian
Shepherd, Shaman, is a great guide but he is so different from Nala. No,
there will never be another Nala.......Tami, I know exactly what you mean.
Many a time I heard people say that huskies were untrainable.Since I do
husky rescue, I have found some to be stubborn, but they still learned to
sit and walk on a leash before they got adopted to a new home. Any way, I
think Huskies make the  best wheelchair guide dogs. Have a great day,
Mardi and Shaman

-- 
http://wolfsinger-lakota.blogspot.com/
http://wolfsinger2-thegoldendragon.blogspot.com



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