08/18/2026
Day 2 at GDB: Dog Day.
Well, Dog Day is in the books, and I could not be happier even if I tried.
I woke up at 6 this morning to get ready for the day. I got my self together and had coffee, before going to the dining room for group breakfast. The GDB staff tries to make this place your home from home, and so we are asked what we would like to have to make this place comfortable and for us to focus on bonding with our dogs, and learn how to best work with them. For me, I got a French vanilla coffee creamer. I have some in my dorm room fridge, and since I drink coffee like water, I have some in the dining room.
Breakfast was a banana bread with cream cheese. It was delicious. After this was a few minutes in our dorm rooms to get ready for lectures.
Lectures are really discussions, and a collaborative communication session. Especially since everyone in this class has had a guide dog before.
So, we talked about how to communicate with our dogs, transitioning to a new dog, and obedience with our dogs. Communication between 2 different creatures can make for a lotof misunderstandings, and when we add trusting our lives into this mix, it can be nerve-racking. Not to mention that these dogs are individuals and have their own ways of showing us IE communicating with us, and so this is why they don’t mail us dogs. Practicing obedience is another component of communication and even strengthens our communication because it shows us how our dogs respond. It shows them the same. It sets everyone up for success.
Transitioning to a new dog is an emotional topic because we all bring with us  baggage from our last partnerships to training, and while it is important to honor the feelings we’ve had, it is also important to keep in mind that these dogs have no idea of our handling style, our ways of communicating and what my new body positioning our former guide dogs had no problem understanding. They need grace and we need grace. Additionally, though we remember the amazing parts of our partnerships, it took some time for us to get there as a team. Essentially, the point of this discussion is to remember that even in the most perfect partnership, there was a not so perfect beginning, and we need to learn the dance that these dogs know, and who knows, we may get to that perfect point again.
After those discussions, we went out with our trainers to re-measure our pace, and pull. This is our walking pace, and the amount of pull we receive from our dogs. This is very important to a partnership, because walking pace and pull allows the handler and dog to be able to read each other through the harness. For example, if a dog is guiding a blind handler around an obstacle, they will pull them to the side around that obstacle while maintaining that walking pace. This is if that walking pace is safe. The dog may be slower in giant crowds. But that movement around and over to the side is what tells the handler what the dog is saying. Which is, hey, we can’t keep going straight. Something is in our way, and we need to move to the right. If the pull and walking pace aren’t matched accurately to human and dog, it may be hard for the team to communicate.
The measurement is done through an empty harness and an instructor holding or pulling the place where the dogs’ head would go through. They slow down, speed up, and we tell them in that range where we like to be.
After this, we did practicing obedience with a folded towel and a collar and leash attached to this thing. Side note, when we practice techniques we will use with our dogs on an object, we refer to the object as JUNO. JUNO is an imaginary guide dog.
So, we practiced obedience commands, and management techniques on JUNO before getting our dogs. We learn fare and adequate leash corrections, how to check body positioning to see if our dogs are doing what we asked. For example, if I asked Juno to sit, is Juno actually sitting or giving me a cute look?
We later got back in our rooms and got ready for lunch. I had a chicken sandwich, it was delicious. The chef made it from scratch.
After lunch, we had a meeting with the peer support person. Guide dog training is an emotional time, and it is nice to sometimes unpack some of it. It was helpful for me to say out loud that I was 99% scared of my dog not working out, and instead of dismissing that feeling, because lets be honest, its from a place of trauma, and not my current training reality, he validated it, and my full class was there, and I got to hear about their experiences. We finished the session with a giant group hug and headed to our rooms to meet our dogs.
About 5-7 minutes later, a knock at my door. And I got my dog. I cannot believe I’m actually saying this.
Now, I may reveal the gender tomorrow, but any other information beyond that will come next week.
This is for a great reason. These dogs are raised by volunteers who pour their entire beings into these dogs. Hearing from social media that the dog they raised is not a respectful thing considering their hard work. So, the training department takes care of notifying puppy raisers when the time comes and when we get the notice that everyone was notified, we announce on social media the info about our dogs.
Another reason to not say anything is that who knows, there may be a dog switch. Maybe the dog this handler was matched with is suddenly not working out, and that dog is no longer in class. So, this along other reasons, we keep the details close until the time comes that trainers and client feel like yes, this was a great match, and will graduate to together.
Anywho, after getting our dogs, I got to hang with new pup for about 15-20 minutes. New puppy is not sure about me, and happens to be wondering why they left the room with this stranger.
This is normal. In fact, my first guide took 4 days to warm up to me, and the other 2 didn’t want anything to do with me on dog day. I understand and I have been making the case to new dog on why they should trust me. Slowly I’m sure they’ll come around.
I will say with all my looking on the Pupdates website, I was not look at the dog I got. It was a huge surprise when the instructor gave me this pup.
I’m happy to have gotten who I’ve got.
Remember the practice we did with Juno? We did that with our new dogs. My new dog is attentive, and wants to do the right thing. Of course I forgot just about everything, and my instructor is having to remind me to give food at my left leg so this pup doesn’t curl in front of me to get the food reward. For now, we are working on stay in the heel position and not getting too far ahead of me. This pup gets a food reward when they do stay at my left leg with their front legs.
This pup was been a popcorn, a jack-in-the-box, or whatever you want to call it when they don’t stay down. This is all new, and I’m’ hoping they aren’t that way normally. But if a jack-in-the-box is the thing this dog has, there is no problem on my end. We all have something.
I’m tired, and so I’m going to head to bed. Tomorrow is our first day in harness. Can’t wait to see what new dog is like as a worker.
Picture description: a photo taken from above that shows the crate new dog sleeps in at night.
