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🎙️ Interesting Humans Podcast
🎙️ Real people. Cool stories. Inspiring chats with dreamers & doers — guaranteed to make you see what’s possible for your own life. Host : https://www.instagram.com/jeffhopeck/
🎙️ Interesting Humans Podcast
Art of Training Seeing Eye Dogs [Behind the Scenes]
Lehman Brothers to Training Seeing Eye Dogs! Jim flew in from New Jersey, headquarters of Seeing Eye Training Institute. We go behind the senses starting day 1 arrival when blind students arrive. Jim explains what it takes to train these incredible dogs, how the students get chosen and matched to their dog, and so much more. He even gives the day-to-day dog owner some really interesting and practical tips to help FIDO become a better listener. Jim's career path change is a true testament to leaving a financially successful career path to pursue a bigger calling. Thanks, Jim. You have such an awesome story and I loved our time together.
To learn more about my work and the conversations I care about, find me at @hey_dad_can_we
What a great episode we have today. If you go back, folks, to episode 27, we had an interesting human on by the name of Chad Foster. I got through Chad's interview and said, is there any chance that you can connect me to the very school that you're talking about? And today I have the director of training for the Seeing Eye in New Jersey. His name is Jim Kessler. And I think what's so, so fascinating here, folks, two things, is one, he's you were in the financial world and you're going to talk about that wall street and Lehman brothers, and now you're training dogs. So I love that. I can't wait to dig into that story. But then, What does this look like every day? I just can't wait to hear it. It blows my mind what you do every day to prepare a dog to go out and protect people with lack of sight or sight issues. So first off, thanks for being here. My pleasure. Greatly appreciate it. And let's dive right in. I want to understand, how did you meet Chad? How did that all come down?
SPEAKER_01:Chad, I've known Chad for many years. He was, when he received his second dog from the seeing eye Sarge I was involved in that I actually I actually trained him with that dog at the in Morristown and then they ended up bringing him home to Atlanta and spent a few days at home in Atlanta with him so I've known Chad for many years
SPEAKER_00:many years yeah he tells a fascinating story in the book about Sarge the very first dog He took to a very crowded mall. It was holiday season in, I believe in Fairfax, Virginia, somewhere in Northern Virginia.
SPEAKER_02:And
SPEAKER_00:they got all the way in through the crowds into a store. And then he prompted Sarge to come back to the car. And from my understanding, the dog can get you close. but the dog took him right to the door. How in the world does that even happen?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a good question because, yeah, can you leave a mall and say, hey, Sarge, find the car, you know, find me my car. You know, to say how the dog found it was probably a lot of it came down to probably scent, you know, using the dog's strongest senses or sense of smell. So he may have found it that way. And Chad, you know, he may have, he probably had a general idea where the car is, the vicinity of it. the car and he active and then the dog dog just probably found it that's it you know
SPEAKER_00:incredible
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:now now your school's in new jersey
SPEAKER_01:correct morristown new
SPEAKER_00:jersey okay but you serve people over the country
SPEAKER_01:north america we have students in the united states and canada
SPEAKER_00:okay
SPEAKER_01:north america
SPEAKER_00:okay
SPEAKER_01:and puerto rico
SPEAKER_00:and puerto rico and they have to come to you for the training correct no virtual or anything like that so let's i want to go back to the beginning so They hear about you from their eye doctor?
SPEAKER_01:No, they'll do research on their own, and a big resource for us is the orientation mobility specialist. Those are the individuals who teach how to use a weight cane. The training with the white cane, because those skills that you learn with the cane are transferable to what you're using with the dog. Just how to line yourself up audibly at a crossing, reading traffic, how to understand, okay, I'm at a lighted intersection. People will say... You know, I still have people to this day who say, you know, I thought dogs are colorblind. How do they know when it's safe to cross the street? And it's not the dog making the decision. It's the handler making the decision. So if you're at a lighted intersection here of an initial front to surge of traffic, that's when you say forward. And the dog goes forward into the street. Now, the dog's been trained to what we call, it's traffic. We have a four-stage, pretty extensive traffic training program for the dogs.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:That teaches them, you know, if a car was to, say, cut any student off, when they're crossing a street, the dog's been trained to check, what we call traffic check. And it's similar to like check in hockey. You know, you're stopping your forward momentum so the dog stops. Now, does the dog have any ability to know that a car can hurt them? no dog just not cognitively does not have the ability to know that nor do we want to nor do we want to train a dog to be fearful of traffic because if a dog's fearful of traffic dog's not going to leave a down curb so we train the dogs to have a respect for traffic
SPEAKER_00:yeah
SPEAKER_01:and they have to they have to do that and like i said we do through four sessions it's pretty intense and um uh it's you know that's it's called intelligent disobedience that's what that's what sets guide dogs off from other types of dogs it's called intelligent disobedience so if you're at a curb and you say forward into the street and a car is right in front of you, the dog will disobey the command saying, it's not safe. I'm not going forward. So they're intelligently disobeying the command. So that's what sets guide dogs off from your regular shall we say, pet dog. So what it means, intelligently disobeys a command. You come up to a train platform and say you're disoriented and the drop-off is right there at the tracks and you say forward to the dog, dog's been trained to go right or left. Intelligently disobey that forward command to go right or left to take the handler out of harm's
SPEAKER_00:way. So it's like an override. Basically. The dog is an override.
SPEAKER_01:Basically, yeah. That's incredible. And we always say, trust your dog, trust your dog. And that trust, you know, that trust happens over time. But, you know, it's, it's, I've trained, you know, I trained this guy, an individual, he's had dogs for multiple years. And he has said to me, he gets to the point in the relationship with his dog where he can pick up that harness and he thinks the dog, he feels the dog can read his mind. Because there's so much conveyed between dog and handler through the harness handle. It's kind of like the old adage when you sit on a horse, they say a horse can size you up. Like you pick up that harness, that dog knows what's going on because so much is conveyed. Unbeknownst to sometimes the handler, you know. I had an old time instructor, he retired. And he said to me, you know, when I was training and I was, you know, as part of the training, we do a three-year apprenticeship, but we can speak to that later. But you pick up that harness handle, he's like, you pick up that harness handle, say you had a bad commute into work or you got in an argument with your wife. He's like, that dog knows it. Yeah, no way. Yeah, so just what's conveyed. Does he know I got into an argument with my wife? No, and I don't get arguments with my wife. I mean, but no, seriously, lots conveyed through the handle.
SPEAKER_00:That's so cool. Yeah. All right, I have so many questions about Breed and all that other stuff. I want to learn a little bit about you because I think it's very interesting. Wall Street, Lehman Brothers.
UNKNOWN:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:how'd you get there? And then what in the world happened there where you said, I'm going to go train dogs.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, it's my, uh, I, my father and brother were both, my father was in corporate accounting and my brother was also in the finance world. You know, he has his MBA and I was like, all right, I guess it's just in the blood. I'll just be a business major. So I went to college as a business major. I graduated from college. Where'd you go? I went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Okay. Yeah. So, uh, went there at a good business program and, uh, I, uh, I started my career in, in finance, like the financial services industry. And I just thought that's what I was supposed to do. I thought it was like, yeah, my dad and my brother did it. Yeah. And at that age, you know, you really don't. You think you know everything and you question. I think you know everything, but you question. You don't really question. So I was in it and I, you know, I enjoyed it. I'm not going to lie to you. I learned a lot. I learned a lot just from my own, you know, in the financial world, like investing in my personal finances. But I was always striving for something more, striving for something that I've always been attracted and interested in teaching. Teaching has always been a thing for me. And this job is, there's a big, there's a huge teaching component not only teaching the dogs but teaching the students that come to campus teaching them how to use a dog so and that's what drew me and you know I just I came upon it by I was in Morristown New Jersey going to an appointment and I saw two instructors working a dog and I was like wow that's a that's pretty cool. You know? So I went on and this was like before the internet was huge. So like I had to go to like the library and like look stuff up and read
SPEAKER_00:stuff. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And, um, I did my research. I wrote a letter, sent a resume. And then next thing you know, it's been 24 years. I started in 2001, 24 years. Yeah, 24 years. Well, I'm in my 24th year. 24 years later, I've been there. So
SPEAKER_00:in the financial world, I just want to ask one question. If you take out all the rules of investing and everybody's got their own thing, just the fundamental one thing, biggest overarching way that you look at finances? What's one big takeaway?
