If you were legally blind, how would you do everyday tasks? What will a guide dog do to help with your disability of being blind? Every blind person has thought about having a guide dog or most of them have a guide dog already, a guide dog is a working dog of many different breeds, trained to become a guide dog for the blind or disabled.
A guide dog’s training does not start at the birth of the dog, it is training starts when a dog gets to the age of fourteen to seventeen months. Then the dog will receive many months of training to create the way of life to help its owner’s handicap. Some people think training a guide dog is cruel and not right to the dog, others think that guide dogs are especially important and that they could be the future to help blindness. The two sides of opinion to the use of guide dogs are extremely different in the world, few believe its cruel, but most think the dog does not have a choice in its training, but the truth is that every guide dog is different and if a dog shows signs of not wanting to train then the dog is not forced to train. The most successfully trained guide dogs start their training young.
The most used guide dog is the Labrador-golden crosses. Oher guide dogs breed are not as comely as germen shepherds, border collies, and poodle as well. Doberman have also been known to be guide dogs, but sometime Dobermans come off as aggressive and it scares the handler because they cannot see what the dog is doing. At a point in a guide dog’s life, it must retire it cannot work till its death. Like police dogs a guide dog senses will be warned down their nose will not work as well as it used to, and their hearing will weaken a lot. Mostly working dogs are fit to be guide dogs. A breed of guide dog must be intelligent, a fast learner, loyal, protective, and well trained.
All dogs are born both blind and deaf no matter what breed. Between the age of ten and fourteen days after the birth of the puppies their eyes and ear canals will start to open but at this age, they still cannot start their training yet. When they reach twelve and sixteen weeks old the puppies will be declared independent from their mother, then after a few months away from their mother the puppies can start their training.
Sleep is an especially important thing for a dog, it is just as important as nutrition for a dog. A silent warm place for a dog to sleep is essential for the normal growth of a guide dog. Dogs that work, guide dogs, sled dogs, or any dog that has a special job should be fed a diet that is much higher in calories and one with a good ratio of fat, protein, and carbohydrates.
Guide dogs are professionally trained to guide and protect a person. One of the first things a guide dog learns is the word “find.” They are taught the word “find” first because one of the most common commands for a guide dog, basic commands like these “find the chair” ‘find the bathroom” “find (item).” Guide dogs can identify and avoid people and items when walking on a street. If a handler of a guide dog were going down a street or road the most common commands, you would hear would be “left,” “right,” “straight forward,” “go on,” “stop” and “back up” some dogs are trained to help persons with seizures disorder and how to signal for help if a seizure was happening.
Guide dogs were useful back in World War one and they are still used to this day to help serve blind veterans in a war. During the COVID-19 outbreak a service dog had lots of trouble with social distancing, the dog or animals could not do their job properly because of the distancing rule. COVID impacted
service dogs more than us humans. Most people are not very understanding of blind people and of what a service animal does daily.
People who are legally blind have learned how to adapt to these everyday tasks. They understand their dog just like the dog understands its master, they both trust each other with their services because a dog does not just help its master navigate the world, the guide dog is also the best friend of the master they have a bond that is a unique and purely rare to this world. Guide dogs work every day of the year for a person, guide dogs are useful in a lot of ways, and they always will be useful to their person or master.
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