[Week One] [Contents] [Send me Email!]

Toward the end of May 1997, I posted the journal you are reading now on an Internet Web site. During the past two and a half years it's been available, people have stumbled across it, and some of those have written me with positive comments on it. I've gotten Email from guide dog users who have remembered their own first-time training experiences fondly while reading mine, and from puppy raisers (even one in Ireland) who have written to express their thanks for the page and for the knowledge that, indeed, their hard work has paid off. By the way, I'd like to thank those puppy raisers for the great work they do, since without their dedication and love and hard work, we wouldn't have the wonderful guides we have. Puppy raisers, you are loved and much appreciated by us all.

Some who read this journal might be surprised to know that I, unlike many other guide dog users, didn't always think I'd find a guide dog a useful addition to my life. In fact, many of my long-time friends were, to say the least, surprised when they learned I was going to guide dog school. Allow me to fill in a little background before we get to the actual training journal. I promise, I'll keep it fairly short!

I went to a school for the blind for the first few years of elementary school and was mainstreamed in the fifth grade when my family moved to Texas from Arizona. It was a hard transition for me in a number of ways. One thing that I did get, however, was some extremely good cane travel instruction. In fact, some might be surprised at how good, considering lessons were only two or three times a week and the instructor covered several schools. The instructors I had were very good though, and even though I really hated them sometimes (one instructor in particular), I truly thank them now for the abilities of orientation, problem solving, and the confidence they taught me. The cane, then, was very liberating in time, and that was good.

A few times, the idea of going for guide dog training came up, and it was intriguing, but at one time, I was too young; another time, my mother said that I could wait until I got older, or moved, or something. Then, after giving the matter some thought, I decided that really, the cane was fine, the landmarks I could find with it were good, I liked the detail I learned about my environment, and while guide dogs were good for some people, I, plain and simple, didn't think a guide dog would be good for me. After all, I liked knowing the details of my environment I'd find with a cane that a guide dog would avoid as obstacles, and how ever could I coordinate the movement of six legs and the processing of two brains?

I was very adamant on this point for several years. I met a number of very well-behaved guide dogs as part of competent and effective guide dog teams, and I thought that was a great thing--for them. I guess that, after a while, I'd seen enough good guide dog teams that I picked up the idea again in the back of my mind. Decision came, however, from what some would think a very unlikely place.

In October of 1995, the National Federation Of the Blind's monthly magazine, the Braille Monitor, was devoted to the pros and cons of cane or guide dog use. Some articles came down very strongly against guide dog use, while others were definitely of the opinion that nothing could beat the ease and speed of traveling with a guide dog. Some of the anti-guide dog articles were positively venomous, some of the pro-guide dog articles were, in my view, missing the point, but there were a few that were fairly balanced. It was a controversial magazine, and it still is a pretty sore subject among guide dog users, many of whom felt the magazine (and by extension, the NFB) unfairly attacked guide dog use, to put it mildly. Well, that magazine ultimately helped me decide that I wanted to try this guide dog thing out. Despite the venomous anti-guide dog articles, and some of the points in the pro-guide dog articles that I thought missed the boat, I saw some advantages to having a guide dog. I saw some disadvantages, too, but, I thought, it sounded like a good idea.

And because it sounded like a good idea at the time--and really, that's what it came down to--I started on this adventure.

I actually had all of my paperwork in order by December of 1995 or January of 1996, including the home interview with the guide dog school (Guide Dogs For the Blind in San RAfael, CA). I remember being disappointed that the walking route that the interviewer had me take was considerably shorter--and less complicated--than one I had thought up, but I wasn't too upset about that. I also remember that the tetanus shot made me sick. But the physical, all the paperwork, the references--everything was in well before my class date. I chose a class date shortly after the end of the University school year ended, and I planned to take the next semester off to get acquainted to my new dog.

That brings us, then, to this journal. I posted it to the Buddy-L Email list, to which I had alluded earlier, in one installment each day. [Note: Buddy-L moved recently to Yahoogroups, but was formerly hosted at Texas A&M. Consequently, archives for the old list may not be available.] (If I forgot something, I ended up making a small note to the list the next day, in addition to that next day's journal posting.) Apart from a couple of explanatory notes, smoothing over some rough spots because of information I was missing when I posted the journal originally, and correction of typographical errors, the journal you'll read here is the same as that posted on the Email list during training, and later posted on my Internet Web page. I did not want to alter the flavor of this journal substantially, so I've left it alone.

And now, we'll go back to 1996, and my meeting and training with Karl, the golden retriever guide dog who has shared my life ever since. Thank you for reading!

Copyright 1996-2002. Feel free to distribute this thing as much as you like so long as it's freely distributed, unaltered, (although excerpting is OK), and my name is attached. You wanna do something else with it? Send me Email. But keep your spam to yourself (as if I believe you spammers will.)