[NYAGDU] February and March Minutes

Tue Apr 15 01:52:52 UTC 2025

New York Association of Guide Dog Users

Monthly Meeting

February 19, 2025

In Attendance: Amanda Martins, Lucy Marr, Mary Lou Mendez, Aubrey Bird, and
Luis Mendez.

Due to Kelleigh's recent loss of her Seeing Eye Dog, Jethro, Amanda is acting
as Intermediate President while Kelleigh takes some personal time.

Mary Lou made the motion and Amanda seconded it to accept our October and
November minutes as distributed. The motion passed.

Lucy provided a Treasurer's report. 

Mary Lou reported a conversation with someone from another organization that
previously had a fundraiser with stuffed dogs wearing leather guide dog
harnesses. Her contact says that they purchased stuffed dogs and had someone
make leather harnesses, but the leather worker is retiring.  Amanda will
research finding a leather worker in the state that could possibly produce a
harness for a stuffed dog for our fundraiser. 

Aubrey suggested having a raffle where the winner would receive a 3D model of
one of their dogs. They would need to submit pictures or videos of their dog
and Jim could make the model. 

Aubrey described an attempted access denial with Uber at our Washington
Seminar. We discussed working on criminalizing interfering with a service dog
team in New York State at our Albany Seminar. We would need guide dog teams
to attend our Albany Seminar March 10, 11, 17 and 18. Possible guide dog
users were discussed as potential attendees. Mary Lou offered to write the
fact sheets for this issue and Lucy said she could help with editing it.
Justin Young is working on guide dog issues/Uber and Lyft denials on a
national level. Raul Gallegos and Al Elia would be good references in helping
with crafting this legislation. It was suggested to use data from the Ride
Share Survey that NFB conducted along with information from a Seeing Eye
Survey to show the severity of this problem in New York.  

We discussed having a t-shirt fundraiser. Aubrey has a list of suggested
slogans that she will share. We will need to make decisions by our April
meeting. Aubrey is willing to pack them in their suitcase and take them to
our National Convention to be sold at the affiliate table in the Exhibit
Hall, but they would like for some NYAGDU members to help sell them.

Meeting adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,

Lucy Marr

NYAGDU Secretary/Treasurer

***

New York Association of Guide Dog Users

March 25, 2025

In Attendance: Kelleigh Larsson, Amanda Martins, Lucy Marr, Aubrey Bird, Jim
Jonas, and Bernice Bird.

Lucy reported that Mary Lou recently lost her retired Seeing Eye Dog
Princess. Our condolances go to Mary Lou and Luis. 

Amanda discussed her experiences in advocating at our Albany Seminar for
amending the service dog bill to criminalizing interfering with a service dog
team in New York State. There were over 100 meetings held with legislators
and their staff over the two weeks.  There were two drafts written, so there
is interest in supporting this issue. Amanda will send a copy of the drafts
to the NYAGDU Board. 

Kelleigh discussed having an online auction that would end in late October
that would contain items such as hand made afghans and quilts. She also
discussed approaching a Syracuse artist named Just Joe to support NYAGDU by
performing a benefit concert. Amanda brought up the idea of the raffle
previously discussed for the 3D dog replica that Jim is able to create. This
raffle would be available to guide and service dog users only. We discussed
ending the sales of the 3D dog replica in September. We would sell chances at
our National Convention in July. The prize would also include the file.
Kelleigh and Amanda will work together to write a description of the raffle
for the 3D Dog replica. 

We discussed the T-shirt sale. Kelleigh asked that Aubrey and Lucy work
together to get our treasury together and moved into the Citazen's Bank
account. Some suggested slogans are:

You can always find hope in a dog's eyes.

Be the kind of person your dog thinks you are.

Shake that tail for me.

This is what a real service dog looks like.

If you are reading this, you are too close to my dog.

Guide Dog do's and don'ts.

Keep calm and wag on. 

Don't tail gate me with pictures of dog tails on back.

Don't fluff with the rights of guide dog users. Picture of golden retriever.

We had a discussion on selling bandanas as they would be less expensive and
easier to sell.

Jim will research using a service called Fiver, where the artist will make
drawings for our fundraising efforts for inexpensive costs.  

Aubrey suggested publishing a survey on NAGDU to see which t-shirt slogans
people wanted and then we could email people later to purchase them. 

Bernice suggested advertising the meetings on New York News. 

After a discussion on our treasury, Amanda made the motion and Lucy seconded
it, that Aubrey will talk with someone from KeyBank about the monthly fees
they have taken out of our account for nearly 2 1/2 years and if they don't
return the funds, we will withdraw our money from the checking and savings
accounts at KeyBank. The motion passed. 

Our next meeting is April 16.

Meeting adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,

Lucy Marr

NYAGDU Secretary/Treasurer

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