If you said, "Bill Murray's line from the movie Ghost Busters, 1984," you get 25 bonus points. If you asked, "Did you get a dog?" - no, but we did take Rufus to Steph and Dan's home once again today, and Blaine (the Guide Dog for the Blind that they are training) and Rufus got to go for a walk together this afternoon.
This is only Blaine's second walk away from their house, as he is just now in that phase of his training. The boy did a fine job. Photographic evidence...
We walked to a "green area" at the end of their street.
These were from Dan (who wasn't holding a leash)...
The both did great. Blaine, being a puppy, tends to put everything in his mouth. One of those things was Rufus - our big furry boy didn't lash out, Blaine didn't bite down... Rufus got some dog slobber on him and that was it.
Some video...
A nice afternoon and evening!
2 comments:
That's right, Rufus! Show him how it's done. Good boy....
A guitar buddy who is seriously vision impaired from a construction injury (and now retired) just recently got a Golden Retriever puppy with the intent of training him to be a guide dog. Only then did he find out that they train the dogs for the task, and you can adopt once they graduate the program, not the other way around. So they have an extra pet now. Not a bad thing, just not according to plan.
Hi Earl. Yes, Blaine was bred for this program by Guide Dogs for the Blind. There is an interesting series on one of the streaming channels on this organization and the work they do. The dogs are provided to a vision-impared person at no charge. When a dog in the program is fully trained, they are tested to make sure they are right for job. Then, there is matching the right person with the right dog, and then training for the person with the dog.
Steph and Dan are "Puppy Raisers" for this organization. If, for some reason, Blaine isn't right for the program, the organization will "career change" him - this might mean he would be right for a different organization or could wind up as a pet. It is a rigorous training and testing that they have to go through.
In the "small world" category: one of the young ladies who was a naturalist for the whale watch company Joan and I worked for works for Guide Dogs for the Blind as a trainer at their California headquarters/campus... it was fun to see her in that TV series. Look up "Pick of the Litter" on Netflix.
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