# Owner trained dog guides and other things

Category: Animal House

## Post 1 by pisces_dreamer (Veteran Zoner) on Sunday, 28-Oct-2012 16:20:55

Hi all
as you know i have posted on this board with various questions, well here i am again. I want to ask 2 questions here, one of which you know from the title, but i'll ask my second question first, as that's kind of the one i want people's opinions on most.
I want to get a guide dog, but not from the school in my country. I won't go into the reasons why, that is just the way it is. I am interested in knowing, do any of the schools in the US or Canada accept international applicants?
my second question is about owner training. Is there anyone here who's done it? If so, how did it go?
Hope to hear from people on this.
thanks

## Post 2 by booklover256 (Veteran Zoner) on Thursday, 08-Nov-2012 20:38:35

I seriously do not agree with someone training their own guide dog. There are so many schools that know what theyare doing. I think the owner should expand upon the training, once the dog is obtained, but go to a schol to get the dog. I believe my school, Guide Dog Foundation, will discuss out of country applicants on a case by case basis. I think that's how most of them are.

## Post 3 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Thursday, 08-Nov-2012 21:32:09

I know that Guiding Eyes in New York had a couple of students from China in their class last July. You can check them out.
guidingeyes.org

## Post 4 by BigDogDaddy (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Friday, 09-Nov-2012 8:54:33

There is absolutely nothing wrong with owner training! This is a topic I have looked at in some great detail over the past year, and one which I feel I'll embark on this spring! Do a google search, for owner trained guide dog, and there is a mailing list or two out there that you can join up and get some wonderful tips ideas, pros and cons! I'll look through my things later and see if I can post some information here for you.

## Post 5 by Daenerys Targaryen (Enjoying Life) on Friday, 09-Nov-2012 10:00:47

Yes Guiding Eyes does accept people from other countries. I got my first guide dog from them in 2007. However, I am also interested in owner training my next guide dog.

## Post 6 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Friday, 09-Nov-2012 13:09:32

I don't know anything about the guide schools, but you will have to see what sort of visa requirements will have to be met in order to enter the country to get a dog. This will depend on the country of origin, since U.S. immigration laws differ for various nationalities. If you are from Latin America or the Middle East you may be better served in a European or Australian guide school. If you're coming from a Western or Asian country your chances are far better. For each visa type, there are a limited number allowed for each region or nation, and that number depends on the location you're coming from.
Also, you will want to check on the quarantine restrictions of your home country, as some countries like the UK I believe, require special certification of the dog and / or a quarantine period.
These are all factors to consider now when doing international travel. The safest bet with international travel anymore is with a corporation, most notably an international corporation. At least as it pertains to U.s. immigration.
Whatever path you pick, make sure you have settled all affairs with the country you're visiting first, and also know exactly what's reqquired for re-entry into your home country with an animal from offshore.
Best,
Leo

## Post 7 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Saturday, 10-Nov-2012 19:10:05

I agree. There's absolutely nothing wrong with owner-trained guide dogs, just as long as you understand the amount of work that'll be required and are able and willing to put forth that effort. And of course one needs to understand that not every dog breed or individual within said breed will necessarily make a good guide. My girlfriend and I have talked about self-training a guide dog at times, but I don't think Sandra either has the right reason at heart or understands just how much work is involved if you want the training to pay off. She says the reason she wants me to self-train is because she's seen lots of videos and read lots of articles where school-trained guide dogs turned on their handlers and that she saw these quite recently. I need hardly point out that when I did my own research I found absolutely nothing to support her claims. Sandra would doubtless say it's because the schools, not wanting anything to tarnish their reputations, cracked down and had all this stuff removed. But of course it's the internet and you'd never be able to completely hush up stuff like that whether it was true or not. And even if by some chance this was true I had to wonder and ask myself what the dogs' handlers had been doing to them to provoke such an attack. After all a well-trained and well-treated guide dog isn't just going to turn on his handler for no reason. But the most absurd idea Sandra had was to try to train one of her Chihuahuas to be a guide for me since she thinks guides don't need to be big dogs. Fortunately she seems to have dropped that particular line of thinking. Even if I believed Chihuahuas could make good guides, which I don't, this particular specimen would quickly have been banned from all public establishments because she was just too aggressive and noisy. and even if their physical size didn't automatically rule out gidework I've never met a Chihuahua that wasn't a yapper. In fact we nded p gettng id of hspartculr dog because fher ggression. So while I'm not remotely against people training their own guide dogs I hope anyone considering doing it covers as many bases as possible before attempting it.

