February 12, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Christine Benninger is the CEO of Guide Dogs for the Blind, the largest guide dog school in North America. She shares about the unique training process for these extraordinary animals and the special bond they share with their owner.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories and up next
we're going to have a little fun. If you're having
a rough day, this story is sure to make you smile.
Guide Dogs for the Blind is the largest guide dog
school in North America and the second largest in the world.
Christine Binninger, CEO of Guide Dogs for the Blind, is
(00:31):
here to share her stories about some powesome friends and
all that they do. Please forgive me for all the
dog puns. Here's Christine with this beautiful story.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Guide Dogs for the Blind was founded in nineteen forty
two to serve individuals who were blinded during World War Two.
The very first founders of Guide Dogs for the Blind
were military dog trainers. They had the idea that dogs
could make a real difference in people's lives and helping
them negotiate life with more freedom and more independence. We
(01:10):
breed labs Golden Retrievers, and then we breed across between
the two. Dogs are individually just as different as people,
so dog personalities, wants, needs, the way they act. Each
dog is unique, but that works for us, and the
reason is our clients are unique. Part of the magic
(01:31):
of Guide Dogs for the Blind is the matching process
and finding exactly the right match, and that match is
based on what your lifestyle is. If you're somebody who
works in downtown Manhattan and takes a train and then
a bus to get into your office every day, you
have to walk the streets of Manhattan, that's a little
(01:53):
bit of a different dog than you know. If you're
living in a suburb and you know, maybe you're doing
volunteer work every day, or you're meeting friends for coffee.
Different dogs like to work in different environments. We match
by personality. If you are somebody who's super outgoing and
really likes talking with people, we're going to match you
(02:15):
with a dog that's super outgoing and is going to
elicit that interaction for you. If you're somebody who's a
little more reserved and you know you just want to
get from point A to point B. You really don't
want to be talking with a lot of people along
the way, we're going to match you with a dog
that's a little more reserved and won't elicit as much.
(02:35):
We also make certain that we match our clients' preferences.
We have clients that their visual impairment allows them to
see dark colors, so we'll match them with a black
lab or allows them to see lighter colors, so we'll
match them with a yellow lab or a golden retriever.
(02:56):
The matching process is complicated, as you can well imagine.
You've got a lot of different traits that we have
to match for the person, and you know dogs each
have their different traits as well, and that's why I
say there's always a bit of magic and every single
match that's made. We were the first service dog organization
ever to employ positive reinforcement training methods. Traditional training methods
(03:21):
basically set a dog up to fail and then you
punish them for failure, with the theory being that the
dog remembers that and doesn't want to be punished again.
Positive reinforcement training is setting the dog up for success
and rewarding them for success. It feels a lot better
to be set up for success and being rewarded for
(03:43):
that versus being set up for failure. It's made a
huge difference for our dogs. So the interesting thing is
that the skills of a dog trained with essentially punishment
based training versus positive reinforcement training, their skills are just
as good. The difference is the excitement about working, so
(04:04):
a punishment based dog who's been trained in that methodology
isn't excited about going to work because what they're thinking
is that, oh my god, if I get something wrong,
I'm going to be punished. Dogs that are trained with
a positive reinforcement methodology are so excited to work. It's like,
oh my god, the harness is out, Yes, yes, let's go.
(04:27):
And honestly, that makes a huge difference and it makes
you feel better too. The other interesting thing is that
when we were using punishment based training, it took us
twenty four weeks to train a guide dog in their skills.
