[nfbwatlk] Momies With Guides

[Prows, Bennett (HHS/OCR)]

>From the NBC Television affiliate in Portland, KGW:

I saw this video on Northwest Cable News on Sunday aftgernoon.

PORTLAND -- Four Moms getting together recently at Playdate PDX had a lot more than kids in common.
They were brought together by the need to have guide dogs help them while they raise their children.
"I can't see and she's my eyes," said Joy Ross as she motioned to her dog Antonia, "she goes everywhere with me, like another child."
The groups is called Mommies with Guides.
"We talk about more than being blind. It's easy for people to sympathize with you but empathy is hard to find,"said Ross.
The women met last year at an alumni meeting for guide dog owners, "Tracy sat down next to me and I heard a baby and I got so excited and thought, 'There's another Mom here,'" Ross remembered.
The women meet regularly and talk on the phone even more. "Sometimes I'm on three hours sharing problems and getting advice," said Ross, who has two daughters.
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"We've all pretty much been through it or it's going to happen," said mother of four Tracy Boyd.
Their appearance this month on the pages of the national magazine Real Simple is making the group a national model.
"Moms from all over the country are contacting us on Facebook," said Boyd.
The advice they share caters to their own challenges, "Like when they told me to put bells on my daughter's shoes once she started crawling so I could keep track of her," said first-time mom Kelsey Sparks.
"I wish they would have had a group like this when I was starting to raise my son Duncan," Rhonda Patrick said, "just to talk about how to balance the dog and the child."
The group is looking for more members, with the hope of helping moms who may be trying to deal with the darkness alone.
"Just that support of, 'You know me,'" Ross said. "No one else can really understand. But we do."
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