Weekly Tails From Southeastern Guide Dogs

Southeastern Guide Dogs: Graduate Profile – Dennis Babini & Chief Cordell

Last week saw another group of students graduate from Southeastern with their new guide dogs. Here is just one of their stories.

At the intersection of US 19 and Sunset Point Road, Dennis Babini’s life changed forever.  Dennis, a police officer for the Clearwater Police Department, was rear-ended in his patrol car by a drunk driver. The accident split both maculas, taking his sight. “My whole life ended, I used to ride a Harley, skydive, ride horses, hunt, and had gotten into underwater photography. That was all gone” remembered Dennis. Two years after the accident, Dennis went to mobility school to learn independent living as a blind person and also applied for his first guide dog from Southeastern. Recently Dennis returned to Southeastern Guide Dogs for his fifth dog, a handsome black Lab named Chief Cordell. Chief Cordell was named in honor of Chief Master …

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Weekly Tails From Southeastern Guide Dogs

Breed All About It

With Westminster Kennel Club crowning a new king, we thought it time to tackle a question we are often asked: "Why don’t you get dogs from shelters to use as guide dogs?"

This week saw a cute little Affenpinscher named Banana Joe take the title as top dog at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show.  It also saw Natalie Morales of NBC’s Today Show air a new PSA encouraging people to adopt a dog.  There are people who are passionate about breeding dogs and others who are even more passionate about rescuing dogs from shelters.  A question we are asked quite often is why do we breed dogs instead of getting them from shelters, so here’s why. We have been breeding dogs for the past 30 years and have developed a method to get the traits that make for successful guide dogs. These traits include excellent health, trainability, hardiness, and intelligence. That’s not to say you couldn’t find dogs with those traits in a …

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Weekly Tails From Southeastern Guide Dogs

Graduate Profile: Jerry Wixson and Guide Dog Harley

This week another group of students graduated with their guide dogs. Here is just one of their stories.

Bradenton resident Jerry Wixson has done much in his life.  A veteran, who was part of the critical skills program, he also helped to build the interstate system in the U.s.. He is a husband of 55 years to his high school sweetheart, and a father of three daughters. Jerry has always had a positive outlook. When facing vision loss in 2000 due to retinitis pigmentosa, he quickly went through the stages of denial, anger, and acceptance to get right to doing something about it.  After completing orientation and mobility training at the Lighthouse, he next had his sights set on getting a guide dog. Now, all these years later, Jerry came back to Southeastern Guide Dogs for his second guide and was paired with a loveable black goldador (or as …

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Proud Pup Parents

Saturday is a very special day for some of our puppy raisers. Here’s a look at why.

We have talked about our amazing puppy raisers and the extraordinary things they do to ensure we have dogs that are well-behaved and confident.  And we briefly talked about Puppy Raiser Day, but we thought you might like a more in-depth look at this very special day. Puppy raisers spend approximately 14 months loving, caring for, training, and exposing pups -- starting at 9-10 weeks of age -- to every aspect of life so they will grow to be confident guide dogs.  They then return these uber-obedient dogs back to us to begin their formal harness training in the hopes of becoming a working guide dog. After six months of training with our guide dog trainers, passing a battery of tests, hopefully these dogs are ready to be matched with their …

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Weekly Tails From Southeastern Guide Dogs

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Match

Just exactly how do the trainers match up the students with their guide dogs? Here’s a glimpse at the process.

If you followed along on our series of articles about the training our students go through when they come on campus to get their guide dogs, then you know a bit about the process of matching up someone with their perfect guide. Well, it is actually quite a bit more involved than we were able to cover there, so we wanted to delve a bit deeper into the science and art of the perfect match. The match process starts long before the students arrive on campus. As the trainers take their dogs through the training process, they are keeping track of all the dog’s idiosyncrasies, each little thing to which they react, how fast they tend to walk, the ease or difficulty of correcting them and myriad other little nuances that will aid in finding the …

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Graduate Profile: John Esak & Dixie

Just before Christmas, we saw our 215th class of students graduate with their new guide dogs. Here is just one of their stories, as told by Leslie Rowe.