SPEAKER_01:The one big takeaway was I learned, I think personally, I learned a lot about myself, who I am as a person. And I think, and I don't know if this is the answer to your question. You know, I learned, especially from one of my bosses who I had, who was a pretty, he was tough. I learned a lot about myself and it really thickened my skin, if that's what you're asking. Yeah. But I also, like I said, I learned like, like, some good basics to investing. And I have friends who are still in the industry who I still keep in touch with. Yeah. And, uh, so it, it gave me a good base knowledge of, uh, again, I don't know all the rules and regulations, but I know good to keep my, keep myself out of trouble.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, so.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Do you do it yourself or do you have somebody do it?
SPEAKER_01:I do do, I do some of my, on myself, but I do ask, I do have, uh, like a financial planner that I help with. Yeah. That helps out also. That's cool. And my brother's a financial planner. financial planner too. He, he was, he's changed his career as a financial planner. So he's always a good resource.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Is he local by you? He's local in Jersey. Jersey. Yeah. That's awesome. All right, cool. So, so something happened in like you, you were, you were in the financial world and then was there like a book that you read? What actually got you to switch? Cause that's the hardest part about it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think it was like, like I said, I, I was looking for something more, you know, not that the cubicle walls were closing in, but yeah, the cubicle walls were starting to close. And I felt like I, you know, it wasn't for me. I just couldn't, I wanted to do more. I wanted to have something a little more, not that you can get rewards out of being in, you know, the financial industry, but for me, my own moral compass, I wanted something a little more. So I left and I resigned from my job at, you know, the Federal Reserve Bank. And then, uh, short periods. I was still in New York city during nine 11. And that was my last day of work in, in New York city was nine 11. And I had already, I had already left my job or I'm not left. It was, I had resigned from the fed, but I was there. And that was, that was pretty much, that was not the icing on the cake, but yeah, the icing on the cake where I was like, all right, I needed, I wanted more. Um, and it kind of validate, not validated. I wouldn't say that way, but my decision, I was like, all right, I, I knew I wanted to, uh, to leave that, you know, New York city and start something different.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So, yeah. And you got to stay right there, right? Cause you're relatively close. I mean, you didn't have to like up and go across the
SPEAKER_01:country. Oh no, no. I lived in Jersey. Yeah. I lived in Jersey. I stayed in the house, you know, that I live in now. Same house, same area. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So it's, and yeah, now instead of taking a subway to work, I take a drive. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:10 minute commute probably, right? No,
SPEAKER_01:it's a
SPEAKER_00:little longer than that.
SPEAKER_01:New Jersey's known, New Jersey has some good traffic, like decent amount of traffic, probably similar to like Atlanta traffic. Yeah, right. It takes me about a half hour, half hour, 40 minutes to get to work. So it's not too bad, but that's my time in the car. You know, it's my time to say, all right, what do I have to, what's going on in the day? I kind of, you know, think about things. Yeah, kind of organize my thoughts. And then the way home, I kind of, not I kind of, I think, okay, whatever. I kind of put the day behind me. What could I have done better?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What could I, you know, and so. Huge. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So for a short period of time, 2003, four, five, six, I spent some time U.S. Secret Service. At the White House. Oh, awesome. And one of my favorite things was the dogs. So we had a whole division, a canine division. Yeah. And I knew a couple guys in there. And when they would explain what those dogs would go through for training and then the street value of that dog. Oh, yeah. I want to say it was$200,000 when they were done with the training. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:it might
SPEAKER_00:be. Bombs. Yeah. Like it could sniff out everything.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not really sure, but we've had a dog. Like we have dogs. We don't have 100% success rate with all the dogs we breed. I think personally, and I'm biased because I do this for a living, I think out of any job a dog can have, I think this is the most difficult job a dog can have. The amount of responsibility that they have unbeknownst to them. So when we actually have some dogs, we've had, I don't know how many, but we've had dogs from our program who have worked in the White House We call them career changers. Yeah. Yeah, career changers. And we have, you know, police departments will come and some local police departments come and look at dogs. So, yeah, not all of our dogs– Our success rate is good, but like I said, it's not 100%. Yeah. So it's not like knock it out of the park 100% every time.
SPEAKER_00:Did a dog have to work prior to coming to you or can they be born into your kind of work?
SPEAKER_01:Well, we do all our own. We have a full-time geneticist on staff. We have a breeding facility, which is located in Chester, New Jersey, and we breed pretty much 100% of all our dogs. We breed. The reason why we breed is we can control certain things, predictability, like to temperament. And again, there's things that are out of our, control, but we can control to, you know, temperament being one. Uh, so we have, uh, we have a full-time geneticist, like I stated, and those dogs are, we have a state of the art breeding facility in Chester and it's, uh, dogs are there till about seven weeks of age, seven to eight weeks of age. Wow. And then at seven to eight weeks of age, the dog is, uh, we have what we call puppy raisers, families that will raise these dogs from eight weeks of age to about 13 to 16 months of age. So this is a volunteer, these people, and I say this, if it wasn't for the puppy raisers, the ability for the seeing eye to carry out its mission would be impossible. I mean, we give these dogs to them eight weeks and you know, puppies, I don't know if you've owned a puppy. It's the housebreaking. It's, it's the, you know, teaching the basic obedience. It's socializing the dog. So they got a hard job. And then at, you know, 13, 14 months, we, the dog comes back to the seeing eye. And that's when we look at the dog to go into training or as a potential breeder. Um, so yeah, Yeah, the puppy raisers are huge. They're huge.
SPEAKER_00:I can't say enough good things about them. It's almost like fostering.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you can think of it like a foster. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:100%. Oh, my goodness. So they go away. So they're bred at facility, go away from facility, and then they're back to facility. Yeah, come back. At what age? 16 months?
SPEAKER_01:Probably 13 to 16 months.
SPEAKER_00:13 to 16 months. Yeah. Okay. Then I want to understand when a client shows up at facility. Let's walk through everything. Okay. Day one, they land at...
SPEAKER_01:Newark.
SPEAKER_00:Newark. Yep. Okay. How do they get... Do you pick them up? Yeah, we pick them
SPEAKER_01:up. Yeah, we have... actually we have a volunteer who helps and we also have instructors, uh, who apprentices will go and help and we'll pick up the students at the airport. Okay. And then, and then we bring them back to campus.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So you're back to campus day one, you show in there, show up, there's some kind of check in, whatever. What is, what is the first day look like? The first, it's a huge change.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Huge. The first day is get acclimated to the building, uh, learn the, you know, the, the layout of the building, get oriented to the building. Um, and then, um, We do a Juno walk, and a Juno walk is already done prior to them coming into class, but the instructor who is teaching the student, and we have our class size is, our maximum number of students we can bring to campus is 24. Okay. So we have, you know, typically around 20, but we max out at 24, and we have one instructor assigned to four students. So it's a four to one ratio. Okay. And then the instructor, like I said, orients them to the building, you know, talks to them and then does a Juno walk. And the Juno walk is where the, where the instructor will take a harness and will mimic a dog, meaning how fast do you want to walk? What's your pace and what's your pull? Pace and pull are pretty much the, I would say the, not the bread and butter, but two of the more important criteria we look at when we go to match an individual, because the last thing we as an organization want to do is give a dog to That's too slow. If a dog is too fast, a dog that pulls too hard, a dog that doesn't pull fast enough. So we look at pace and pull. That's pretty much our bread and, not bread and butter, but yeah. Yeah. So, and again, there's no right or wrong answer when it comes to this for somebody who's, you know, it's not like, hey, the faster I walk, there'll be, you know, it's what's most comfortable to them.
