Enhancing Lives, One Guide Dog at a Time

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Here's Christine with this beautiful story. Guide 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. They 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, golden retrievers and then we breed a cross between the two. Dogs are individually just as different as people. So dog personalities, wants, 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 match is based on what your lifestyle is.

If you're somebody who works in downtown Manhattan and takes you know a train and then a bus to get into your office every day and you have to walk the streets of Manhattan, that's a little bit of a different dog than you know if you're living in a suburb and you know maybe you're doing volunteer work every day or you're 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, we're going 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, you really don't want to be talking with a lot of people along the way, we're going to match you with a dog that's a little more reserved and won't 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 we'll match them with a black lab or allows them to see lighter colors so we'll 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 and 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 and 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 who's been trained in that methodology isn't excited about going to work because what they're thinking is that oh my god if I get something wrong I'm going to be punished. Dogs that are trained with a positive reinforcement methodology are so excited to work it's like oh my god the harness is out yes yes yes let's go and honestly that makes a huge difference and it just it makes you feel better too. 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 us 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 guide 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. Guide dogs are trained not to relieve themselves and harness. So we all need bathroom breaks right? You need to make certain that you're consistently feeding at the same times, that you're consistently relieving at the same times.

You have to take your dog to the vet. I mean so 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 veterinary 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 you know 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 guide 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 4,000 volunteers. So we actually start training our dogs at three days of age. We have a whole group of volunteers called cuddlers 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 and I go for a walk and the reason for that is the team needs to work together every day. Otherwise you as a handler lose your skills or the guide dog loses their skills.

In order to keep that team working seamlessly together you've got to get out and work every day. The third requirement is that you already have the orientation and mobility skills. Guide dogs are not GPS systems. You can't just say to your guide 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. And the fourth requirement is that you are living somewhere that will support a guide dog. Oftentimes particularly in rural environments there are a lot of off-leash aggressive dogs. If a guide dog feels that they're going to be attacked every time that they walk out their door typically then they're going to stop working. So if people meet those four criteria then we bring them you know into our school and they get a guide dog. Nearly 16,000 teams have graduated since our founding.

Very proud of that. And you've been listening to Christine Benninger, CEO of Guide Dogs for the Blind and my goodness what a scaled operation she's running and it's at the behest of so many donors who 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. By the way that whole cuddling thing sounds like we could all use such an endeavor or such a week.

When we come back more of this great story here on Our American Stories. Just this year every year the earth goes around the sun you get the latest iPhone and unlimited wireless from Boost Infinite and free candy. No no free candy but you know those people who always have the latest tech gizmo before everyone else now you could be one of those people without even trying. And when people ask you is that the latest iPhone you could just be all cool about it and say oh yeah I mean I get the latest one every year you know that's just how I roll. That can be you with Boost Infinite infinitely better. To learn more visit BoostInfinite.com that's BoostInfinite.com.

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