Positive reinforcement training, it now takes us twelve weeks, So
(04:47):
you can see there's so many benefits to it, not
only from the psychological aspects to the dogs, but they
learn much faster and that allows us to be able
to train more guide dogs and train more clients. People
have to really commit to the guide dog lifestyle. In
order for a guide dog to be successful, you have
(05:07):
to get them onto a routine. Guide dogs are trained
not to relieve themselves and harness, so we all need
bathroom breaks, right. You need to make certain that you're
consistently feeding at the same times that you're consistently relieving
at the same times you have to take your dog
to the vet. I mean so even the way that
(05:28):
we interface with our clients is all unique. We don't
charge for any of our services. We fly people out
to our campuses, they live with us for two weeks
and train with their dogs. We fly them home and
then we continue to follow up with our clients to
make sure that things are working well. And in addition
(05:50):
to that, we also pay for all the veterinary costs
over the dog's lifetime to make certain that no one
is put in a position of saying, do I hey
my rent, or do I take my dog to the vet.
Our dogs are trained athletes have to be kept in
peak condition, so we want to always make certain that
our guide dogs have the best medical care. And all
(06:13):
of our work is supported through donation. It's a huge
community that supports Guy Dogs for the Blind. We have
approximately three hundred staff members and over four thousand volunteers,
so we actually start training our dogs at three days
of age. We have a whole group of volunteers called cuddlers,
(06:37):
who start cuddling our babies and that's literally what they do.
They cuddle them so that these babies become used to people,
become used to human touch, and there's nothing scary about
a person starting very early on with very gentle, loving touch,
which the puppies react to obviously in a positive ways.
(07:00):
A lot about our breeders. A brand new mama allowing
somebody to sit with her babies and hold her babies
at three days of age is pretty remarkable. Our clients
range in age from fourteen to ninety four. What the
qualifications are for getting a guide dog are that you
(07:22):
are legally blind, that you have a need to go
somewhere every day. That doesn't mean that you have to
have a job. You know something every day at a minimum,
I get out and I go for a walk. And
the reason for that is the team needs to work
together every day. Otherwise you, as a handler lose your
skills or the guide dog loses their skills. In order
(07:44):
to keep that team working seamlessly together, you've got to
get out and work every day. The third requirement is
that you already have the orientation and mobility skills. Guide
dogs are not GPS systems. Just say to your guide dog,
take me to the nearest Starbucks. You have to know
(08:05):
essentially where that Starbucks is and then you need to
give your dog the commands for how to get there,
and your dog will get you there safely. And the
fourth requirement is that you are living somewhere that will
support a guide dog. Oftentimes, particularly in rural environments, there
are a lot of off leash aggressive dogs. If a
(08:28):
guide dog feels that they're going to be attacked every
time that they walk out their door, typically then they're
going to stop working. So if people meet those four criteria,
then we bring them into our school and they get
a guide dog. Nearly sixteen thousand teams have graduated since
our founding, very proud of that.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And you've been listening to Christine Benninger, CEO of Guide
Dogs for the Blind, and my goodness, what a scaled
operation she's running. And it's at the behest of so
many donors who want to see this happen. When we
come back more of this great American story of Guide
Dogs for the Blind and so much more. By the way,
that whole cuddling thing sounds like we could all use
(09:12):
such an endeavor or such a week. When we come
back more of this great story here on our American story,
(09:39):
and we return to our American Stories and to Christine
Benninger's story, the CEO of Guide Dogs for the Blind.
Here's Christine to talk about the dogs and all that
goes into the unique training for these very special animals.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
When you look at service dogs and all the different
things that service dogs do, guide work is the most
complicated for two reasons. One is that guide dogs have
to get everything right one hundred percent of the time.
They can't just walk their person into traffic once, or
(10:17):
they can't walk you into a light pole once, so
guide dogs get no second chances. They've got to do
it right. Secondly, they have to evaluate whether the command
they're given is going to keep the team safe or not.
And if the guide dog believes it won't keep the
team safe, it'll have to disobey the command and do
(10:37):
exactly the opposite. Now that's even tough for humans. I
don't know how often you say no to your boss,
but that's a hard thing to do, and dogs leave
in a hierarchy, so basically saying no to their boss.
It takes a special dog to be able to do that.