SPEAKER_00:The right fit. So let me tie, let me tie pace and pull real quick into the puppy raisers. When a puppy raiser brings a puppy home to monitor for those couple of weeks, do they have specific instructions like walk him faster, walk him slower? No, we
SPEAKER_01:just let
SPEAKER_00:them... Raise him.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, just raise him. Let them be a dog. Pretty much let them be a dog. Yeah. And let the dog walk. You know, we don't want to... If a dog's pulling, we don't want to... you know, she's, you know, we don't want the dog not to pull. We want the dog to pull. So that's, that's because pulling is guiding. Yeah. The dog's not pulling, the dog's not guiding. And whether it's a light pull or whether it's a hard pull, you know, so we, we don't, we don't prohibit, Hey, you don't let, you know, don't have the dog heel on your side. We don't want that. We want the dog. That's one concept. Because like I said, pulling is pulling is, you know, pulling is, Dog has to know, learn the concept and they'll learn the concept when they come to campus.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, they'll understand like, because it's not like, it's not like we dogs are filling out applications to do this, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's these dogs to come and they're like, all right, I just spent 14 months in a wonderful home, you know, loving family, and now I'm back in a kennel. And then they're put into the training. And there's a series. They go through a series of tests when they come back to campus through our veterinarian. We have a canine health center on campus for veterinarians on staff. And they do the medical workup on them. But then if they're deemed to be put into training, the dog's put into training. And they have to learn what it means to have a harness on them. Because I've never had a harness on them in my life. But that's the beautiful thing about a dog, is the dogs are so adaptable. Dogs are very willing to please their master. And yes, some dogs are more willing than others to do the job, but that's your job as the instructor, is to to bring out the willingness of a dog and how willing he's so.
SPEAKER_00:So is there a breed or breeds that are better or worse than another?
SPEAKER_01:Well, no, the breeds that the Seeing Eye predominantly uses are German Shepherds, Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, and we do a crossbreed between the Lab and the Golden. So we get a cross. But if you were to see a cross, like if I was to bring one here today and I had a cross, you'd probably say, hey, that's a lab because they look a lot like labs. Sometimes the feathering of the tail ends a little different, but for the majority of parts, they look like Labradors. And we use those breeds because we feel they are the most successful for this line of work. Like I said earlier, we have a geneticist, we breed these dogs to do this, but, you know, and we, German Shepherds from, you know, we're founding, we were founded in 1929, you know, German Shepherds, that's the breed that we used,
SPEAKER_00:you know, Predominantly, yeah. What's the thought process behind breeding the Lab and the Golden, the Lab and the Golden, right? Yeah. You do the Lab and the Golden. What's the thought process there? What does it get?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it's just, the Lab is, you know, like the lab is, you know, one of the more popular breeds, but not that that has anything to do with guiding, but we just feel the working qualities, their size, what they are as breeds make them give us as a seeing eye the most chance of success, those breeds, as opposed to, you know, people, you've heard of boxers, like boxers were used in the past. Boxers, We didn't breed boxers, but we've had boxers that we've received from outside breeders that we just didn't have a ton of success with them. Sure. We've had poodles. We've used poodles. Poodles are highly intelligent. Wow. And, uh, but we don't, we don't breed our own poodles, you know, but we've had, we've used poodles in the past, uh, you know, uh, so, but we, I mean, now we have a, like I said, a successful and organized breeding, uh, breeding program for the seeing eye. And it just gives us sort of Best chances of success.
SPEAKER_00:Best chance of success. Ever, uh, Husky ever, uh, on the, no, no. Do
SPEAKER_01:you own a
SPEAKER_00:Husky? I had two, he had two. Can you imagine them being, I'm just curious the why though. What, what about them? Is it their stubbornness? Is it their, what would make them not good?
SPEAKER_01:I, you know, I'm not that familiar with the Huskies as a breed, you know? Um, you know, so I, I can't comment why, and I don't want to talk anything negatively about Huskies cause you know, I don't want to get any, you know, say anything bad about the Huskies as a breed, but I can't say definitively what it is for them as a breed that we've never entertained.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they're wild. I don't know why. I just think back to some of the stories. So intelligent.
SPEAKER_01:But again, back to that, it's like, yes, these dogs are bred to do this. I'm very fortunate with the dogs I work with and I see every day. These dogs are phenomenal, but they're still dogs at the end of the day. And they'll revert back to natural instincts. So dogs thrive with consistency.
SPEAKER_02:That's
SPEAKER_01:how dogs thrive, whether it's a pet dog, whether it's a guide dog, they thrive with a consistency, consistency from their master. So that's, you know, I've done some private dog training on the side and I would say majority of the time, it's not the dog, it's the person. That's the problem. You know, it's just because dogs... Dogs as a breed, they're just, they want to please their master. Right. And that's just who, that's who they are as a breed. Yeah. But, you know, it's just, they thrive in a consistent environment.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so you're training the dog, you're training the master as much as you're training the dog when they
SPEAKER_01:show up. Oh, 100%, 100%. Like I, dogs are a part of the seeing eye, but the people aren't. the people are, are what drives our mission. Right. You know, we're a people organization. Yes, we have dogs and yes, dogs are a huge component of it, but it's the people that drives our mission. The people. Yeah. It's the people.
SPEAKER_00:So let's, let's come back to check in. So they, the, the, so the clients, client, you refer to them as, right? We call them students. Okay. So the student, The student checks in, gets acquainted. They do the pace and pull. Yeah. What walk me through the next.
SPEAKER_01:All right. So they come in on a Monday, the whole, you know, the whole students from all over North America come, they come to campus. Um, they spend Monday. Monday is just kind of like an orientation. Get to, you know, get to know type day. Yeah. Uh, Tuesday. Um, they, uh, or with their group of, you know, their instructor and for their students. And this is when, you know, we do another Juno walk, um, with them. We actually do two more Juno walks on Tuesday, uh, with them just to solidify, because even prior to them coming in, uh, we've already assessed the person in their home environment. Like we've gone to their, their home and, you know, so, so where they live and got their, you know, uh, It's got our idea of what their pace and pull is. And then even prior to them being, you know, coming into what we say coming into class, that's when they come to campus. We have an idea what dogs were thinking of. So we're like, okay, Betty, we have Snoopy. Not that we have any dogs named Snoopy. We have Snoopy in mind. We have Lassie. Lassie neither. But we have those in mind. Now when the student comes, the instructor will do a general assessment, and they'll walk. They'll see, okay, what's their pace and pull? How do they follow the harness handle? Lateral moves, left and right, how do they follow the harness? Those things. And then they'll say, okay, yeah, I think Snoopy's the best option here. It's not like we have an equation here. You know, or we can plug into this master equation, come out with the best dog for this person. You know, it's, it's, it's not bad. It's not bad. It's, there's a lot of, there's a magic to it, shall we say. There's a feel to it. So, yeah. So Tuesday is Juno walks, you know, other, we do some lectures, we have lectures there. We have lectures all throughout the class training, and the class training is 25 days on campus for a new student, 18 days for a retrained student. Retrain is student that's had a one or two, has had, it's a good thing if they're getting their successor dog, like a second, third, fourth dog.
SPEAKER_00:That would be Chad, too. Chad, too. He's had three or four.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, and then on that Tuesday afternoon is when we have the match meeting. That match meeting happens in the late afternoon on Tuesday.
SPEAKER_02:Match
SPEAKER_01:meeting. And that's when you look at your supply of dogs and you match them up to the clients that are here on campus. And Wednesday is when the fun begins, shall we say. Wednesday is what we call dog day when they're giving their dog. They're giving their dog after breakfast. And that's when the relationship between
SPEAKER_00:dog and human starts. Wow. Let me come back to day one for a couple minutes. So what's the state of mind when somebody arrives here? Are they all in the same type of state of mind? Yeah, I would say. Happy to be there. Oh, heck
SPEAKER_01:yeah. Yeah, you know, no doubt. I mean, I think you're kind of experiencing a whole range of emotions from excitement to, you know, maybe some trepidation because you don't know what to expect. What dog am I going to get? Yeah. I've never done this before. I don't know what to expect. You know, the retrains, they know they have something to base it off of. But a new student, you know, I think, you know, I can only— Just from what I know, I think they're probably going through all the emotions that you can, not all, I mean, you know, but a lot of emotions they're feeling.
