Enhancing Lives, One Guide Dog at a Time

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Guide dogs for the blind is the largest guide dog school in North America and the second largest in the world, Christine Bettinger, CEO of guide dogs for the blind is here to share stories about some awesome friends and all that they do please for me all the dog ponds. Here's Christine with this beautiful story guy dogs for the blind was founded in 1942 to serve individuals who were blinded during World War II. The very first founders of guide dogs for the blind were military dog trainers had the idea that dogs could make a real difference in people's lives and helping them negotiate life with more freedom and more independence. We breed labs gold retrievers and then we ran across between the two dogs are individually just as different as people so dog personalities wants and needs the way they act. Each dog is unique but that works for us and the reason is our clients are unique part of the magic of guide dogs for the blind is the matching process and finding exactly the right match. And that matches based on what your lifestyle is if you're somebody who works in downtown Manhattan and takes the train and then a bus to get into your office every day you have to walk the streets of Manhattan that's that's a little bit of a different God than you know if you're living in a suburb and you know maybe you're doing volunteer work every day or your meeting friends for coffee. Different dogs like to work in different environments we match by personality.

If you are somebody who's super outgoing and really likes talking with people working to match you with a dog that's super outgoing and is going to elicit that interaction for you. If you're somebody who's a little more reserved and you know you just want to get from point A to point B really don't want to be talking with a lot of people along the way to match you with a dog that's a little more reserved elicit as much.

We also make certain that we match our clients preferences. We have clients that their visual impairment allows them to see dark colors so will match them with a black lab or allows them to see lighter colors to match them with a yellow lab or a golden retriever. The matching process is complicated as you can well imagine you've got a lot of different traits that we have to match for the person you know dogs each have their different traits as well. And that's why I say there's always a bit of magic in every single match that's made.

We were the first service dog organization ever to employ positive reinforcement training methods.

Traditional training methods basically set a dog up to fail and then you punish them for failure with the theory being that the dog remembers that doesn't want to be punished again. Positive reinforcement training is setting the dog up for success and rewarding them for success. It feels a lot better to be set up for success and being rewarded for that versus being set up for failure.

It's made a huge difference for our dogs. So the interesting thing is that the skills of a dog trained with essentially punishment based training versus positive reinforcement training their skills are just as good.

The difference is the excitement about working so a punishment based dog is been trained in that methodology isn't excited about going to work because with their thinking is that oh my god if I get something wrong, I'm to be punished. Dogs that are trained with positive reinforcement methodology are so excited to work is like oh my God the harnesses out yes yes let's go and honestly, that makes a huge difference in inches it makes you feel better to the other interesting thing is that when we were using punishment based training.

It took us 24 weeks to train a guide dog in their skills. Positive reinforcement training. It now takes is 12 weeks so you can see there's so many benefits to it, not only from the psychological aspects to the dogs, but they learn much faster and that allows us to be able to train more guy dogs and train more clients. People have to really commit to the guide dog lifestyle in order for a guide dog to be successful you have to get them onto a routine guy. Dogs are trained not to relieve themselves and harness so we all need bathroom breaks right you need to make certain that your consistently feeding at the same times that you're consistently relieving at the same times you have to take your dog to the vet a means of even the way that we interface with our clients is all unique. We don't charge for any of our services. We fly people out to our campuses.

They live with us for two weeks and train with their dogs. We fly them home and then we continue to follow up with our clients to make sure that things are working well and in addition to that, we also pay for all the veteran costs over the dog's lifetime to make certain that no one is put in a position of saying do I pay my rent or do I take my dog to the vet our dogs are trained athletes have to be kept in peak condition. So we want to always make certain that our guy dogs have the best medical care and all of our work is supported through donation.

It's a huge community that supports guide dogs for the blind.

We have approximately 300 staff members and over 4000 volunteers so we actually start training our dogs at three days of age. We have a whole group of volunteers called cobblers who start cuddling our babies and that's literally what they do. They cuddle them so that these babies become used to people become used to human touch and there's nothing scary about a person starting very early on with very gentle, loving touch, which the puppies react to.