## Post 8 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Saturday, 10-Nov-2012 19:21:31

Bryan, you write about this whole thing about your girlfriend Sandy trying to get you to train a dog for your own guide and how she says all this about guide dogs turning on their handlers and such and how she thinks the schools took down all that information and you don't know what is going on...
Have you asked yourself weather if it is possible that she made all this up?
Not to upset you or anything but reading your story over and over countless times on many of the threads, it is making me wonder weather if you could be looking in the right places for the truth or not.
Just my own inquired mind wanting to know.

## Post 9 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Saturday, 10-Nov-2012 21:15:58

I never believed her story. I've met many guide dogs and guide dog handlers over the years and I've never seen evidence to support her. So more than likely she did make it up, either that or there's someone out there with a sick sense of humor who juryrigged a fake guide dog harness and put it on a regular dog in an effort to have a little fun. The other possibility I can think of, and it's even more disturbing, is that these were some handlers who either seriously let their dogs' training lapse after graduating from their schools or abused the hell out of their dogs. Or it could hae been someone who tried to self-train their dog and it didn't work out. But I do not believe for a moment that it's as common as she seemed to believe it is. And I did a lot of research on many different sites for infrmation about guide dogs who turn on their handlers because I wanted to see these supposed articles for myself even though I didn't believe it.

## Post 10 by SensuallyNaturallyLiving4Today (LivingLifeAndLovingItToo) on Friday, 25-Jan-2013 17:07:04

I'm sorry, but I'm currently in a hurry and first inclination is to simply ask why the heck you are still with Sandra? She sounds like an idiot. Dude, you can do better. My sighted husband would never suggest any of those moronic things. The reason I love him, am with him, is that he gets it. He gets blindness, access rights, guide dogs, and other issues rellivant to me, in a way that many ignorant sighted people don't. I'd keep looking and try and find someone who A. has a few more brain cells. B. respects you enough not to try and tell you how to live yur life, and yeah, just A and B, and you'll be a lot better off. Oh, and will post more later, but I am very pro owner trainer for responsible owner trainers of many different types of service dogs.

## Post 11 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Friday, 25-Jan-2013 21:02:30

Actually I'm not still with her. The details are rather tedious but the short version is she stole money from me even if not directly. I've been single since the day after Christmas and now that she's out of my life things have become a lot less chaotic.

## Post 12 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Saturday, 26-Jan-2013 19:16:01

Self training a dog can be done, but it does require a lot of patience and a lot of time. As for schools in the US, I know that the aforementioned Guiding Eyes in NY, as well as Leader Dogs in MI will accept international applicants. But as Leo says, you need to work on whether the dog will be able to enter your country, what papers will need to be filed, and what laws related to service animals are in place. As I'm not a guide dog user myself, this about sums up any info I can give. But I do know of a couple of successful cases of people who have self trained their service dogs. But it takes a good teacher with lots of patience and good observation skills to pull it off successfully. It's certainly not something I'd recommend most people try.

## Post 13 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Monday, 28-Jan-2013 11:35:39

Yup. It's not something you want to go into lightly. I don't know if I'd want to try it personally.

## Post 14 by Runner229 (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Monday, 28-Jan-2013 11:44:43

Why are they choosey about which countries they will accept people from?