SPEAKER_00:But they're past, like they're past the part of like, oh my gosh, I'm blind. Yeah. Yeah. I've been blind for some time. Yeah. They're not coming to you the next day.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no, no, no, no. You know, like I said, they're no, not at all. They, um, there's, there's, uh, you know, there's, like you said, an adjustment, uh, but there's also, they have to, they have to learn their orientation mobility and orientation mobility is, uh, that is, you know, using a white cane to navigate. Those are, that's, that's a, that's, a prerequisite for, you know,
SPEAKER_00:they're like long, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it's all, it's all depends on the, you know, your height and, and, and, um, you know, but talking about a cane, not to get off the topic, cane and dogs, there's a, there's a two mean way to navigate it. If you're blind or, you know, those are the two ways you can use a cane or can use a dog. Yeah. And there's a difference. Cane is, when you think about it, if you're using a cane, it's an obstacle finder. So if you're walking down the street and there's a garbage can in the middle of the sidewalk, Like, oh, you'll encounter that with your cane, and then you just navigate around the garbage can using your cane, whereas a dog brings you around, the dog takes you around it. You don't even know you're going around. Oh, I went around something. I don't know what it was. So a cane's like an obstacle finder. A dog is an obstacle avoider. Avoider, yeah. But you get a lot of tactile information through a cane, tactile information that you don't get... With a dog.
SPEAKER_00:Like you bump into something, you stop.
SPEAKER_01:And there's, you know, we, I, we, I trained a, he was part of a class I was in years ago where he was in a very adept cane traveler and he wanted to, he came for his first dog and about after a week or so, he said, you know, I, I prefer the tactile information I feel through my can as opposed to a dog. So yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So he, uh, Yeah, he decided it wasn't for him. I could see that.
SPEAKER_00:It's all personal
SPEAKER_01:preference.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, personal preference. Something this show, doing these episodes, has helped me with is shining light on these topics that I found myself personally, like blindness. I would look at it, hear it, throw it over a corner, and just hope that that's not me. And that's how I've gone through it. My life is like, I had a brain surgeon on and all these interesting survivors. And it's just like, it's, this has become so fascinating for me. I know you do it every day, but gosh, I have like a million more questions. So
SPEAKER_01:people, I mean, people, they lead normal lives. You know, I, I've trained a gentleman who's a judge, trained a woman who's an oceanographer and I've trained, you know, I've trained professors, but I've trained just the, you You're a regular person who uses a dog to– not a regular person, but somebody just who uses a dog to go on an exercise walk, to go pick their daughter up at the school bus, those types of things. So it's– It's, yeah, we have a, we've had, well, our graduate base, you know, we've, since inception, or since we were founded, over 18,000 partnerships since 1920, since 1929. Oh, my goodness. Over 18,000 partnerships. And right now we have approximately, I think it's 1,800 active grads within North America. So all these people are leaving normal lives.
SPEAKER_00:1800 active and a partnership is when you pair a dog with a person. Is there ever, is there ever like a time when there's not a horror story or like a close call or like. Give me some stories of what happens on campus. Oh, I mean. Has a dog ever like attacked or bit?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, there's always that possibility with the pet dog. But it doesn't happen with any regularity. But we have, and that's just real life. If somebody was to encounter a dog, I mean, they have their instructor with them coaching them. They're teaching them how to handle that situation. But that's real life. You're going to encounter people with dogs. And, you know, back to my thing, you know, that's distraction. We call distraction in a dog. You know, our hopes as instructors are to, Control the distraction. If the distraction or the instinct is just too great in the dog, then the dog will be dropped from the program. So our hopes are to control the instinct in the dog. You're never going to get that out of the dog. That's just an
SPEAKER_00:impossibility. Does one in 100 get dropped? Has one ever gotten dropped? What are the
SPEAKER_01:numbers? Our success rate is about close to 70%. So close to 70%, which is a good percentage. It's good
SPEAKER_00:for anything. It's good for anything. All right, in chat. In Brad's book, he talked about that it's so important for the dog to be, I think the word was desensitized, that when you take a dog to a steakhouse, and I never thought about this until he brought it up in the book, is that dog is going to sit there and smell incredible smells, right, for the hour, two hours, three hours, however long you're there.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Walk me through those steps that you take to desensitize a dog. It blows me away. Well,
SPEAKER_01:desensitize, I don't necessarily know if you want to call it desensitize. And the fact that, as we all know, I mean, who own a dog, their strongest sense is their sense of smell. Okay. You know? Okay. We can't turn that off in a dog. It's not like we can automatically turn the sense of smell off. Interesting. You know? It's not like we're, you know, we try and forbid them from using the sense of smell, but the... sense is so strong that it's, it's impossible
SPEAKER_02:to,
SPEAKER_01:yeah. So the dog will, I mean, the dog will, I mean, he'll smell, but you know, it's not like, it's not like he's, you know, you know, sniffing and walking over to a table to go, you know, sniff a snake, you know, and again, it's the handler's control. Yeah. He's going to get a lot of information through his nose and pick that up. But, uh, you, that's one thing. The, the sense of smell is just, um, I don't know the statistic, but the number of, I'll do it kind of an example I saw. He was in the military. He trained dogs in the military. And he described the sense of smell in a dog as, you know, a human walks into a kitchen and says, oh, you're making stew. This gentleman says, a dog walks into the same kitchen and says, hmm. potatoes, carrots, you know, beef, you know, like that's, that's the, that's the, that's what we're talking about. That's what the dogs smell, you know? Yeah. So, um, yeah, it's just a lot of information. And I always wonder like how it probably, it almost be, I can't imagine the sense that how strong it is. Cause it's, it's pretty remarkable.
SPEAKER_00:And the distance of it.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. It's, it's,
SPEAKER_00:it's remarkable. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Gosh,
SPEAKER_00:that's so cool. All right, I'm going to come back to Chad's book again because he told the funniest story, the funniest story. And the book, it was so well-written, I was able to, like, be there for the apartment story that he talked about. I think it was the first day he brought, it would be Sarge, when he brought Sarge home. And Chad went to take a shower and tied Sarge to the oven door, the 30-pound oven door.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Didn't realize? What is it? Like, what's the outcome of that? What did he do wrong? What should he have
SPEAKER_01:done? One thing he did wrong was he attached the dog to the oven door. That's one thing. But, you know, you want to, especially early when you get home with a dog in the infancy stages of the relationship, you have to set up barracking. You know, you have to set up. Rules and regulations. So he should have had, not he should have, but he should have restricted the dog's freedom, which he did. But on an oven door, I don't necessarily know if that was the wisest choice. You know, you can use a crate, you can use like a tie down where the dog's, you know, restricted in some capacity. So that was probably, that was a mistake.
SPEAKER_00:And it didn't work, right? Which is the funny part of the story. He gets out of the shower and... Sarge ripped the door off and was laying at the front door of the apartment still attached to the door. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:I didn't know if that was... I don't know if that was Sarge. Was that his dog? Because I know he had a previous dog from another school.
SPEAKER_00:Was Sarge the first one?
SPEAKER_01:He was the second one from the seeing eye.
SPEAKER_00:But
SPEAKER_01:he's had dogs from another school. So it might've been that. He
SPEAKER_00:didn't mention the schools in the book, but the story is just so incredible. So what would be the right thing to do there in that scenario?
