Weekly Tails from Southeastern Guide Dogs – Graduate Profile
Our puppies are adorable and our dogs are super-talented, but the real reason we are here is to serve the visually impaired community. Here’s a brief profile of one of our newest graduates.
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When someone decides it is time for them to get a guide dog, which sometimes is a hard decision to make, they then must endure an intensive 26-day training course at Southeastern Guide Dogs’ campus to learn to work as a team with their dog. We are proud to say that just yesterday seven people made it through that training period and that achievement was celebrated at graduation. Here is the story of just one of those people and their new guide.
Steve Gladstone & Billy
The Actor and the Rock Star
Retinitis Pigmentosa took all of Steve Gladstone’s sight by the time he was 30, but that didn’t stop him from a thriving career on the stage and big screen. A character actor, Gladstone has appeared on the big and small screen with such names as James Woods, Michael Caine and Dom DeLuise and doing commercials for heavy hitters such as Pizza Hut, Toyota, McDonald’s and Sierra Mist. Gladstone plays a rather imposing pirate in the movie “The Island” for all of about 20 seconds…while he is hardly recognizable, it’s still something to be able to say “hey, I know that pirate!”
Gladstone has come back to Southeastern for his third guide and has been paired with Billy, a black & tan goldador with a rock n’ roll pedigree. Billy was sponsored by Johnny Van Zant, lead singer of the quintessential Southern rock band Lynyrd Syknyrd. And he was named in honor of Billy Powell the longtime keyboardist for the band who died of an apparent heart attack in 2009. Gladstone describes Billy as being a bit of yin and yang – “he is a funky dude, a good player but he is also very bright – he picks things up very quickly.”
Gladstone is looking forward to playing a little tennis ball fetch with Billy, but more importantly, hanging up his white cane and getting out and about.
“Having a guide makes traveling so much easier, people react much better to a dog than they do a cane, he’ll be a great icebreaker for me,” he said.
Hmmm, maybe Billy will help Gladstone land some parts…they’d be a shoo-in if there’s ever a movie about a certain Southern rock band!
Looking for a way to honor someone special in your life? How about sponsoring a guide dog puppy-in-training? The $3,500 donation covers the majority of expenses for the first year of the puppy’s life and comes with naming rights (and bragging rights when it becomes a guide).
