GDF vs. GDB

About three people have asked me to critique my experiences with having a guide dog from Guide Dogs for the Blind (my current dog) with Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind (my first dog), hereby designated as GDF as M1’s school, and GDB as M2’s school. This might get tedious if you are not a guide dog user…so feel free to skip if you are of the sighted nature.

In this corner: M1 from GDF

In this corner: M2 from GDB

Disclaimer:

It is a little unfair to critique GDB dogs when I’ve only had mine about 5 weeks so far. I was going to do this later, but the thing I have problems with remembering my first dog (M1) is remembering how she was when I got her vs. what I trained her to do. Before I was a blogger, I was a journaler, so I have gone back and looked at journals of the first year I had M1. And this initial period is what I will try to compare, not my new dog five weeks in vs. my old dog at 5 years in. In other words, what kind of dog you actually get from the school from the get-go. There is also the famous “second dog syndrome” where guide dog users have trouble adjusting and accepting their new dog because they are so used to their old one. I’m not immune to this, but I think I am not as susceptible as some others might be because it has been 5 years since M1 died and about 6 1/2 years since I worked her. I did not go straight from a broke in dog to a new one. It was more like going from cane to dog again.

Also, there are just differences in dogs which do not reflect on the school. I try to appreciate this and also be objective about it and bring in what I know of other service dogs besides M1 and M2. I was very familiar with Big N’s dog fro GDF, Jats, and lived with him for a while. I have not met, but heard stories of Big N’s ex-wife’s 2 dogs from GDF. Besides my fellow GDF students, I also knew several people in Nebraska with GDF dogs. For three years, I lived next to a woman who went through two guide dogs from Guiding Eyes for the Blind. In grad school, I also was good friends with another woman who had a dog from The Seeing Eye, along with several other acquaintances from that school. I also lived with a man who had a service dog (not a guide dog, a mobility assistance animal) from NEADS. I do not know that many people with dogs from GDB except for my fellow students in class and a friend of N’s in Toronto. I knew of  a couple in Nebraska who both had dogs from GDB as well, but mostly only saw them at the bus stop, not working them. My point is, I have been exposed to and have seen the workings of a lot of guide dogs from  a lot of different schools. So rather than comparing M1 to M2 specifically, I will try to look for overall patterns I see with the dogs from the same schools. This is imperfect and highly subjective, obviously, and with that I will end my long-winded disclaimer.

I’m going to sort of go through the life of a guide dog and rate my opinions on each domain, if that makes sense.

Breeding:

Both schools breed their own dogs. I am not an expert in any way on animal husbandry and thus this is where my opinion counts the least.

GDF dogs were in general bigger than GDB’s. Although this may have changed. I also know that now GDF are breeding a large number of labradoodles that don’t shed. I prefer a smaller dog as they are easier to handle in tight spaces like light rail cars and restaurants. So far, it seems like M2 does not shed as much as M1 did. Her coat is a bit thinner and wire-y-er than M1’s and thus shedding is not all over the place like M1. Both dogs were very pretty yellow labs, and both seem exceptionally intelligent. I do know that GDB breeds a LOT more dogs than GDF, and this might help with diversity. The jury is out on M2 yet, but M1 had some mild skin allergy issues and then later experienced joint problems in her old age.

Winner: I really can’t call a winner in this category. I just don’t have the expertise.

Puppy Raiser Program:

Both schools place their puppies with volunteer families that raise them the first year and are responsible for basic things like housebreaking and socializing. This is pre-me so it is another area where I have limited information. But this is what I gather.

GDF’s puppy raisers raise the dog from 8 weeks to about 12 to 15 months old. I did have a relationship with M1’s puppy raisers and from what I was told, they took M1 to “puppy camp,” every Saturday morning for a year. This was obedience school for the dogs that occurred right on campus with GDF trainers running the class. They had specific assignments required of them to practice during the week in regards to obedience commands. And then they were encouraged to give the dog opportunities to experience all kinds of different situations.

GDB’s puppy raisers seem to keep the dogs longer (8 weeks to 18 months), but do not seem to have the structure in place that was required at GDF. From what I have heard, the puppy raisers go to “meetings” that take place within their local cluster once or twice a month. GDB families seem to be spread out geographically much farther than GDF families. Some families are several states away from the campuses. It seems that although they take their dogs to the meetings and do learn and discuss obedience techniques and problem solve behavioral issues, they are not really attending “obedience school” with the dog. Based strictly from what I’ve heard, it seems a lot more lax than the GDF program.