SPEAKER_01:You want to fix a dog to something that's, you know, whether it's a, you put a dog in a crate, you know, and people, you know, crates are not a form of punishment for a dog. You know, I don't want people to think like they're a form of punishment. They're not to be construed like that. Dogs actually gravitate toward crates. Yeah. And, you know, it comes from, you know, dogs are descendants of wolves. Wolves, you know, feel security and safe in their den, you know. Dogs have that same sort of security, and it's a place of safety, refuge for the dog. So you could put the dog in there, or you could just tie the dog down where you restrict his freedom, where he's not running around, because dogs are opportunistic. Any opportunity a dog will get, they will take. Yeah, they will take it. They will take it, and that's just... But that's the beauty of a dog, too, to me.
SPEAKER_00:It's awesome. I love it. All right. Let's talk a little bit about they're in Monday they arrive, Tuesday, Wednesday. What's now the state of mind of somebody? They got their dog. Is it like just incredible to see? Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:it's incredible.
SPEAKER_00:The bond.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's great. And it's even, you know, to watch over the dog. you know, whether it's 18 days or 25 days to watch the relationship between dog and handler dog and student grow. You know, I've been doing this, like I said, 24 years, 24 years now, and it never gets old. You know, it's, it's good stuff. It's great stuff. Uh, you know, seeing that relationship. Yeah. Is it perfect after the, the, the month they spend on campus? No, it's not perfect, but you, what I like to say, you built, you know, you have a foundation and then you grow from there. Um, and you know, it's, it's, You know, we call class when they come and they're on campus for the month. Every month of the year, we have a class come to campus, 20 students from all over North America. And, you know, in that month, like I said, we lay the groundwork. But then, you know, the relationship takes about six months to a year, we say, to solidify completely. Yeah. Oh, interesting. And the one thing that distinguishes the seeing eye from other programs in the United States is our graduates have full ownership of the dog. So when they leave the seeing eye, they have full ownership. So we as an organization do not have any right to take the dog from them. What we do is once they have ownership, if– How it works is if you're having a problem with your dog, whether it's behavioral or training-wise, you call the seeing eye. Myself, training manager, one of us will talk to you over the phone and say, okay, Snoopy's doing this. And then we try and fix it over the phone. Okay, try this, try this, try this. And they call me back with an update. They call back with an update. If we can't fix that problem, then... We will send an instructor to their home area to try to fix the problem. But we make every attempt on the phone first, but then we go to their home environment. And again, that's initiated by them. We don't mandate, okay, it's time for your six-month checkup, time for your yearly checkup. We have some graduates we don't hear from eight to 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, we won't hear anything. They're out and they're doing their thing. And then, you know, that's the thing. At the end of their relationship with their guide, they can keep the dog if they can, keep it as a pet. They can adopt it to a friend or family member. So it's their dog.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's their
SPEAKER_00:dog. Yeah. I cried when... In that part of the book when Chad took the dog, Sarge, and that dropped him off after all the years working with him and gave him to the farmer down the road. Yeah, yeah. You just think how tight that bond. That bond is way more than a family pet, in my opinion. It's
SPEAKER_01:a thousand percent because you- Every second of the day. Yeah, they're protected by the ADA, the American Disability Act. So this dog, a guide dog is allowed to- Go into a restaurant, go on a plane, go anywhere. They're protected by the law. And that's sometimes challenging. Sometimes that is challenging at times because people are uneducated about the law and they don't understand
SPEAKER_00:this. Some countries he mentioned in the book don't understand or they don't have culturally. He mentioned, I'm not talking about the country, but they weren't accepting having the dog come and stay at the hotel.
SPEAKER_01:That's tough. It is tough. Jeez. It is tough. And we're making inroads as an organization to try and, you know, from an access and advocacy standpoint, trying to make inroads, especially like the denials, like an Uber or Lyft. The denials that, you know, Uber or Lyft pulls up, sees somebody with a, you know, sees a student with a dog or any guide and they leave, they pull away because I don't want a dog in my, I don't want a dog in my
SPEAKER_00:car. What do you do? What's the, is there, does the law take? Well, that's what
SPEAKER_01:we're trying to, that's what we're trying to, you know, that's what we're trying to work on. And, uh, we have, uh, you know, we're trying to make, like I said, in rows in there, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a point of frustration, extreme point, you know, and it's, uh, Yeah, but we're trying to make that better, shall we say, or easier.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. What are some other areas that...
SPEAKER_01:Like even just going into a restaurant, like you say, no, you're not bringing that dog in. Yes, I can bring that dog in. And then, because like I said, you're protected by the American Disability Act. And then getting on a plane. I mean, there are things that people have to do now on a plane that like students or graduates who have to do on a plane, you know, fill out a DO, Department of Transportation form, fill out. And it's hoops that they have to jump through that aren't necessary anymore.
SPEAKER_02:you
SPEAKER_01:know, or not necessary. So, but you know, the, the service dog industry, there's been a transformation, the service dog industry over the many, many, not many years, but years, there's been a transformation, you know, people, people saying it's a service dog, you know, like, right. And it's not, and that just, that, that's, that, that makes diff provides difficulty at times for us. But, you know, our graduates, you know, hats off to them, you know, that they're, they're, uh, They get out there and they advocate for themselves, which is good. And we as an organization advocate for them also and help out
SPEAKER_00:any way we can. Absolutely. And hopefully this episode gets out and helps to advocate. So I'm going to come back to Chad's book because Chad's truly the first person that I got to ask tons of questions about being blind. So there's another interesting part in his book where he talks, and I don't understand it, so I'm going to ask you.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Why is it not good for people to pet these dogs?
SPEAKER_01:I guess it distracts the dog. It's a distraction. If you had a... Dogs are social animals. That's just who they are. Coming back with wolves, they're pack. They operate in packs. They're not like cats. Nothing negative about cats. I admire their independence, but it stays there for me with cats. But dogs are social animals. So if you were to go up and you were to pet a guide dog, you're distracting the guide dog. Guide dog's focus is not on it. on the task at hand, meaning guiding this individual. So the dog's like, okay, I'm gonna say, somebody's gonna come and pet me. So not that every dog, but some dogs are like, oh, I'm gonna go visit this person. I'm gonna go visit this person. So the social, it's almost like the social side. So that's why we don't want dogs. Take off the harness. Dog can be a dog. Put the harness on, it's all business.
SPEAKER_00:All
SPEAKER_01:business. It's all business. You want to say it's their uniform? Yeah, it's kind of like their uniform.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Oh, that's cool. I like that, the uniform. I could see how your job, and now I can totally feel why, a career change. I mean, I could feel your passion through this interview. So I could see how the whole thing is just incredibly rewarding. A thousand percent. What in it do you love absolutely the most? Like, is it to me, as you explain in this, I could see myself the minute the bond takes place would like Trump all of it. Like, do you have a one thing within the job?
SPEAKER_01:That's part of it, but it's really the people. the people I work with every day, not only like the graduates, but it's the, the other employees. Okay. So more than the students. No, even both. But I'm saying, yes, we have a, we have people and we're 180 employees and we are, you know, people are all there for the same mission, you know, instruction and training. Yeah. We're, we're, we're providing the dog. Yeah. We're training you with the dog, but there's donor public relations, um, finance, uh, facilities, the buildings, you know, the facilities who keep the, the facilities wrapping. Sure. Um, all the departments, the veterinarian staff, they're all here for the same thing for the student. And that's to me, but yes, when you, when you see, uh, when you train an individual, a student with a dog and seeing that the culmination of after that, you know, 18 or 25 days of hard work and, and seeing them get on, you know, saying the goodbyes on the plane and seeing them go. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's it. And, uh, to me, this is, yeah, it's a job and it has good days and it has bad days, but, I'm never like, I like, I love going to work. I love going to work. You know, yeah, there's challenges. And, you know, my job now has an administrative component to it, but I still get out and work dogs. I still go out and, you know, train students here and there when I can. Yeah. You know, but, you know, it's just, yeah, I can't say enough good things about seeing
SPEAKER_00:eyes. So cool. And I would think that all 180 people working there want to work there it's not like a career like i graduated school i think i'll go work at an idea right yeah yeah you probably have done something else in life found this as to become a passion and said i want to come in here yeah that's
SPEAKER_01:it yeah and some people i mean yeah so yeah i think it depends but i think yeah a lot of people have some uh real life experience and other people's just um Get here by, you know, your journey in life, you know, just kind of get you here. You know, that's how, that's how it got me here. I just. So cool. Yeah. So.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. Yeah. What was the time? I know you referenced like people will call, a student will call, hey, I've had my dog for a year, but he's doing this. You try to diagnose it over the phone. What's a story when you had to go travel?