## Post 15 by SensuallyNaturallyLiving4Today (LivingLifeAndLovingItToo) on Tuesday, 29-Jan-2013 10:25:57

Ok, so I said I'd come back and actually post about owner trained service dogs, well, I'm back. Owner training, like raw feeding, prong collars, and many other things I believe in is one of those things I don't recommend to everyone, or even to most people. If done right it is a wonderful thing, but it's not a decision to make lightly. There are some owner training forums on various internet communities and other resources for owner trainers out there, brimming with good advice, great advice, bad advice, terrible advice, and good advice that just doesn't apply to your situation, so read carefully and think about this a lot. If I hadn't for some strange reason been able to get accepted to attend Seeing Eye I was prepared to do 1 of 2 things. A attend Pilot even though they do inadaquate trafic training, get a GSD or a dobermin, then do the trafic training myself or B. simply owner train a dog. I see the first option as essentially owner training, but having the head start of a pure breed adult dog with basic obediants training, obsticle clearance training, good socialization and good health screnings. I did wind up going to Seeing Eye, so I did not have to pursue this avenue, but I did a lot of research, would have had to do considerably more had I opted to actually owner train and so I have some starting out thoughts just to get you thinking. First of all, why do you want to owner train? Understanding your reasons and classifying them into wants vs. needs is a good start, or wranking them by importance. My main reason for wanting Seeing Eye or no other school is their ownership policy, where you get instant ownership of your dog, no strings, upon graduation from the program. I feed raw, like to add additional tasks and behaviors to my dog once I have them home, believe strongly that teaching reliable offleash recall is crucial, prefer to do tyders instead of vaxinating whenever possible, use wholistic medescine on my dog when appropriate and I truly utalize my dog to the fullest, including taking them to parades, fireworks displays, festivals, camping, cannooing, to amusement parks, and so on and many schools with parental ownership policies and attitudes would take my dog away, or at least try for any 1 of those offenses, as most schools don't know anything about raw feeding, have only limited knowledge of tyders, don't approve of guides being taken to wholistic vets fore even minor health concerns and have limitations on where you should and should not use your dog. Secondly, I wanted a shepherd. I would have been alright with a dobermin as they are very shepherdy in personality and work style, but I didn't want a lab or a golden. Most schools have either stopped breeding GSDs or provide only a super limited number of shepherds and only to retrains and there are long waiting lists. The Eye Dog Foundation which trained exclusively shepherds essentially closed down a few years ago after the company fell apart, Pilot who provides shepherds does incomplete trafic training for the dogs and especially for the dogs and students as a team, and Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation has gone through some major changes lately decreasing their transparancy in alarming ways and some of their practices and policies related to students in particular have been changed and this is very concerning. So, I was left with Seeing Eye if I wanted a shepherd. If you want to owner train I suggest making a short list of breeds you are willing to accept, mine contained: german shepherds, dobermin pinchers, belgian sheepdogs of all three types, lacinois, malinois and granindal, boarder collies, smoothe and rough coated collies and austrialian shepherds, although GSDs and dobermins were my top choices. Next, figure out your budget for purchasing or adopting the dog, even shelters and rescue groups charge adoption fees. Then determin how far away you are willing and able to travel to look at potential dogs. We decided on New York, Pensilvania, Virmont, New Hampshire, Maine and Conetacut with a budget of $1000 including purchase price, cost of any medical procedures needed to get the dog ready for training, namely, spay/nutor costs, and transpirtation to go and get the dog. I urge you to only consider dogs from reputable breeders, as shelter dogs can have all sorts of unknown medical conditions, and pure breed dogs are genetically screned for many conditions and will have full vet records of them and their sire and dam and for many generations back beyond that. Rescuing a shelter dog is admirable when obtaining a pet, but this dog will cost you hundreds, no thousands of hours to train, plus a huge emotional, psychological, time and monitary cost, and if they die within 2 or 3 years of you getting them, it's just not worth it. Breed rescue groups are a good compermise if you have a low budget, but still want a specific breed, and want to rescue a dog who needs a home, but also need more information than a shelter is going to have about the dog candidates for your dog training. I wanted a dog from a breeder, but would have been open to a dog from a rescue. Next, you want an adult dog, not a puppy. While it would give you the opertunity to socialize the dog yourself and know everything about it's early life, you also won't know a thing about the dog's pace, pull or gait until it's matured, and then it might be too fast, too slow, pull too hard or not hard enough, or have too choppy or smoothe of a gait for you to work with, and what a huge waste of time, energy and money just for a well trained, well socialized pet? You will want to ask breeders if they have an adult dog between 1 and 3 years of age, usually a bitch who had trouble carrying litters or who produced litters not up to the standards of the show ring, or a stud whose sired litters didn't stand up to show quality standards. Or sometimes a breeder will keep a puppy or 2 from a litter to see how their confirmation shapes up, but it just doesn't happen, these are the dogs you will want. They won't have been puppy raised, but they will have been very well socialized to behave calmly in the stressful and busy environment of the dog showing circuit, which is pretty darn good at preparing them for lots of things. They won't have seen subways or escelators, but a well socialized dog to chaos and stressful situations will be able to meet new challenges and experience new environments with much greater ease than a dog whose never been anywhere but the backyard and the vet's office. Depending on whether or not the dog is titled at all in confirmation or obediants, the price will probably be set somewhere between, "the dog is yours free, because you are a responsible person and you want to train it to do a real job, you just need to pay to have him or her altered." to "Well, my puppies usually go for 800 but since this is an older dog I'd be happy with 200 or 300." to "Well, this dog's not a puppy anymore, but they do have a CDX, companion Dog Excellent obediants title and their CGC, Canine Good Citizenship certificate, so I want 800." Then once you've found a few possibilities go and visit them. Do a basic temperment test, and if they pass that, try some of the commands they already know. If they don't have many, try teaching them with treats and a clicker a new command and judge their willingness to learn and their eagerness to please. If that looks promising, pop a harness on them and go for a walk. Don't expect them to guide you, but just walk with them, and use a leash to urge them left or right if they go off of the path. After they've gotten used to you and come up to speed, or calmed down from the excitement of meeting you and being on a walk and have slowed down to speed, after about 5 minutes, you will have a good idea of their normal gait, pace and pull. If that looks good then have the breeder come with you and you or the breeder, you 2 can work that out, should take the leash and bring tdog into some higher stress situations.