And this seems like as good of place as any to discuss the off duty behaviors of M1 and M2 (and the other dogs I’m familiar with.) Guide dogs only guide a small portion of the day. The rest of the time, you and everyone around you in your family, workplace and public, has to deal with them. The thing I have struggled with the most with M2 is her off duty behavior, which by service dog standards I was astounded by how bad it is. And I was astounded by how bad the other GDB dogs were as well. I don’t know if the puppy raiser programs are solely to blame for this or at fault at all, but I put it here because this is what I expect most out of a dog that has been in a puppy trainer program.

M2 (and other GDB dogs I’ve seen and heard about) jump on people to greet them. They have trouble sitting still in restaurants. They have trouble sitting next to other guide dogs without wrestling/playing. They, to varying degrees, put things they shouldn’t in their mouths and then don’t know simple commands such as “leave it” or “out.” I have to tell you that this is what absolutely shocked me the most in my training at GDB. You think at the very least, you are going to get a dog that has been trained better than your average pet dog that has been through obedience school and I have to say in my experience, they are not. My dad’s miniature dachshund, Abbey, has better control of her trash mouth behavior than M2 does. And it was really weird at GDB when the fellow students would get together in someone’s room or in a lounge just to talk, controlling our dogs from going ape shit with each other was a constant interruption. All dogs will get a sniff or nuzzle in, and some dogs will even get especially excited to see another familiar dog and lose control. That isn’t what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about just constant wresting with each other, barking, growling, nipping, biting etc. It is not vicious. It is all very playful in nature. And M1 did do this with other dogs at times, but it was not constant and it was controllable. When I was in training for 4 weeks at GDF with nine other students stuck in the dorm, we visited with each other a lot and NEVER had the constant degree of dog wrestling problem that I had in my two-weeks at GDB. When I lived with Jats and the NEADS dog, Chloe, we did not have this problem. When I visited my friends with guide dogs, we did not have this problem. I’m not saying the dogs NEVER got frisky and played with each other, I just mean that it was not constant and it was easy to call off. And remember that couple in Lincoln I only sort of knew from the bus stop? All I ever saw their dogs do was sit at the bus stop. But my friend went to their house a few times and she said it was constant dog WWF the whole time and also that their were pee and poop stains all over the floor.

M2’s trash mouth problem might be specific to her in its extremeness, although my GDB roommate has pretty much adapted her lifestyle to preventing her dogs from eating stuff they shouldn’t. She has her son keep all his toys in his room and they baby gate  the upstairs. They keep the downstairs toy and debris free. There is nothing wrong with this, I guess. But in a small house like ours with two (almost three) boys, it is not that realistic. M2 has eaten legos, matchbox cars, little dinosaur animals, crayons and wooden blocks. She got into a bottle of WEED KILLER (though I blame my dad for that one.) She constantly gets into the trash can (like literally every five minutes) and then I bought a trashcan for the bathroom with a lid and she dumped that over and figured it out in about ten minutes. She got into my back pack and wallet and ripped apart my cash and some credit cards. I have to keep constant supervision of her which is nearly impossible. I tie her down and she eats the carpet right out of the floor. I put her in the living room (hardwoods) and she chews on the couch. My only way to contain her when I need to do anything (like go to the bathroom or sleep) is to kennel her, which she is not fond of. Outside she eats her own poop, bark mulch and the branches right off the bushes. Her problem is constant. She is learning the command “leave it” but I still have not found a way to teach her “out” and thus am constantly diving into her mouth with my hand and pulling stuff out. This is our biggest challenge and to be truthful I am absolutely shocked that I have to deal with this problem to this extent. I am working on it by supervising her in small doses and trying to replace the offending item with Nylabones and dog toys and “leave it” ing her all day long and trying to teach her to spit stuff out. But we have a LONG ways to go. This bad habit is deeply ingrained within her.

If I seem a little hysterical about this, I am. My whole existence has changed due to M2’s trash mouth. I can’t relax around the house when she is free or even on tie down. And even I can’t in good conscience kennel her ALL the time.

