[nagdu] Dobes as guides

[Jenine Stanley]

Sorry, I think I missed the message about Doberman guides at Leader. 

Stan Doran, whom many may remember from the Newsreel magazine, was one of
the first legally blind instructors to work at an established guide dog
school back in the late '30's and beyond. 

Stan spoke once to our local guide dog group and I kick myself to this day
for not having recorded it. He talked about working for a program in Royal
Oaks, Michigan called Path Finders. This was a guide dog school run by a man
who had a Doberman kennel. I think they only used Dobes in the beginning.
The program wasn't around that long, maybe 5 years if that, but one of the
things they also did was to find graduates employment as traveling Fuller
Brush sales people, demonstrating the abilities of the dogs as they went
from house to house. 

Stan didn't say how many of these dogs they graduated or how many blind
people, mostly men in his recounting, did this type of work. He did say that
the school broke up after a row with the founder and Stan and a group of
others went to the Chicago area to regroup and eventually came back to
Columbus where they founded Pilot dogs with a formal facility. They stuck
with the Doberman as a core breed since that's what Stan and his brother,
Walt, knew, but they did add other breeds. 

Stan said he thought that some of the players in Path Finders did go on to
work with Leader and that for a time Leader did use Dobermans but it didn't
last. 

I still think Path Finders wins for best guide dog school name ever. <grin>

 Jenine Stanley
jeninems at wowway.com