If a dog is given a command to cross the
(10:58):
street and that handler is not hearing, the electric car
that's coming around the corner. The dog has to pull
their handler away from the street rather than walking into
the street. So that's an example of what we call
intelligent disobedience. Guy dogs are trained to do all kinds
of things. When you walk into a room, or you
(11:21):
walk onto a bus, they are trained to find you
an open seat, so they'll take you to the first
available open seat. Many of our clients train their dogs
for very specific things. Like we have a client she said,
wherever I go, I've always got my water bottle with me,
and so I'm always looking for recycling bins. So she's
(11:44):
trained her guide dog when she needs to to find
a recycling bin so that she can get rid of
her water bottle. You can train your dog to take
you to Starbucks. Once your dog knows where Starbucks is
and that's where you go on a regular basis, you
can just say take me to start all kinds of
things like that. What I'll call the magic of guide
dogs is that the team becomes so close because the
(12:11):
team is together twenty four to seven and relies on
each other. Our guide dogs are not trained in being
able to sense medical changes in our clients. Somehow they
get to know their person well enough that they do.
This happened about two years ago. We have a client
(12:32):
that does work in Manhattan. She works in one of
those buildings that is like a gazillion floors, and so
you have to take a very specific elevator to your
bank of floors, and so her guide dog knows exactly
which elevator to go to. And one particular day, her
guide dog didn't take her to the bank of elevators,
(12:53):
but took her to a group of couches that were
sort of off the lobby. And when she got to
the group of couches, she realized she wasn't feeling very well.
She sat down and had a stroke. So did her
guide dog. I cry sorry. Did her guide dog know
(13:15):
that she was going to have a stroke? No, but
the guide dog knew something was wrong. What our guide
dogs do is take care of their people. So the
guide dog knew getting in that elevator probably wasn't the
best thing to do. Getting her to a safer spot
was the best thing to do. Those kinds of stories
(13:37):
happen all the time, not through training, but through that
relationship that grows between a guide dog and their person.
What I find really remarkable about our clients is the
different types of things that people do. Our clients are
(14:00):
mothers raising three children. We have people who are business people.
We have people who are chefs, who are musicians, who
are teachers. We actually have a couple of clients that
have just competed in the Paralympics over in Japan. What
a guide dog does is give people confidence to be
(14:21):
able to do what they want to do in life.
And so as a result, you see these just remarkable
things that our clients do. We have a client that
he's a professional hiker. He's hiked with his guide dog
the Pacific Crest Trail, He's hiked the Appalachian Trail. I mean,
(14:42):
he's hiked all over the world. And he does that
as someone who's blind with a guide dog out for
days and days and days by himself. All of that,
in my mind, is truly remarkable guide dogs. For so
the Blind has made a concerted effort to target youth.
(15:04):
Kids have a tendency to not want to be sort
of called out as different, right, and so much of
who we become as adults is based on what we
experience as young person. So canine buddies they're not guide
dogs that they are companion dogs, well trained companion dogs.
(15:25):
For individuals who are too young yet to get a
guide dog. We do have a lower age limit, but
we don't have an upper age limit. We're giving canine
buddies to families with children as young as five, and
what a canine buddy does is not only start to
orient kids around dogs, but most importantly is building their confidence.
(15:50):
You know, hearing from parents about how you know their
five year old was not making friends in school, afraid
to dress them, wouldn't go to the bathroom on their own,
Mommy had to be there. And once they had a
canine buddy, all of a sudden, wanting to be independent,
getting dressed on their own, starting to make friends. They're
(16:12):
the kind of coolest kid on the block with this
really neat dog. Some kids have night terrors. With a
canine buddy, those night terrors go away. So canine buddies,
while they're not specifically service dogs, make a huge difference
in the life of very young children. Then we have
(16:32):
a whole host of programs that are targeted towards high
school kids. That's a very sort of vulnerable time, right,
wasn't my best years if I think about high school.