John Esak’s early vision struggles never stopped him from leading a renaissance life. A former long-haired hippie who once cashed in Coke cans to buy his ticket to Woodstock, he earned a master’s degree in music composition and enjoyed an inventive career as a recording engineer and recording equipment designer. John lost his left eye at age 10. So when a glaucoma operation failed on his good eye about ten years ago, the resulting vision loss was devastating. But John pressed on, teaching himself to use a cane and inventing his own methods of navigation. For years he hesitated about getting a guide dog, fearing that the dog would be more of an impediment than a help. But after just a few weeks with an unbelievably smart black Lab named …

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Weekly Tails From Southeastern Guide Dogs

Open Your Eyes to Visual Impairments

This week kicked off with National White Cane Day, so it would seem appropriate to shed some light on visual impairments.

Monday brought another National White Cane Day in the U.S.  Closer to home, Bradenton Mayor Wayne Poston and the Manatee County Commissioners put forth proclamations that also designated White Cane Safety Day in Manatee County and the city of Bradenton.  The White Cane Law has been in effect since the 1930’s and provides for safe travel for anyone using a mobility device (i. e. white cane or guide dog) by giving them the right-of-way when crossing the street. As of June 2012, the World Health Organization estimated the number of people with visual impairment to be 285 million: Wow, 285 million!  The U.S. alone has more than 25 million people with vision impairments, with the most prevalent causes being cataracts, glaucoma and age-related …

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Trust Me Baby: To Be a Southeastern Grad You Have to Learn Trust

Last week we had another group of students leave campus as graduates of Southeastern Guide Dogs. In order to successfully complete their training, they had to learn to trust their dog, something that is not an easy task.

Take a moment and put yourself in the shoes of our students.  They have been dealing with vision loss for anywhere from the past year to their entire lives; they have learned to take cautious steps and concentrate on the task of getting safely from one place to another; they are now taking the big step of getting a guide dog and have arrived for training.  They are away from all that is familiar, away from family and friends, and are anxious about what is coming in training. Enter our confident guide dog trainers. They have studied each student’s gait, personality, learned about their lifestyle, and have determined the perfect dog for them. The students and their dogs have had their bonding time and now its time to go to work. They go out …

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Weekly Tails From Southeastern Guide Dogs

Graduate Profile: Michael Pierce and Addy

This week another group of Southeastern Guide Dog Students turned into Graduates – here is just one of their stories.

Michael Pierce of Ft. Myers came to Southeastern Guide Dogs for his first guide.  It was an encounter on paratransit with a man who had made the transition from a cane to a guide dog that brought him here.  “That guy said that trading in the cane for a guide dog was like going from a Model-T to a Ferrari,” Michael recalls. Michael’s Ferrari came in the cute little body of a black Labrador named Addy.  Watching this pair work, you can see Michael made the right decision as their steps are confident and quick. Back home in Ft. Myers, this musician (who opened up for the likes of Janis Joplin), turned ADA advocate looks to have a full plate.  As a staffer for the Center for Independent Living – Gulf Coast, Michael spends much time working …

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Weekly Tails From Southeastern Guide Dogs

Hoveround Provides Mobility in an Unusual Manner

Thanks to the generosity of a local employer, here is a profile of one of our most recent graduates.

Hoveround has been providing mobility in the form of power wheelchairs for 20 years, supplying those in need with over 185,000 power chairs from their Sarasota factory.  But recently they helped to provide mobility in the form of a guide dog – not their usual M.O. Hoveround employee Josh Burch has had a guide dog in the past, but despite having a world-class guide dog school in the neighborhood, Burch felt he couldn’t take the time off work to go through the intensive 26 day training.  When word of this dilemma got to Tom Kruse the CEO of Hoveround, he graciously gave Burch the time off and even went the step further to pay Burch while he learned to work in concert with his new guide, Wayne. “Southeastern Guide Dogs is a wonderful …

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