To put this into perspective, think of it like this. A few days after I got M1 I went back to work, at a preschool, and then a few weeks later in a public school kindergarten class. Kids, toys, chaos everywhere; carpet, furniture, books abound. Recess in grassy areas with kids playing with balls. I never even bothered to tie that dog down. Ever. Not at home, not at work. She had a blanket to lay on and work and she laid there. I would let her run around outside in the fenced yard area and in my empty classroom (with a few straggling kids sometimes for entertainment) during my lunch break. She rarely picked up anything she was not supposed to put in her mouth. She was not perfect. If there was a big piece of pizza lying on the floor, she would go for it. But I could say “leave it” or if I didn’t catch it in time, I could say “out” and she would spit it out. For years I left bags of dog food out that she would not touch. (In her retirement years, she did get a bit of trash mouth, but this happened when she was left home alone and had anxiety issues. Never right in front of me after repeated corrections.)

One thing that is definitely different about the dogs is their behavior in harness and out. M1 did act better and more serious in harness. But there wasn’t like a whole bipolar personality and training difference out of harness. The GDB dogs seem to really have a whole different personality when not in harness. M2 is a basically good dog in harness, but a holy terror brat out of harness. The GDF dogs were taught to guide on leash, not just in harness. Leash guiding is a little sloppy, so it was only meant for things like running to your mailbox, getting around indoors short distances, things like that. The point is, all the same commands and rules applied when on leash and when in harness. Its not like they don’t run and play when they aren’t in harness, it is just that when you give them a command, all the same rules apply and they listen to the command. GDB does not teach their dogs to guide or do much of anything besides sit and stay when out of harness, or even in harness but having downtime. They really don’t carry over that discipline much at all. It is really annoying.

Winner: GDF, BY FAR. To have a guide dog is a lot more than guide work. It is to have a constant companion at your side in all situations. To me, off duty stuff seems to fall into the hands of the puppy raisers, and I don’t think the GDB folks get enough structure or guidance to do all that needs to be done. And/or the work that they do do is not carried over and reinforced and added onto in actual guide training.

Guide Work:

The next step for the dogs is to return to the school and do the intense training of guide work. GDB seems to generally train less for less time (about 4-6 months) than GDF (about 6-8 months.) This is the area I really looked back into old journals and my memory to really try to be fair and evaluate M1 as a new guide dog. I actually think both M1 and M2 are equally good at the guide work they do. But there are some major differences in training that make M1 and GDF the standout.

Number of commands:

GDF teaches their dogs more commands. It is that simple. And many are quite handy. The commands that GDB teaches and that M2 knows, she knows quite well. But she just doesn’t have the vocabulary of M1. I’m not going to write an exhaustive list of commands that each dog knew upon my receiving them, but M2’s are much more basic. She knows forward, left, right, follow, hoppup, and others like that.

M1 knew those and in addition knew things like upstairs, downstairs, out door, escalator, chair, under (as in “sit under the bus bench”), find the way (when confronting a total obstacle that blocks your way), head in (to walk into the harness when putting it on, M2 and I wrestle a bit with this), over left/right (A gradual or not obvious turn. M2 has a left, left, left that kind of does the same thing, but not as well and more annoying to keep saying it until she turns, sometimes you are in a conversation with someone and you don’t want to stop and say left, left, left 20 times), about (to do a 180 and go the other direction, M2 can just do a right and a right again, about is more convenient). I’m probably forgetting some. There is a way I talked to M1 to keep her on track that I’m now doing with M2 and she is catching on. Like “Straight to the curb!” when she starts to get a little meandering on a sidewalk.

Learning New Commands

Another big difference between GDF and GDB is the use of food. GDB uses food rewards and GDF never did. We were required to carry around our waist a little pouch of kibble and to reward M2 upon crossing a street, finding a door, etc. Although I do believe that this process speeds up the transition from the loyalty the dogs have to the trainer to the loyalty she has to you, it was a pain in the ass and I have almost completely eliminated using food with M2. M2 works WAAAAAAY better when food is just out of the picture all together.  Because when you have food rewards, she gets so into the food that she focuses on nothing else. She does her guide work to get the reward, but she is not really focusing on the guide work or what is going on around her. She is focusing on getting the food. She technically does what she is supposed to, but it almost has a hyper-sterical quality to it that is rushed and unfocused. It is not comfortable to guide with her when she is constantly thinking about food. Besides, it is gross to always have to have your right hand handy to grab food out of a pouch and shove it in your dog’s mouth. You want to shake someone’s hand and you have wet, slobbery dog breath hands. Also, you attract other dogs with the food pouch. Its gross and its a pain in the ass. And it is sometimes painful. Although usually she is fairly good, especially if I get the food right down to her quickly, she can bite your hand off. Ouch! I was giving her food rewards intermittently at the school, I saw the problem and their solution was to have me UP the food rewards to every street crossing, good deed, etc. When I got home, I forgot the food pouch enough to just accidentally see HOW MUCH BETTER she does without food. I still give lots of praise and pats, but the food is gone for good. She doesn’t expect it. She is much more comfortable working now. She is steadier and not so frenzied, she is more focused, she seems to relax and enjoy the walk more, she listens better. The only exception to this is when I let her run around in my backyard and I call her, I give her a food reward for coming, because this is such an important thing for her to do if you accidentally lose her, or if I need to quickly retrieve her from a dog run or something. M1 never used food as reward.