So we have things like what we call GDB Camp
for high school kids to get together with other kids
(16:53):
with similar disabilities. They actually have the opportunity to work
with a guide dog, sleep with the guide dog overnight,
plus just have a great time just being campers, just
being kids. We fly kids in from all over North
America and there's all kinds of fun things to do,
you know, tandem bike riding, canoeing, swimming. This last year
(17:17):
we actually had the kids visit a lama farm and
have the opportunity to walk a lama. They all agreed
that walking a guide dog was a lot easier than
walking a lama. Oftentimes, kids that have a visual disability
don't know anybody else who does, so lifelong friendships are made.
(17:39):
It's a great place, it's fun place. We've grown from
a very small, fledgling organization to really, you know, the
largest guide school in North America. That's not easy. So
I'm very grateful to my counterparts who were a part
of this organization and set the state for who we
(18:01):
are today. Because of their efforts, we've been able to grow,
We've been able to fund ourselves and really become the
leader in the guide dog industry. It's a huge community
that supports our work. I've always been inspired by the
difference that animals make in our lives. It's really an
(18:23):
honor to be a part of this organization because this
is an organization that saves lives. It gives people their
independence and allows people to live the life that they
want to live. And I can't think of anything more
inspirational than that.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And a great job is always on the production and
the storytelling by Madison and special thanks to Christine Beninger,
the CEO of Guide Dogs for the Blind. To learn
more and to help support their mission, go to guidedogs
dot com. And by the way, this is just a
perfect example of American generosity at work. He's working at
a nonprofit. People are donating money, people are volunteering, they're
(19:04):
cuddling with dogs. All of these things they're doing to
help a stranger's life just move along a little better.
And my goodness, what she said about what the dog's
mission was, what our guide dogs do is take care
of their people. And they do it not through the
mere training, but through the strong relationship they build with
(19:25):
their client. And anyone who has an animal knows what
that relationship means, and a special thanks to all the
people who support this great organization. Again, go to guiddogs
dot com if you love the mission and go ahead
and help them do what they do. The story of
Christine Beninger, the story of Guide Dogs for the Blind,
and the story in the end of the generosity of
(19:47):
the American people. Here on our American stories. It different
Speaker 2 (20:08):
E
And we continue with our American stories and up next
we're going to have a little fun. If you're having
a rough day, this story is sure to make you smile.
Guide Dogs for the Blind is the largest guide dog
school in North America and the second largest in the world.
Christine Binninger, CEO of Guide Dogs for the Blind, is
(00:31):
here to share her stories about some powesome friends and
all that they do. Please forgive me for all the
dog puns. Here's Christine with this beautiful story.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Guide Dogs for the Blind was founded in nineteen forty
two to serve individuals who were blinded during World War Two.
The very first founders of Guide Dogs for the Blind
were military dog trainers. They had the idea that dogs
could make a real difference in people's lives and helping
them negotiate life with more freedom and more independence. We
(01:10):
breed labs Golden Retrievers, and then we breed across between
the two. Dogs are individually just as different as people,
so dog personalities, wants, needs, the way they act. Each
dog is unique, but that works for us, and the
reason is our clients are unique. Part of the magic
(01:31):
of Guide Dogs for the Blind is the matching process
and finding exactly the right match, and that match is
based on what your lifestyle is. If you're somebody who
works in downtown Manhattan and takes a train and then
a bus to get into your office every day, you
have to walk the streets of Manhattan, that's a little
(01:53):
bit of a different dog than you know. If you're
living in a suburb and you know, maybe you're doing
volunteer work every day, or you're meeting friends for coffee.
Different dogs like to work in different environments. We match
by personality. If you are somebody who's super outgoing and
really likes talking with people, we're going to match you
(02:15):
with a dog that's super outgoing and is going to
elicit that interaction for you. If you're somebody who's a
little more reserved and you know you just want to
get from point A to point B. You really don't
want to be talking with a lot of people along
the way, we're going to match you with a dog
that's a little more reserved and won't elicit as much.
(02:35):
We also make certain that we match our clients' preferences.