SPEAKER_01:It could be, it could be. I guess the one that really comes into mind is traffic. Traffic with dog. I feel my dog is getting close in traffic. And what I mean by close is cars are getting close. That's something we take very seriously. Wow. Because sometimes you can, as a handler, you can go months to a year without ever getting a traffic check. It's not something you can reinforce. What I mean by reinforce is say... You know, you're walking down the street and you bump into, I don't know, you bump into a pole or something. You as a handler can go back and show the dog, hey, this is wrong. repeat it until the dog is successful with something. If a dog doesn't check in traffic, it's not like as a handler, you can say, all right, I want, I'm going to have my neighbor come over and drive that man to see that you can't do that. So sometimes a dog will go a period of time without getting a traffic check. Other things are, you know, other things on that list are, you know, uh, pace, pace might be a little too slow. Pace might be a little too fast. Um, distraction.
SPEAKER_00:Is that so on pace real quick? Is that like, Can pace change if somebody gets more out of shape and they can't keep up with their dog? Is that an
SPEAKER_01:example? I mean, it could, or the dog just slows up. As the dogs get older, they typically slow up. They don't, they don't, they don't, you know, but sometimes, yeah, we have a, where the dog slows down. So we try again, this is a huge investment for us. 70,$75,000. So we want to do everything we can do to see if we can fix the problem in the field, because if we can fix the problem in the field and, prolong the, you know, the, the relationship that's, that's, that's just benefits the organization and benefits the, the, the handler. Right. Because these, these individuals, you know, who come to campus, they're, they're come to the seeing eye for a month. So, you know, people have jobs, people have lives. So, you know, so it's, there's, there's a lot to it. And, you know, before I got into this work, I had no idea what was involved. You know, I remember my, I was, I was on the subway in New York city and, And I saw a gentleman get on a train and I don't know if it was a seeing eye dog, but it was a guy dog. And I saw a dog get on the train. And if he gets a seat and he sits down, I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. Not at that point in my life did I ever know what goes into matching somebody with a dog or how much hard work and what's involved in the whole process. You know, I'm like, okay, you know, like you have someone who's blind, you have a dog, you match them. You know, you gotta look at pace and pull. You gotta look at their environment. You know, we have people who work in New York City, work in Philadelphia, work in Chicago. but we have people in more rural areas of the country. So some dogs, every dog in training goes into New York City and gets exposed to New York City, but not every dog has to work in New York City to be like, oh, if a dog doesn't do well in New York City, it's not like, all right, Sorry, he's disqualified. He's out. He's out, no. We rejected from the program. Reject is such a strong word. I like to say career change maybe. I love that. Career change. For the dog. So you take that into mind. Keep that in mind when matching. And like I said earlier, there is a magic to it. There
SPEAKER_00:is a magic. Like it's more of an art.
SPEAKER_01:There is an art. Than a science. Yeah. Yeah. There, I mean, there's some, you know,
SPEAKER_00:there was
SPEAKER_01:something, but it's more of a, it's more of an art and there's a feel to it. That's so cool. You know?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love it. Yeah. All right. So the list, I cut you off there, but it was a traffic pace. What are some other things that people call in? Like,
SPEAKER_01:like distraction, like instinctual distraction. Like my dog's very distracted on other dogs. My dog is, um, you know, game distraction, whether it's birds, squirrels, whatever is distracting other squirrels.
SPEAKER_00:That's the Husky answer. I think that we were looking
SPEAKER_01:for overall. Well, you know, just a lack of focus, lack of focus. And so, you know, the training methodology, our principles are what our school is founded upon. The same principles. We use what's called the affection correction principle. Dog does something right, the dog is praised. Whether it's verbal, whether it's a little pat, a little touch, a little tickle.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, and if a dog does something wrong, a dog is corrected, whether it's a verbal reprimand
SPEAKER_02:or
SPEAKER_01:whether it's a leash correction, you know. And, you know, there's, you know, it seems like industry-wide a lot of, you know, some schools and, you know, their philosophy, they're using a more positive approach to things, a lot of food-based training. And that's what they feel is most successful and what suits their needs, which is fine. But we at the Seeing Eye, our training methodologies are on what we were founded upon. Right. You know, like the verbal reprimand that we use is pfui. It's P-F-U-I. It's a sharp German word of disapproval. So pfui.
UNKNOWN:Pfui.
SPEAKER_01:We feel it gets the dog's attention a little better than no. And the thing, if you're a dog owner, like if you have a pet dog, or even if you have a guide, I always tell dogs are very keen to the inflection of a human's voice. Very keen. Like you can tell your dog no. Or you can say, no, you know? And I'm not yelling. I'm just, what I like to say, turning up the firmness, being a little firmer with the dog, you know? Dogs are very keen on inflection of the human's voice. You know, like you can say praise, you could be like, good boy. Or you can be like, good boy. You know, and dogs are like, oh yeah. You know, dogs, I mean, at the end of the day, dogs, they really want to, they want to please you. You know, they really want to do, Well, they do right by you. And you just, like I said earlier, you just got to stay consistent.
SPEAKER_00:Was the F.U.I. an acronym for something? No, it's
SPEAKER_01:just a sharp German word of disapproval.
SPEAKER_00:So instead of saying no.
SPEAKER_01:It's F.U.I. And that's from where we were founded. Oh.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:back in 1929. You used that word? We still use it today. Oh,
SPEAKER_01:my goodness.
SPEAKER_00:That's so cool. What other kind of words? What do you say for, like, good boy?
SPEAKER_01:Just praise. And you can find what works best for your dog, like attaboy, good boy, like those types of things. You know, a dog doesn't know what you're saying. Not really. Their vocabulary isn't that extensive. But, again, it's just genuine, heartfelt praise. And play, like playing with a dog. Yeah. What I mean play is when you're at home and you want to develop a relationship or keep with a relationship, it's just playing with the dog, like getting down on the ground, playing with him, wrestling with him. That's how you develop a relationship with a dog. You know, other words, you know, forward, left, right. We also use a command called hop up. It's H-U-P dash U-P. It's hop up. It means speed up or continue on. We don't have a command for stop. Uh, we just, you know, if you, if you had to stop, you would just stop your forward momentum. You just stop, just plant your feet, just plant your feet. And the dog stops, you know, dogs, how dogs brains think, or dogs are dogs like continual motion, like dogs. That's just, that's just from their instinct. They like continual motion. So all you, all you do, all you do that is just stop, plant your feet and reset. Um, you know, there's, uh, uh, We do, I can't say we don't, we do use some clicker training. All of our dogs are clicker savvy. Yeah. And clicker, I don't know if you're familiar with clicker, but clicker is, it's operant conditioning and it's, you know, using click sound and with, when that dog hears that sound, the dog associates that with a food reward. So we do use that for certain things, like targeting. Like if you wanted to target a, and I'm getting into the weeds here, but if you wanted to target a bus stop or a garbage can, you could use, you know, you could use the clicker to help target a certain destination. So that's the nice thing about a dog. Dogs are destination oriented. They like to go to destination. That's just how, again, that's how dogs think they did.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Like here's where we're going.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And the dog, like if you go, especially like if, like when I'm working a dog and I'm training the dog, especially back when I'm training dog, like if I went to this coffee shop once or twice, if I walked by that cop coffee shop and like a week later, that dog's going to be like, It'll pause and be like, hey, do you want to get another cup of coffee? You know, that's just, you know, it's just, that's just how dogs are, you know?
