[nagdu] Why I decided not to owner train.

[Daryl Marie]

Debby,

Jenny and I have been a team for just under a year. She started training with me when she was 18 months old (to the day).
We did in-home training, and I honestly loved it!  We dealt with transition problems as they came up, and if there were good/bad things during the evenings while the trainer was gone, I was able to ask questions and deal with real behavior issues as they came up, and we were able to change our training concerns on the fly.
We actually extended training an extra week because Jenny had some problems with our train system.  With a school-trained dog, I don't know that we would have been granted that freedom.  Perhaps she would have been washed out or trained with another dog, and then I may have been waiting,yet again, for another dog.
The trainer was very blunt with me and told me that Jenny could go either way: she could become a fantastic guide dog, or something would happen to her and she would not work well.  if she had exhibited some of these behaviors in the beginning of training, she would have washed out; by the time she showed them, we'd been training for 2-3 weeks, we had bonded... while the trainer had concerns, I was determined to make it work, and she was willing to give it everything we both had... Thankfully, with a lot of work, the former seems to be what's bearing out with jenny.

Daryl
----- Original Message -----
From: debby phillips via nagdu <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
To: Raven Tolliver <ravend729 at gmail.com>, NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users <nagdu at nfbnet.org>, singingmywayin at gmail.com, nagdu at nfbnet.org
Sent: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 07:47:05 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Re: [nagdu] Why I decided not to owner train.

Hey, I'm not saying that people shouldn't owner train if they can 
and want to.  And some of the things you say about dogs from 
schools is very true.  I don't get the getting into garbage, 
shredding stuff, not being able to be by themselves without 
making a fuss.  Between the time they go from their puppy raisers 
and finish training as guides, they seem to lose some of their 
house manners.  I will say though that Neena is improving.  She 
still shreds stuff, especially paper.  But it is becoming less 
and less, (though I doubt she'll totally ever stop).  As far as 
length of training, Seeing Eye made the change from three months 
to four quite some time ago.  I worry about the shortening of 
class times, even though it isn't easy to be away from home.  You 
made a comment about adolescent dogs.  I'm just curious about 
what age you think dogs should be trained and then turned over to 
us.  I know that there are dogs out there that are 16 months old, 
and to me that seems awfully young.  Neena will turn two in 
November.

I know that I don't have the patience, time, and all to train my 
own dog.  I'm grateful that I don't have to.  But I am curious 
about the cost of having a private trainer.  And where do you 
find trainers who know about guide dog training? Also, have any 
of you had dogs from a program that does home training rather 
than going away somewhere else? How did that work? Mind you, I'm 
hoping that Neena will be with me for the next ten years, so I'm 
not planning on doing anything other than making us the best team 
we can be.    Peace,    Debby and Neena

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