We have clients that their visual impairment allows them to
see dark colors, so we'll match them with a black
lab or allows them to see lighter colors, so we'll
match them with a yellow lab or a golden retriever.
(02:56):
The matching process is complicated, as you can well imagine.
You've got a lot of different traits that we have
to match for the person, and you know dogs each
have their different traits as well, and that's why I
say there's always a bit of magic and every single
match that's made. We were the first service dog organization
ever to employ positive reinforcement training methods. Traditional training methods
(03:21):
basically set a dog up to fail and then you
punish them for failure, with the theory being that the
dog remembers that and doesn't want to be punished again.
Positive reinforcement training is setting the dog up for success
and rewarding them for success. It feels a lot better
to be set up for success and being rewarded for
(03:43):
that versus being set up for failure. It's made a
huge difference for our dogs. So the interesting thing is
that the skills of a dog trained with essentially punishment
based training versus positive reinforcement training, their skills are just
as good. The difference is the excitement about working, so
(04:04):
a punishment based dog who's been trained in that methodology
isn't excited about going to work because what they're thinking
is that, oh my god, if I get something wrong,
I'm going to be punished. Dogs that are trained with
a positive reinforcement methodology are so excited to work. It's like,
oh my god, the harness is out, Yes, yes, let's go.
(04:27):
And honestly, that makes a huge difference and it makes
you feel better too. The other interesting thing is that
when we were using punishment based training, it took us
twenty four weeks to train a guide dog in their skills.
Positive reinforcement training, it now takes us twelve weeks, So
(04:47):
you can see there's so many benefits to it, not
only from the psychological aspects to the dogs, but they
learn much faster and that allows us to be able
to train more guide dogs and train more clients. People
have to really commit to the guide dog lifestyle. In
order for a guide dog to be successful, you have
(05:07):
to get them onto a routine. Guide dogs are trained
not to relieve themselves and harness, so we all need
bathroom breaks, right. You need to make certain that you're
consistently feeding at the same times that you're consistently relieving
at the same times you have to take your dog
to the vet. I mean so even the way that
(05:28):
we interface with our clients is all unique. We don't
charge for any of our services. We fly people out
to our campuses, they live with us for two weeks
and train with their dogs. We fly them home and
then we continue to follow up with our clients to
make sure that things are working well. And in addition
(05:50):
to that, we also pay for all the veterinary costs
over the dog's lifetime to make certain that no one
is put in a position of saying, do I hey
my rent, or do I take my dog to the vet.
Our dogs are trained athletes have to be kept in
peak condition, so we want to always make certain that
our guide dogs have the best medical care. And all
(06:13):
of our work is supported through donation. It's a huge
community that supports Guy Dogs for the Blind. We have
approximately three hundred staff members and over four thousand volunteers,
so we actually start training our dogs at three days
of age. We have a whole group of volunteers called cuddlers,
(06:37):
who start cuddling our babies and that's literally what they do.
They cuddle them so that these babies become used to people,
become used to human touch, and there's nothing scary about
a person starting very early on with very gentle, loving touch,
which the puppies react to obviously in a positive ways.