SPEAKER_00:That's so cool.
SPEAKER_01:I think personally, I think we as humans do not give dogs enough credit. You know, they're very intuitive animals. A retired instructor who had big influence on my career, he summed it up as an organic sense. Like the dogs just can sense so much from you. And, um, I mean, dogs can have a whole host, a host of jobs out there. And, uh, but it's, uh, yeah, it's, uh, I, I very happy to, like I said, to, to, to have, be a part of this organization and a very spoiled with the dogs I work with every
SPEAKER_00:day. Yeah. So that's so cool. Yeah. Um, Like the campus itself.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. 60
SPEAKER_00:acres. Okay. 60 acres. 24 people at a time. Yep. So 24 there each month, obviously the workers, instructors and stuff like that. What does a day look like?
SPEAKER_01:A day? Okay. Yeah. So I'll give you a quick version of a day in the life of a student. Wake up at 5.30. They take their dog out to what we call park time, go out and park and relieve the dog. Dogs come back in. They feed the dogs breakfast. They get themselves ready. Breakfast is at 7 o'clock. So we have a dining room right on campus. So they have the dormitory wing that is on one side and the dining room is on the other side of the building. And it's set up like a letter H where the dormitories are here. dining rooms here and there's a thoroughfare here, if you want to call it, or a straight hallway where offices and stuff, they get to work the dog down the hall. Yeah. So they come at seven o'clock in the morning. Breakfast is from seven to 7.45. Okay. 7.45, you'll do, the morning is comprised of one trip in Morristown. And trips are, you know, from the early, the infancy stages of training, they do, we have three routes, two routes that they solo by themselves. Um, so they'll do, um, they'll do these routes and that's for the first week and a half of training, but, and I'm digressing, but so there's a morning trip in the morning. Yeah. And then you come back from, uh, your, your morning or your morning trip, and then you give the, you give the dog some water, um, then you give them another opportunity to park. And then there could either be a lecture. There could be obedience you're doing with the dog. There could be some stuff your instructor wants to work with you on. Lunch is at noon. So again, they'll work down from their room to the dining room. Lunch is from 12 to 1, 1 o'clock they do an afternoon trip. And there's an early morning trip, a later morning trip, an early afternoon trip, a later afternoon trip. So they do a trip again in the afternoon. They come back from the trip in the afternoon. They'll feed the dogs at 4.30, feed the dogs, water the dogs, take the dogs out, give them an opportunity to relieve themselves. 5.15 is dinner. 5.15 to about 6. 6 is dinner. And then in the evening time, we typically have another lecture. Lectures can be a host of topics. They could be, um, like a traffic lecture. They could be control, like controlling it, like, uh, um, like controlling a dog, like, uh, like just, you know, um, fears. Like we talk about dogs, fears, how to, um, how to, how to, what you do as a handler. If every dog ever becomes fearful in a situation. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, dog food. Uh, we have a veterinary, our, our veterinarian, our, our director of, uh, canine, uh, medicine. Uh, he'll come down and he'll do a lecture on, on veterinary, uh, things that are important. And, uh, yeah, so we have a lecture and then eight o'clock they take, they water the dogs again and they take the dogs out for one, another park time. And, um, then they, uh, then it's lights out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So tweak this.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. I want to get a good understanding of challenges. There you go. That's my one hour. It's a one hour screensaver. It's such an appropriate picture though. What, what are like, okay, that's a day. It sounds awesome. What are challenges when they, when somebody first gets their dog, like what are some of the most common challenges they have? The stakes they make.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think one of the challenges you see is the attachment of the dog to the instructor. So the instructor trains the dogs for four months. Okay. And then in the fifth month is when they train— one of the students with a dog. So say the dog that they spent four months with, they are putting, they're going to be training that dog with one of their students. There's a relationship between the initial, well, the relationship between the dog and the instructor that can not be troublesome, but the dog's attached to the, to the handler. And then all of a sudden we're saying, Hey, sorry, all bets off. You know, I don't, you know, I, I, not that they don't interact, but they limit the interaction that they have with the dog. So the dog's like, well, what the heck's going on? So some may, you know, so that's an adjustment. Just the overall adjustment for students, just the adjustment with the new dog if they're getting a successor dog, you know, or with a new student using a dog for the first time, you know, just learning the basics. Like this, you know, guide work, it comes down to basics, proper arm position, proper body position, you know, handle, you know, harnessing, you know, harness, you know, Positioned right in your hand, held right, leash in the right position, all the basics. That's what, you know, not only with this line of work, but the basics, you know, things break down when the basics start breaking
SPEAKER_00:down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. So I want to tie that part of the journey back to the puppy raisers, all the way back to the beginning. What would happen if a dog... saw the puppy raiser, they would remember them like a year ago. Like, does that ever happen?
SPEAKER_01:Well, we have how it's set up. So the puppy will come back. Well, dog will come back at, you know, 14 months and then it'll be trained. And then as part of the process, the family that's raised the dog comes in for their, if the dog makes it, and this is in the fourth month of training, the dog, the family comes in for a town walk. And what a town walk is, they get to observe the dog and the instructor from afar. Like they're not like, they're walking behind about, who knows, 20 feet or so watching the dog
SPEAKER_00:work. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So they get to see the dog there. They don't get to interact with the dog. Like when they give the dog back, there's no more interaction with the dog. So the dog, they'll see it there. And that's just like icing on, you know, it's just like, oh, all my hard work. You know, it's there. And a lot, I mean, we have families that have raised, you know, through like, grandparents, parents, through the whole 60 plus dogs. Like that's how many, and they do it. And it's such a selfless act. It's like a self, it's a very, it's such a selfless act and they do it because they know why they're doing it. And, um, you know, um, my family, we raised one dog and, uh, it was, yeah, it was a great experience. My, my daughters, my two oldest daughters wanted to do it. They were younger at that time and they raised a dog. So I understand the hard work that goes into it. And I still have remnants of, you know, still have memories of, of the dog we raised, you know, a photo, uh, Chewed leg of the dining room table, chewed molding. Yeah. You know, but you know, it's just like, you know, I'm joking, of course, but you're dealing with, it's a tough time. And, you know, they welcome these dogs in. And then at 14 months, and a lot of people, what some raisers will do is they, like the dog's getting toward that time where they go back, they'll get another puppy. So there's a little like... Like layover, if you want to call it, or whatever the term is. So they say, okay, well, this dog's Liam, but I got this one to kind of fill the void, you know? Oh,
SPEAKER_00:that's awesome. So you have to be like hyper local to do it?
SPEAKER_01:Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware. We have clubs everywhere. can't remember how many clubs off the top of my head but we have clubs throughout there and how that works is each club is you know geographically located and we have what's called an area coordinator a coordinator who goes to these club meetings is in their direct contact hey my puppy's doing this and they they can give advice to them so we have area coordinators in the puppy puppy development department and i'm gonna i'm gonna put a little plug in here um we are, and it's not just the seeing eye, it's, it's industry wide is there's been a shortage of puppy raisers, meaning people aren't raising puppies. And this is ever since COVID, but you know, they're, they're not raising, we're having a, now we're having difficulty, but we get all puppies placed, but it's been a challenging, there's been a whole sort of a, a change in the industry, but we're still, I mean, again, hats off to the puppy development, department or at the seeing eye i mean they they work hard and they get these puppies in place but you know it's been it's it's it's been tough and we're using all resources we can to you know attract sure do it and like part of the you know people like will say oh a puppy i'll do it and then they they realize wow like a weaker tone they're just like wow this is a lot of
SPEAKER_00:work a lot of work
SPEAKER_01:so part of our criteria is they they um the family who's interested they they They will sort of babysit a dog or take a puppy for a little period of time just to get a, like somebody, a puppy who may be in, who's with another family, they could, babysit not babysit but get a get a flavor of what goes on raising a dog because it's a lot of work and like i said the the they they do the housebreaking that they do the obedience that with them they socialize and they take them to events like a lot of these clubs are tight-knit they go to like events they go to new york city they go to washington dc they go they do a bunch of stuff so it's it's good and it's great for the dogs it's
SPEAKER_00:great for the dogs sure so I bet it is. Yeah. Incredible. Wow. What an incredible look behind this, not behind the scenes, but like sort of under the hood. Yeah. As to what goes on. How can somebody support your mission, the mission?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, we have, again, you know, we are a nonprofit organization. We rely on no funding from the federal government or the state.