## Post 16 by SensuallyNaturallyLiving4Today (LivingLifeAndLovingItToo) on Tuesday, 29-Jan-2013 10:36:17

Into the city around busy trafic, around other dogs, around livestock, near a train crossing, if possible into some buildings. You can use dog friendly restaurants and stores or you can, if your state or province has laws to protect dogs in training, you can take the dog into a mall, an office building, or another sort of public building. For instance, in New York State dogs in training have protections under the law, not the same as guide and other service dogs, but protection never the less. One more thing that is super important that I should have mentioned at the beginning is this... You said you're in another country? Does your country support owner trainers? For instance, if the laws specify that only "certified" guide dogs are allowed in public places or only "Guide dogs trained by licenced programs." Then owner training is pointless, because your dog won't be allowed anywhere. Also, if you do not have rights to bring your dog in training into public places then you can't train the dog yourself, whether or not you are capable of it, so do that research. Find your country's version of the ADA and read everything remotely applying to service dogs then decide. To answer the last poster about why guide dog schools in the US wouldn't accept students from some other countries. Several reasons. For instance if there is a lack of legislation supporting the use of a guide dog in the country where the person lives, then it would be a waste of a perfectly good guide dog if it goes home to a country where it can't be used often, or at all. Another reason might be concern for the safety of the dog based on the laws protecting animals and dogs in particular in that country. For instance, in some parts of the world they eat dogs, and there are no humane laws protecting animals from being eaten, used for sacrafices, and the cultural attitudes towards dogs wouldn't only make access issues a nightmare, but would also put the dog in danger. Also, if the student doesn't speak english at all or doesn't speak adiquate English, then they couldn't properly train the student unless the student was rich and could pay for a 24-7 interpriter to be with them through out the training process. Those are three reasons, and I'm sure there are more.

## Post 17 by softy5310 (Fuzzy's best angel) on Friday, 15-Feb-2013 18:03:39

Hi,
I've trained my own guide dog and it worked very well for me. The thing I liked about it was we weren't expected to fit into some neat little box. Smokey and i could do things the way we wanted to do them, not the way a certain school or other said we had to do them.
Take Care,
Dawnielle

## Post 18 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Sunday, 17-Feb-2013 15:27:25

The other logical thing you need to have, and I'm not sure it has been mentioned, is very good mobility skills. You cannot train a dog properly if you yourself have no concept of the spaicial relationships in your environment. That was the other thing I've taken from those who I know who are owner trainers.

## Post 19 by Lisa's Girl forever (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Wednesday, 20-Feb-2013 8:29:05

i got my guide dog from a school. And It is kind of oner trained school. And i'm doing vary well. with my dog. and we work good together. Etc.

## Post 20 by frex65 (Newborn Zoner) on Wednesday, 17-Jul-2013 9:21:06

Hi all, owner-training is not for the faint-hearted. I'm currently working an owner-trained rescue Labrador, and I'd say that if you have the mobility skills, the access laws, the time and money and immense patience that's required to train your own dog, then go for it. But I'd advise against choosing a rescue, as its past life may come back to haunt you both.
I've found training my own guide dog hugely rewarding, and I'll probably do it again once Lucy retires. But the lack of clarity around access laws in the UK means that I don't know if I'm legally allowed to take her to public places.
Would you consider signing my petition to ask Guide Dogs to provide a mechanism for having owner-trained guide dogs legally recognised in the UK?
Cheers, Lynn