Both schools expect that you will go home and teach your dog more commands and customize routes to your own environment. But they have different expectations as to how to do it. My basic theory is that GDB WAY underestimates it’s dogs capacity to learn stuff. GDF’s basic thing was to just left, right navigate your way to a destination and when you get to the door or whatever, name it and give it lots of praise. So, like you would go to the store, get there and be all “Good Store! Good Store, Doggy! Good store!” Yes, you sound ridiculous, but it works. When surveying some of the GDF students I know, they say it averages about three or four trips there to really get it into your dog’s head. And then they get it. I even remember taking M1 back to my old hometown after not living there for over a year and she remembered some of our regular routes and the commands that went with them. M1 could find bus shelters, crossing light buttons, and other landmarks like that consistently across contexts as long as they looked somewhat similar to what she knew. N’s dog, Jats could find public telephones and subway stations across contexts, as well. I taught M1 the names of my college classes and these changed each semester. I have in my journal the number of words she knew after about a year with me and it was 67. She also picked up on several ASL signs.

I have absolutely no doubt that M2 has this same capacity to learn. She has already demonstrated this as I have used the same methods with her. So this isn’t really a neg on GDB, just an interesting point, or it could even be a positive. But I don’t think GDB thinks the dogs have this capacity to learn. The way they teach the dogs new commands is pretty tedious. It isn’t that it is wrong to know these methods, and maybe in some instances it is good to know these methods because there are some contexts that any dog just struggles with and needs extra help to learn something. But I just don’t think that in general, for most dogs in most situations, this is necessary.

What they do is basically two methods. One, there is a word for it that escapes me right now. I want to say backtracking? You cane or sighted guide to your destination, then name it and provide food reward. Then you back up two feet and do it again. Then four feet and do it again. Repeat at increasing intervals until you’ve gotten a good 25 or so feet away. So basically, to find the door to a Starbuck’s during training. I walked up to that door, didn’t go in, treated my dog and repeated this process like 10 times. Compare that to what I would do with M1 (and have already successfully done with M2) which is to maybe twice go up to the door starting from perhaps 30  to 50 feet away. One of the first things I taught M2 was the route to D’s house. I did it once, then back tracked all the way to the end of the block and did it again. Did it once again the next day, and since then she knows it. I’ve also done that for my own house and the train station. No food reward needed, no 20 step backtracking. Dogs LIKE to learn. They like to use their brain.

The other interesting GDB strategy is clicker training. I don’t quite get clicker training, it seems like redundant systems. But I can see where in certain circumstances, redundant systems might be helpful. Basically, you have this little gadget in your hand that, when you push a button, makes a distinct clicking noise. And in the dog’s Pavlovian mind, this clicking noise is paired with food reward. So, in class, I taught my dog a couple of things with the clicker. One was to find a chair. I held a kibble in my hand and clicked when the dog touched my hand with her nose, immediately giving her food reward. After a couple of those, I put my hand with the kibble in it on the chair seat. Immediately as she touched my hand, I clicked and gave her the food. Then I paired the click and the food with the word “chair.” Then, I stretched my body (and the dog) as far away as I could while still touching the chair with my kibble hand and repeated. Then two feet away, then four feet, etc. We also did this with a miscellaneous post and a bus shelter later on. Interestingly, when I asked my instructor if this reward for the bus shelter would transfer to all bus shelters (that looked reasonably similar to this one) and she said, no. Funny, I thought. I taught M1 how to find almost any bus shelter without clicker/food or big ta-doo. Just a few trials with reinforcing praise (Good Bus! Good Bus!!!). I haven’t found a context in which I think clicker training would be more helpful than just the usual positive reinforcement that seems to be working just fine for us right now. I’m not saying that I never will. (Can I use it somehow to eliminate trash mouth? Hmmm.) But it just seems like more of a distraction from the “lesson” than necessary. The word + the click + the food +the verbal praise, gets M2 all hyper-spastic about the food reward. Whereas the word + the praise seems to help her focus on the actual WORD/LOCATION pairing, which is the important part.  It takes her less time to learn a new word my way than to use the clicker. I taught her this particular ramp/curb cut that I have to find on a daily basis in my neighborhood when I had the instructor handy. And she did learn it that day, but she forgot it only four days later when I got home. We still are working on that damned ramp from time to time. She seems to get all kerflustered each time we get near it.  This might be a YMMV thing. But pairing food rewards for M2 gets her all fucked-in-the-head silly.

