[NAGDU] guide dog from the US

[Wayne And Harley]

Hi Bonnie,With regards to Leader Dogs and Spanish students, IIRC, Leader has an agreement with Once to provide follow-up care for Leader Teams. I don't know how Leader handles follow up for Israeli and Canadian students.
Yours, Very Sincerely And Respectfully,

Wayne M. Scace 

-------- Original message --------
From: Bonnie Mosen via NAGDU <nagdu at nfbnet.org> 
Date: 1/2/2016  19:23  (GMT-06:00) 
To: nagdu at nfbnet.org 
Cc: Bonnie Mosen <bonnie at mosen.org> 
Subject: [NAGDU] guide dog from the US 

Interesting thread. As an expat American living in NZ, I haven't decided
what to do about my next dog, and I hope I have several more years before I
have to make any decisions. My current guide is from The Seeing Eye, and as
much as I would love to continue getting dogs from TSE, there is a lot to
consider when getting a dog from another country and bringing it abroad. The
biggest is follow-up. A foreign school can' easily support you in the field.
International dogs must be certified to work in NZ by the NZ school, but
there training methods and expectations are different. It's my experience
that we in the US expect more out of our dogs than many of the international
schools, and I like that about our programs. Another consideration is the
overall logistics of getting and training with a dog. NZ has extremely
strict import and export requirements for animals due to our agricultural
based economy. It takes six months to go through all the paperwork and tests
to get a dog in the country and then there is a two week home quarantine if
all is well. As we know, anything can happen prior to or during training,
what if the dog selected fails or worse is a bad match in class. You would
have to start completely over with a long wait. To my knowledge, TSE only
takes current TSE students living abroad, but I think many many years ago
they may have taken international students. I would be curious how GEB,
Leader, Pilot, and GDB handle these situations.

I know TSE and other schools have had handlers traveling, and studying
abroad with their dogs, and it has worked well. Times have certainly
changed, and it is much easier now to travel and live abroad with a guide
than in the past.  

Cheers Bonnie and Lizzie 

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