(07:00):
A lot about our breeders. A brand new mama allowing
somebody to sit with her babies and hold her babies
at three days of age is pretty remarkable. Our clients
range in age from fourteen to ninety four. What the
qualifications are for getting a guide dog are that you
(07:22):
are legally blind, that you have a need to go
somewhere every day. That doesn't mean that you have to
have a job. You know something every day at a minimum,
I get out and I go for a walk. And
the reason for that is the team needs to work
together every day. Otherwise you, as a handler lose your
skills or the guide dog loses their skills. In order
(07:44):
to keep that team working seamlessly together, you've got to
get out and work every day. The third requirement is
that you already have the orientation and mobility skills. Guide
dogs are not GPS systems. Just say to your guide dog,
take me to the nearest Starbucks. You have to know
(08:05):
essentially where that Starbucks is and then you need to
give your dog the commands for how to get there,
and your dog will get you there safely. And the
fourth requirement is that you are living somewhere that will
support a guide dog. Oftentimes, particularly in rural environments, there
are a lot of off leash aggressive dogs. If a
(08:28):
guide dog feels that they're going to be attacked every
time that they walk out their door, typically then they're
going to stop working. So if people meet those four criteria,
then we bring them into our school and they get
a guide dog. Nearly sixteen thousand teams have graduated since
our founding, very proud of that.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And you've been listening to Christine Benninger, CEO of Guide
Dogs for the Blind, and my goodness, what a scaled
operation she's running. And it's at the behest of so
many donors who want to see this happen. When we
come back more of this great American story of Guide
Dogs for the Blind and so much more. By the way,
that whole cuddling thing sounds like we could all use
(09:12):
such an endeavor or such a week. When we come
back more of this great story here on our American story,
(09:39):
and we return to our American Stories and to Christine
Benninger's story, the CEO of Guide Dogs for the Blind.
Here's Christine to talk about the dogs and all that
goes into the unique training for these very special animals.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
When you look at service dogs and all the different
things that service dogs do, guide work is the most
complicated for two reasons. One is that guide dogs have
to get everything right one hundred percent of the time.
They can't just walk their person into traffic once, or
(10:17):
they can't walk you into a light pole once, so
guide dogs get no second chances. They've got to do
it right. Secondly, they have to evaluate whether the command
they're given is going to keep the team safe or not.
And if the guide dog believes it won't keep the
team safe, it'll have to disobey the command and do
(10:37):
exactly the opposite. Now that's even tough for humans. I
don't know how often you say no to your boss,
but that's a hard thing to do, and dogs leave
in a hierarchy, so basically saying no to their boss.
It takes a special dog to be able to do that.
If a dog is given a command to cross the
(10:58):
street and that handler is not hearing, the electric car
that's coming around the corner. The dog has to pull
their handler away from the street rather than walking into
the street. So that's an example of what we call
intelligent disobedience. Guy dogs are trained to do all kinds
of things. When you walk into a room, or you
(11:21):
walk onto a bus, they are trained to find you
an open seat, so they'll take you to the first
available open seat. Many of our clients train their dogs
for very specific things. Like we have a client she said,
wherever I go, I've always got my water bottle with me,
and so I'm always looking for recycling bins. So she's
(11:44):
trained her guide dog when she needs to to find
a recycling bin so that she can get rid of
her water bottle. You can train your dog to take
you to Starbucks. Once your dog knows where Starbucks is
and that's where you go on a regular basis, you
can just say take me to start all kinds of
things like that. What I'll call the magic of guide
dogs is that the team becomes so close because the
(12:11):
team is together twenty four to seven and relies on
each other. Our guide dogs are not trained in being
able to sense medical changes in our clients. Somehow they
get to know their person well enough that they do.
This happened about two years ago. We have a client
(12:32):
that does work in Manhattan. She works in one of
those buildings that is like a gazillion floors, and so
you have to take a very specific elevator to your
bank of floors, and so her guide dog knows exactly
which elevator to go to. And one particular day, her
guide dog didn't take her to the bank of elevators,
(12:53):
but took her to a group of couches that were
sort of off the lobby. And when she got to
the group of couches, she realized she wasn't feeling very well.
She sat down and had a stroke. So did her
guide dog. I cry sorry. Did her guide dog know
(13:15):
that she was going to have a stroke? No, but
the guide dog knew something was wrong. What our guide
dogs do is take care of their people. So the
guide dog knew getting in that elevator probably wasn't the
best thing to do. Getting her to a safer spot
was the best thing to do. Those kinds of stories
(13:37):
happen all the time, not through training, but through that
relationship that grows between a guide dog and their person.
What I find really remarkable about our clients is the
different types of things that people do. Our clients are
(14:00):
mothers raising three children. We have people who are business people.