The Two-Handed Harness Issue

When comparing the two school’s method of training, the two-handed harness vs. one-handed harness has been HUGE for me. I’m a mom of two young boys. One of the reasons I waited so long to get a guide dog after my kids were born is because I could not figure out how to watch the kids while having to sacrifice one hand to a guide dog. Even with a cane, you can flip it back and forth as need be or even tuck it under an arm in a pinch. It is mandatory for me to have hands free to manage kids. Finally, as the kids have gotten older, I felt that they were able to be verbally managed enough that I could let one hand free to use for a dog. Imagine my surprise and horror when I found that the way GDB’s harnesses work and the way that they teach corrections requires both hands to be available. I couldn’t believe it. It is the dumbest thing ever. Even if you don’t have kids, sometimes you have to like, carry things? Like groceries? Or maybe a coffee? Or, like, anything that needs to be carried? How they possibly ever thought this was a good idea or workable in real life is beyond me. Right now I am in the absolutely necessary process of changing M2 over to the old harness and the left handed corrections. (And she is doing quite well with the transition, thankyouverymuch.)

Okay, so let me explain. GDF had you do everything with your left hand in regards to your dog. You held the harness with your left hand and you held the correction leash looped around your left wrist and then held between your fingers of your left hand. The harness itself had a little give to it between the handle and the actual leather straps on the dog. The harness connected to the leather straps via two loops that removed with a standard leash clasp. Most guide dog harnesses are something like this, so you probably know what I mean, it is the standard. So, with your voice and your left hand, you could do everything. Rarely, if your dog was just a complete monster and getting away from you, you could reach down with your right hand and correct with the leash in your right hand. But you had a system of escalating corrections. 1. Verbal (huppup). 2. A slight jerk and release of the harness (meaning, Yo, over here. Pay attention!) 3. drop the harness and snap the leash (a major correction when she’s completely gone from guiding.) The thing is, you ALWAYS have that dog. You always have your wrist wrapped around the leash. So not only is your right hand free… for short periods, your left hand can be free, too, and you dog is still guiding albeit leash guiding only. For example, to carry a cafeteria tray to a table, drop the handle, the leash is automatically around your wrist, grab your tray with both hands, and your dog can at least guide you a bit around obstacles. My infamous story of being hit by a car while walking across a Target parking lot driveway is a case in point. That one handed leash hold very well saved my life. A car hit us while driving out of the driveway into a busy street without looking at us. Both M1 and I fell under the front of the car and were pushed into the busy street of oncoming traffic then the car lurched to a stop. In the fall I dropped the harness handle but the leash was safely around my wrist. M1 was able to guide me instantly via leash up and away from the oncoming traffic and back to the sidewalk.

With the GDB way of doing it, I likely would have let go of the whole dog in that scenario and then who knows if I would have had the wherewithal to get my butt out of the traffic so quickly. So, they have you hold the handle in your left hand, but hold the leash just tucked under the index finger of your left hand, not around your wrist and all or several of your fingers. The handle is connected to the harness via a stiff rubbery sort of male/female attachment. (Basically a stick goes into a hole and locks in place.) There is absolutely no give to the harness handle. The handle is stuck in one position to the leather straps. As an aside, that handle sticks up awkwardly when not in use just an inch or so instead of resting on the dog’s back, and because of this and because there is no give to it, it gets stuck EVERYWHERE! All harness handles can get stuck from time to time, but this one just gets stuck a whole lot more. So anyway, to make a correction, almost your only way to do it is to take the leash with your right hand from under your left index finder and do a leash correction, and then have to put it back. There is no harness handle “Pay Attention!” mechanism. Also, as GDF used hand signals a lot (you could literally just point your dog the direction you wanted to go with your right hand if need be) GDB relies on the leash in right hand to point your dog in the right direction. So if your dog strays to the left and you want it to go forward, you take the leash from your left hand with your right and actually take the leash forward in front of the dog. It is extremely awkward, and you can’t freakin’ use your right hand for anything else! (Especially if you are also using your right hand to dish out food rewards.)