Obviously, in a positive way. It says a lot about our breeders a brand-new mama allowing somebody to sit with her babies and hold her babies at three days of age is pretty remarkable. Our clients range in age from 14 to 94. What the qualifications are for getting a guide dog are that you are legally blind that you have a need to go somewhere every day. That doesn't mean that you have to have a job you know something every day.

At a minimum I get out I go for a walk in the reason for that is, the team needs to work together every day.

Otherwise you as a handler lose your skills or the guy dog loses their skills in order to keep that team working seamlessly together got to get out and work every day. The third requirement is that you already have the orientation and mobility skills guy dogs are not GPS systems. You can't just say, dear guy dog take me to the nearest Starbucks you have to know essentially where that Starbucks is and then you need to give your dog the commands for how to get there and your dog will get you there safely in the fourth requirement is that you are living somewhere that will support a guide dog. Often times, particularly in rural environments. There are a lot of off leash. Aggressive dogs. The guy dog feels that they're going to be attacked every time that they walk out their door.

Typically, then there can stop working so if people meet those four criteria then we bring them into our school and they get a guy dog nearly 16,000 teams have graduated since our founding, very product that anyone was Christine Bettinger. No guide dogs for the blind.

My goodness, what a scale of operations running and best of so many donors want to see this happen when we come back more of this great American story of guide dogs for the blind, and so much more where that whole convoy thing sounds like we could all use such are ever such a week when we come back more of his great story here on our Americans. Everything is more expensive these days with inflation, rising Medicare beneficiaries living on a fixed income are concerned about increasing costs make your Medicare dollars go further by picking the right plan. Start by looking for a plan that gives you more. For example, many Medicare advantage plans include dental, vision and hearing benefits while original Medicare doesn't learn more about plan costs beyond premiums such as deductibles and co-pays and drug coverage find that right plan for you, visit you HC Medicare health plans.com let me guess, unknown caller, you can reduce the number of unwanted calls and emails with online privacy protection. The latest innovation from Discover will help regularly remove your personal info like your name and address from 10 popular people search websites that could sell your data and will do it for free activate in the Discover app see terms and learn more@discover.com/online privacy protection. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop for small business insurance.

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Call your local State Farm agent for quote today and we returned to our American stories to Christine CEO guide dogs for the blind was Christine to talk about the dogs and all that goes into the unique training is very special and when you look at service dogs and all the different things that service dogs do guide work is the most complicated for two reasons.

One is that guy dogs have to get everything right hundred percent of the time, they can't just walk their person into traffic once or they can't walk you into a light pole once so guy dogs get no second chances.

They gotta do it right. Secondly, they have to evaluate whether the commander given is going to keep the team safe or not. And if the guy dog believes it won't keep the team safe will have to disobey the command and do exactly the opposite. Now that's even tougher humans. I don't know how often you say no to your boss but that's a hard thing to do and dogs live in hierarchy so basically saying no to their boss.

It takes a special dog be able to do that if a dog is given a command across the street and that handler is not hearing the electric car that's coming around the corner.

Dog has to pull their handler away from the street rather than walking into the street.

So that's an example of what we call intelligent disobedience guy dogs are trained to do all kinds of things when you walk into a room or you walk onto a bus. They are trained to find you an open seat so they'll take you to the first available open seat. Many of our clients train their dogs for very specific things like we have a client. She said wherever I go. I've always got you know my water bottle with me and so I'm always looking for recycling bins so she strained her guy dog when she needs to to find a recycling vent so that she can get rid of her water bottle.

You can train your dog to take you to Starbucks what your dog knows where Starbucks is and that's where you go on a regular basis. You can just say take it Starbucks all kinds of things like what I'll call the magic of guy dogs is that the team becomes so close because the team is together 24 seven and relies on each other.

Our guy dogs are not trained in being able to sense medical changes in our clients somehow they get to know their person well enough that they do. This happened about two years ago. We have a client that does work in Manhattan. She works in one of those buildings that is like a gazillion floors and so you have to take a very specific elevator to your bank of the floors and so her guy. Doug knows exactly which elevator to go to and one particular day her guy dog didn't take her to the bank of elevators, but took her to a group of couches that were sort of off the lobby, and when she got to the group of couches, she realized she wasn't feeling very well.