We have people who are chefs, who are musicians, who
are teachers. We actually have a couple of clients that
have just competed in the Paralympics over in Japan. What
a guide dog does is give people confidence to be
(14:21):
able to do what they want to do in life.
And so as a result, you see these just remarkable
things that our clients do. We have a client that
he's a professional hiker. He's hiked with his guide dog
the Pacific Crest Trail, He's hiked the Appalachian Trail. I mean,
(14:42):
he's hiked all over the world. And he does that
as someone who's blind with a guide dog out for
days and days and days by himself. All of that,
in my mind, is truly remarkable guide dogs. For so
the Blind has made a concerted effort to target youth.
(15:04):
Kids have a tendency to not want to be sort
of called out as different, right, and so much of
who we become as adults is based on what we
experience as young person. So canine buddies they're not guide
dogs that they are companion dogs, well trained companion dogs.
(15:25):
For individuals who are too young yet to get a
guide dog. We do have a lower age limit, but
we don't have an upper age limit. We're giving canine
buddies to families with children as young as five, and
what a canine buddy does is not only start to
orient kids around dogs, but most importantly is building their confidence.
(15:50):
You know, hearing from parents about how you know their
five year old was not making friends in school, afraid
to dress them, wouldn't go to the bathroom on their own,
Mommy had to be there. And once they had a
canine buddy, all of a sudden, wanting to be independent,
getting dressed on their own, starting to make friends. They're
(16:12):
the kind of coolest kid on the block with this
really neat dog. Some kids have night terrors. With a
canine buddy, those night terrors go away. So canine buddies,
while they're not specifically service dogs, make a huge difference
in the life of very young children. Then we have
(16:32):
a whole host of programs that are targeted towards high
school kids. That's a very sort of vulnerable time, right,
wasn't my best years if I think about high school.
So we have things like what we call GDB Camp
for high school kids to get together with other kids
(16:53):
with similar disabilities. They actually have the opportunity to work
with a guide dog, sleep with the guide dog overnight,
plus just have a great time just being campers, just
being kids. We fly kids in from all over North
America and there's all kinds of fun things to do,
you know, tandem bike riding, canoeing, swimming. This last year
(17:17):
we actually had the kids visit a lama farm and
have the opportunity to walk a lama. They all agreed
that walking a guide dog was a lot easier than
walking a lama. Oftentimes, kids that have a visual disability
don't know anybody else who does, so lifelong friendships are made.
(17:39):
It's a great place, it's fun place. We've grown from
a very small, fledgling organization to really, you know, the
largest guide school in North America. That's not easy. So
I'm very grateful to my counterparts who were a part
of this organization and set the state for who we
(18:01):
are today. Because of their efforts, we've been able to grow,
We've been able to fund ourselves and really become the
leader in the guide dog industry. It's a huge community
that supports our work. I've always been inspired by the
difference that animals make in our lives. It's really an
(18:23):
honor to be a part of this organization because this
is an organization that saves lives. It gives people their
independence and allows people to live the life that they
want to live. And I can't think of anything more
inspirational than that.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And a great job is always on the production and
the storytelling by Madison and special thanks to Christine Beninger,
the CEO of Guide Dogs for the Blind. To learn
more and to help support their mission, go to guidedogs
dot com. And by the way, this is just a
perfect example of American generosity at work. He's working at
a nonprofit. People are donating money, people are volunteering, they're
(19:04):
cuddling with dogs. All of these things they're doing to
help a stranger's life just move along a little better.
And my goodness, what she said about what the dog's
mission was, what our guide dogs do is take care
of their people. And they do it not through the
mere training, but through the strong relationship they build with
(19:25):
their client. And anyone who has an animal knows what
that relationship means, and a special thanks to all the
people who support this great organization. Again, go to guiddogs
dot com if you love the mission and go ahead
and help them do what they do. The story of
Christine Beninger, the story of Guide Dogs for the Blind,
and the story in the end of the generosity of
(19:47):
the American people. Here on our American stories. It different
Speaker 2 (20:08):
E
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!