I started the wrist wrapped, left handed leash corrections with M2 almost the day I got home. And that has worked fine, allowing me to at least hold a kid’s hand or a bag of groceries in my right. But the REAL improvement came when I put M1’s old harness on M2. That made a huge improvement in our guiding and need for correction in the first place. M2 is easier to control if you can catch her before she goes full-fledged bad dog. With the right hand corrections, by the time I’ve gotten the damned leash in my right hand and all that for a big correction, she’s gone off in her bad dog world, eating shit off the ground or going after a bird or something. With the GDF harness, I can catch her at the slightest inkling of misbehavior. Another dog walks by and I feel her head turn towards it. With just a subtle left-handed flick of the harness (Hey! Get back to work!) she is corrected before she even had a chance to go full-fledged bad dog. No big leash correction necessary. And when that doesn’t work, I can much more quickly drop the harness handle and correct her than I can crossing over hands and putting it into my right. I can do this and still hold onto my kid and even still with maybe just a command or two keep my conversation going with whoever I’m with, too. With the GDF harness and all left-handed corrections, my need to correct her (with a full leash correction) have decreased dramatically. Mostly, she just needs to be told to get back to the job at hand.

Miscellaneous

M2 (and the other GDB dogs) lack some “grace” or something that other service dogs have. It is little things. Like just going to a restaurant and having your dog tuck under your chair or beside you under the table rather than sprawling around everywhere and scooching around searching for crumbs. When I take M2 on the light rail and find a seat and tell her to sit, she just plops down wherever the hell she is at. Middle of the aisle, in front of someone’s feet, whatever. And then I have to man-handle her into the right place out of the way. M1 would just automatically go under the seat. (Now, sometimes she would start to sprawl eventually, but at least she started in the right place and tucking her back in was easier). I can teach M2 these things, but right now she just has no idea. M1 already knew these types of things. Going sighted guide with M1 meant that I could just drop the harness and heel her and almost forget about her unless she got sufficiently distracted (which did happen.) Heeling with M2 is a fucking nightmare. I hate it. I either have to work her or not go for a walk at all because going sighted guide with her or heeling with her at all is constant, CONSTANT corrections and having her jerk around and cross in front of you back and forth or lag behind you. It’s easier to walk with my dad’s total spastic brat miniature dachshund than her (at least she doesn’t pull so hard.) Again, I’m working on the heeling with her, but I did not have this problem with M1, nor did I ever see it much with Jats, Chloe, or the Guiding Eyes or Seeing Eye dogs that much. I’m not saying these other dogs were perfect. They ALL have their moments of brattiness. But at least they started with an expectation of good behavior and you worked back to that, that was the default. M2 just doesn’t have a clue about some of this stuff. There is no default to work back to.

Winner: Most definitely GDF. I’m working Ms. M2 into being a GDF dog, and I resent a lot that after thousands of dollars of training (paid for by donors) and hundreds of dollars of childcare and hours of taking time out of my life to get her, that I have to do all this with her. You always have to do work with a new dog. That is a given. But in my journals, I have the things M1 and I worked on the first few weeks. And it was all route stuff. Like how to get through my parking lot of my apartment with no sidewalks and buildings everywhere. It wasn’t things like “heel” and “leave it” for crissake. Not quit eating your poop, you damned dog! Quit jumping on and knocking over the babysitter’s 6 year old! Brat!

There are other small finesse type issues that GDF trains their dog to do and GDB does not. For example, shopping with a dog while pulling the cart behind you. GDB says don’t do it, it isn’t fair to the dog. They say to just heal the dog and push the cart in front of you, having a sighted person pull you and the cart from behind. But part of my job, for example, is to help D go shopping. Even though he helps me with the visuals, I cannot just passively be sighted guided around the store. I have to pull the cart behind me and have M2 lead. Then (being up front and with my right hand easily freed, I can grab things for D and put them in the cart. M1 was trained for this, as well as to work with strollers, etc. M2 was not. But I do have to say, we’ve been shopping three or so times now, and she did a good job guiding. She didn’t blink an eye with the cart behind her. She instantly compensated and didn’t seem a bit nervous. I’ve even shopped with her and Costco carts with two kids in them. And Costco carts are huge. There are just little things like this, escalator training, subway training, that GDF expects that in living your life you are going to have to do, whereas GDB tends to rely on the “get a sighted person to help you” approach.