She sat down and had a stroke so did her guy dog. I cry sorry to her guy dog know that she was going to have a stroke know but the guy Doug knew something was wrong. What are guy dogs do is take care of their people. So the guy Doug knew getting in the elevator probably wasn't the best thing to do.

Getting her to a safer spot was the best thing to do those kinds of stories happen all the time, not your training but through that relationship that grows between a guy dog in their person. What I find really remarkable about our clients is the different types of things that people do, our clients are mothers raising three children. We have people who are business people.

We have people who are chefs who are musicians who are teachers we actually have a couple of clients that have just competed in the Paralympics over in Japan. What a guy dog does is give people confidence to be able to do what they want to do in life. And so as a result, you see these just remarkable things that our clients do we have a client that he's a professional hiker piece hiked with his guy dog the Pacific crest trail he's hiked the Appalachian trail any he's hiked all over the world and he does that. As someone who is blind with the guy dog out for days and days and days by himself.

All that my mind is truly remarkable guide dogs for the blind has made a concerted effort to target youth kids have a tendency to not want to be served, called out his different right and so much of who we become as adults is based on what we experience as young person so canine buddies. They're not guy dogs that they are companion dogs well trained companion dogs for individuals who are too young yet to get a guy dog. We do have a lower age limit, but we don't have an upper age limit were giving canine buddies to families with children as young as five and what I canine buddy does is not only start to orient kids around dogs, but most importantly is building their confidence in her hearing from parents about how you their five-year-old was, not making friends in school afraid to dress themselves wouldn't go to the bathroom on their own money had to be there, and once they had a canine buddy all of a sudden wanting to be independent, getting dressed on their own starting to make friends there. The kind of coolest kid on the block with this really neat dog. Some kids have night terrors with a canine buddy does night terrors go away so canine buddies while they're not specifically service dogs make a huge difference in the life of very young children, then we have a whole host of programs that are targeted towards high school kids. That's a very vulnerable time right wasn't my best years I think bicycle so we have things like what we call GDP camp for high school kids to get together with other kids with similar disabilities.

They actually have the opportunity to work with the guy dog sleep with a guy dog overnight plus just have a great time just being campers just being kids. We fly kids in from all over North America and there's all kinds of fun things to do.

You know, tandem bike riding, canoeing, swimming this last year we actually have the kids visit along the farm and have the opportunity to walk a llama. They all agreed that walking a guy dog was all lot easier than walking on a llama.

Often times kids that have a visual disability don't know anybody else who who does so lifelong friendships are made. It's a great place is fun place.

We've grown from a very small fledgling organization to really you know, the largest guide school in North America. That's not easy. So I'm very grateful to my counterparts who were a part of this organization and set the stage for who we are today because of their efforts.

We've been able to grow. We've been able to find ourselves and really become the leader in the guy dog industry is a huge community that supports our work. I've always been inspired by the difference that animals make in our lives. It's really an honor to be a part of this organization because this is an organization that saves lives.

It gives people their independence and allows people to live the life that they want to live and I can't think of anything more inspirational than that. Great job as always on the production member storytelling by medicine and special thanks to Christine Bettinger, CEO of guide dogs for the blind, to learn more and to help support their mission guide dogs.com. By the way, this is just a perfect example of American generosity at work is working at a nonprofit.

People are donating money people are volunteering there cuddling with dogs. All of these things are doing to help strangers life just move along better. My goodness, what she said about what the dogs mission was order guard dogs do to cure people and they do it, not through the mere training but through the strong relationship built with their client has a mental knows what that relationship means special thanks to all the people would support this great organization guide dogs.com if you will permission to go ahead and help them with the story of Christine Bettinger. The story of guide dogs for the blind and the story of the M of generosity of the American people on Elmo drinks and more fun on your beach vacation like bottomless margaritas going snorkeling whenever I want and body and is loaded and all the daiquiris I can drink everything we need to Level beach vacation in Mexico and the Caribbean with Caribbean help DEA keep our communities safe and healthy.

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