SPEAKER_00:Is that by design? Do you want it that way? Yeah. Is it better that way?
SPEAKER_01:It's better
SPEAKER_00:that way. And we'll leave it there.
SPEAKER_01:But, you know, I mean, donations, you know, that's huge. We even have a volunteer, you know, we have a network. I think it's 100. Well, with the puppy raisers, it's probably over. It's probably over 600 volunteers. Whoa. Like within the organization. Yeah, volunteers. But a good percentage of those are the puppy raisers. Yeah. But we have... We have volunteers who come and help out in any way they can. So it's a good story.
SPEAKER_00:It's a great story. It's a good story. So there's needs. At the facility as well for volunteers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we have volunteer opportunities there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, we definitely have volunteer opportunities. Special, short-term, long-term, everything? Yeah, I guess a
SPEAKER_01:little bit of both. You know, we have volunteers that have been around for, you know, a long time helping out. And we have some, you know, younger, newer people, you know, helping out and volunteering any way they can. So,
SPEAKER_00:so cool. How big is the... industry roughly are there 20 seeing eye dogs are there five like other people that are schools
SPEAKER_01:schools like i said seeing eye is we're the only school that can call our dogs seeing eye dogs like it's like we have a trademark so it's like xerox and kleenex you know we're we're the only school there's 13 schools i believe in the united states 98 schools worldwide So there's schools throughout, uh, throughout the entire world. Yeah. So, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Fascinating. Yeah. All right. Let's, let's, uh, let's talk a little bit and then we'll wrap up about just some advice for the person out there struggling with, with a dog at home. The normal stuff, like my dog pulls my dog, you know, what are some tips, uh, you operate at such a high level so you can help
SPEAKER_01:with this
SPEAKER_00:kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Just at the end of it all, dogs want to please their master.
SPEAKER_00:Every breed?
SPEAKER_01:You know, some breeds more than ever and some dogs, but consistency, consistency is key with dogs. Dogs thrive with a consistent environment, you know? So if you do one thing, if you like, for instance, if you own a pet dog and you're like, I'll let the dog on the couch one day, and then the next day, you yell at the dog to get off the couch, and the dog's lemon-sized brain,
SPEAKER_02:they
SPEAKER_01:were like, well, here, you told me it was great yesterday. You're cuddling with me on the couch, and now you're yelling at me to get off the couch. So it sends mixed signals to the dog.
SPEAKER_00:Which
SPEAKER_01:is
SPEAKER_00:it? Yeah. What about, so we had this with one of our Huskies. The front door problem. When the front door rings, he just goes berserk and insane and goes to the front door. If we let him go, he would tear the thing down to get to the person, but not to hurt them. They wouldn't. They would get to them and lick them, but the person doesn't know that. We've never been able to
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's multiple, there's, I mean, there's a couple of things, you know, and I'd have to really like see the dog, the behavior of the dog, but you know, you can, I don't know if you use a crate with the dog. If you use a crate.
SPEAKER_00:He's passed. So we wouldn't have to know his brother. The other Husky is perfectly fine with the door. You can ring it all day long. He doesn't move.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you can, you could use it, use a crate in that situation. What I mean by a crate in that situation is like I referred to earlier about a crate, a crate is a safe place for a dog and you can assign a, you could assign, Hey, this could be, you know, go to your crate and the dog When that doorbell rings, you know, you tell them to go to their crate and they have to go to their crate and rest there. Or in a situation like that, you could, you know, it could be through patterning the dog. You bring the dog to the door on a leash, you put the dog at a sit, rest position. We use rest. We don't use stay. We use rest. It means the same command. But you could have a dog rest on your left side, and the dog has to exhibit some self-control on their part. If they want to be interacted, like if the visitor is coming to your house, if they wanted to interact with the dog, the dog has to exhibit some self-control on their part. So what does the dog want? The dog wants to greet the person. What are you doing by having them sitting and resting? You're saying, okay. Your reward, and the reward there is, I wanna meet you, I wanna say, hey, I wanna see you, I wanna say, hey, I'm a dog, ha, ha, ha, you know, tail wagging, put the dog at a sit rest, and then. When the person, you let the dog know, okay, it's safe for you to pet the, it's okay for you to pet the dog. And then the dog, that's one way. That's one way. And again, that's the type of stuff you want to start early. I mean, can you teach an old dog new tricks? Yeah, you can teach an old dog new tricks. You could. Yeah, you can. But it's, I mean, it's always easier when they're younger. It's the same thing with children. Right. You know? Yeah. Isn't it? Right. I mean, I have four kids. I know what it's all about.
SPEAKER_00:Form good habits rather than break bad habits. Well said. Well said. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Is there anything that you can think of that anything come up during this interview that you would like to. talk about or bring up or anything you think I may have missed. This is an incredible.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, like I said, we could probably talk for hours on the organization. You know, there's a, it has a deep rooted history, you know, and we're the oldest school in the world. And I, and I'm biased, but I, I, I feel, I feel we're the best school, you know, and I'm not saying, you know, other schools are good, but you know, we're, we're, I'm proud to be a part of this organization. Being a part of this organization has made me a better person overall. You know, just working for this organization has made me a better person. And I owe that to the organization. I owe that. And, you know, it's, yeah, I can't say enough good things. I can't say enough good things about the organization. I can't say the people I work with, I can't say enough good things about the students that I interact with on a daily basis, the courage and everything, you know, they, uh, that, you know, they're, they're leading normal lives and, uh, and, you know, I, I, they're, you know, they're, they're a big, they're the, they're the motivation every day is the students. Cause like I said, we're, we're a people organization. Yeah. It's the people that drive our organization. Yes. Dogs are huge. Dogs are a big component of it. I like, and I, I, I, I, I'm a, I'm a dog fan, you know, but it's the people that really,
SPEAKER_00:yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. Well, I want to say thank you for being here. I mean, it's great. This is fun. Awesome. The insights here are incredible. I took so many notes. One day, my kids are going to be able to go through this. Every episode I do a different, like these are all notes from today. They're going to have that to look at. My thing's curiosity. If you're curious in life, right? If you're curious in
SPEAKER_01:life. Who was it? I don't know if it was Thoreau or Whitman that said, be curious, not judgmental. I forget who it was, but it's funny. I'll leave with this, but I was driving over here And my wife, I'm talking to my wife quick. I'm like, is Jackie there yet? And I'm like, almost. She's like, you're late as usual. And I'm like, yep. A man of my own heart. I'm talking to her. And she's like, are you nervous? And I said, if I can not talk about this with knowledge and passion. Yeah. After 24 plus years of doing it, then, then I, then I have a problem. So to me, it's just like a conversation and, you know, like, like it's funny, it'll just strike up a conversation. And I was traveling cause there's times, and we didn't go into depth about this, but there's times that we'll take a dog to the, to, um, we'll take a dog to the student, their home environment and train them at their home. But, um, there's times I'm traveling on a plane with a dog and I'm there with a dog in harness. And it's, you know, people come up and just, it's a, it's a million like questions, you know, it's just, yeah. And it's, it's, and I love talking about, I love talking about it. You know, it's, it's never, it's never like a, oh, you know, but it's just, it's, it's, it's my life.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it's my life.
SPEAKER_00:So awesome. I think it's so cool. You got a great story. Thanks for sharing all this under the hood stuff. There'll be many other questions that'll pour in and come in and I'll send them your way and you can comment on them and everything. But I want to shake your hand and say thanks for being
SPEAKER_01:here. Pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:Really appreciate
SPEAKER_01:it.