When I asked about the differences in training, the basic explanation I got was that GDB trains way more dogs than GDF does and thus can’t put in the time for extras and must focus on basics. Again, what M2 knows, she knows well. She likes to guide. She is a good natured and fun dog. She is very smart and eager to learn. But she just doesn’t have the skills that M1 had. And it is entirely up to me to teach them to her. I have to live my life. I think I would much rather go to a smaller school who puts more into their dog training and has higher expectations for their dogs and be able to pretty much go right back to life after training than to go to a dog factory and have to do the last third ( or the first third?) of the work myself. Oh, another anecdotal thing, It seems like it is much more frequent for GDB students to give their dogs back for various reasons that GDF students did. I have no statistics to back this up, but I was surprised at the stories I heard from my fellow GDB students on false-start dog pairings.

In their defense, there has been problems with long waiting lists for blind people to be able to get guide dogs. And GDB has done a lot to try to speed this process up, especially for retrains. Double campuses, shortening training (and perhaps shortening dog training as well and slimming it down to the basics) are all things that have helps more blind people get dogs faster, so there is that. Everything is a trade off.

Student Training:

I’ve documented my love of the guide dog training experience elsewhere, so I’ll be brief. I haven’t been to GDF in 16 years and I’ve heard there have been improvements like single rooms, air conditioned vans with TVs, things like that. But it is still dorm life and I’m sure it is about on par with GDB dorm life. I’m not a fan.

Due to the new “innovations” that GDB is trying with the shorter class periods, higher instructor/student ratio, community settings, etc. they are obviously at least trying to go in new directions and make training more real life to blind people. So because of that…

Winner: GDB

Post Graduate Services:

I have not experienced GDB post grad services yet. But I have heard good things. Lots of in-person problem solving and follow-up seems to be available. Now whether this gets annoying (like are they going to flip when they come visit me and I’ve totally switched to an all left-handed GDF harness technique?) I don’t know. You do get the option to take legal ownership of your dog after a probationary year, which is very important to me and seems relatively reasonable. They also have a lot of financial assistance for vet bills available.

GDF’s grad services were limited. You could call them on the phone but I don’t know that they made house calls at all. They did not give you a vet stipend. In fact, when M1 needed ongoing expensive medication near the end of her life, I asked for financial assistance and was refused. I did not officially OWN M1 until I was given that option when she was about 11 years old. Until then, they officially owned her and could take her at any time. Now, I think this has changed, but I don’t know the particulars under what circumstances you can own your dog. There is not a large support network for GDF grads, although I do think they are just as helpful as GDB in placing your dog should you need to give it up.

Winner: GDB

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Overall Winner: GDF

For me, personally, I’m going to call the overall winner here to be GDF. I personally think that having to live with the guide dog for 10+ years makes good dog training the number one priority above all else, and GDF simply has better trained dogs, hands down. Now, I’m committed to working it out with M2 and I will do my best with her. I do not think she is a bad dog and I think she has a lot to offer. But when it is time to go back to guide dog school for a third? I can’t say what I will do specifically. But I will say that I’m not going to assume all guide dog schools are the same and I am going to do my research (like I did the first time, but really didn’t this time.) And if it means dorm prison training and paying my own vet bills to get a top quality trained dog? Well, I might just have to sacrifice and make myself suffer through it. What you most want out of a guide dog school is the best trained dog possible. One you can trust to keep you safe (which I do pretty much with M2) but also one that can live in your world and interact with the public and all situations effectively whether you are a stay at home mom or a top business exec (both things M2 cannot manage yet.) I’m not daunted too terribly much by M2’s troubles. But I think that is because she is my second dog and because I have so much training in behaviorism (through special ed stuff). I think that a dog like M2 with someone less experienced could be a potential disaster. And I’ll be honest. At this time in my life with a baby coming and two kids and some major transition coming up, it would have been really nice to have gotten a dog who knows how to live in a house with kids and be at least somewhat well-mannered. But we’ll keep working on it and maybe I will do a (shorter!) follow-up on her in a year or so.