![]() “A student is someone who’s applied to our school and been accepted to our program, and we’ve flown them here or provided travel to come here,” O’Neal explains. Before a blind person can take a guide dog home, they must live on the campus and go through weeks of training to learn all the intricacies of working with their dog, including navigation and bonding. The dogs and their trainers aren’t the only ones working hard at The Seeing Eye. Seeing Eye dog instructors also train the dog owners. If you aren’t ready to commit to working for The Seeing Eye full-time, you can volunteer to be a puppy raiser and foster future guide dogs in your own home. to 4:30 p.m., they train, exercise, and care for eight dogs total-four in the morning and four in the afternoon. The work doesn’t become any less intense when apprentices graduate to full-fledged instructors. The apprenticeship includes classes and exams, as well as hands-on training with dogs and students, The Seeing Eye’s name for blind people preparing to become guide dog owners. Once you make it through the application process, you go through a three-year apprenticeship program in order to become an official trainer. If you meet the basic requirements, such as having a four-year Bachelor’s degree, you can apply to become an instructor. It takes years of apprentice work to become a Seeing Eye Instructor.īeing a Seeing Eye instructor isn't a volunteer position anyone can sign up for-it's a full-time job. We spoke with three trainers from The Seeing Eye about why certain breeds make great guide dogs, how they keep their owners safe from low-hanging branches, and whether or not they can read cross signals (spoilers: They can’t). Though the dogs that come out of the school have garnered plenty of attention, the dedicated instructors who prepare them for working life are less well-known. And legally, no guide dog can even be called a "Seeing Eye dog" unless it graduated from the school itself. Seeing Eye dogs are venerated in January 2020, New Jersey proclaimed them the official state dog. “It’s the oldest guide dog school, and we’ve been honing this very specific process of training a dog to do very specific tasks,” Brian O’Neal, a guide dog mobility instructor with The Seeing Eye for nine years, tells Mental Floss. It's a system that has worked for over 90 years. In order to make sure each dog is ready for all the obstacles and challenges that come with leading the visually impaired, instructors train them in both real-world settings and simulations at The Seeing Eye's campus. Founded in 1929, The Seeing Eye is a nonprofit in Morristown, New Jersey, that trains guide dogs to help their blind owners navigate the world safely. ![]()
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