Jeff and Hobbit

Meet Jeff Jeff became part of the VIP3 puppy raiser club at the end of 2001.  He wanted to raise a pup because he felt in a few years he might be needing to use a guide dog.  After a few months he decided that now might be the time to get a guide.  Well, in May of 2002, Jeff headed to San Rafael to get his guide.  Today, Jeff and his guide Hobbit are an inspirational part of our group.  But that is not all; his wife Janna is raising a puppy named Russ! The rest of this page is devoted to the insight Jeff can give the puppy raiser about training with a guide dog, graduation day, and life with a guide.

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Training Week 1 | Training Week 2 | Training Week 3 | Training Week 4
Graduation Day | Life With a Guide | Return to Index

The following are taken from e-mail messages sent from Jeff to Mary Jo during his four-week training period.  Continue to check back for updates on what Jeff and Hobbit are up to.

May 31, 2002 | Return to Top

Time is pretty tight around here at the moment so I'll have to keep this short as we are back to training at 7 PM.  I just wanted to let you know I'm completing my first week and working my guide in harness.  She is a golden retriever lab cross, named Hobbit.  She stands 24 inches at the shoulder and weighs 68 pounds.  We hit it off right from the start.  At least I think so, she hasn't said a thing one way or the other but she seems to be enjoying being on the team.  I understand she is a sister of Honeydew.  I thought that might be of particular interest to you and the club. 

In closing I would like to say, this is way harder than a good guide dog team makes it look.  I kid you not, it will take all 28 days to get this thing right enough to be turned loose on the world.  We're making progress but there's a lot to practice to be at the point where it becomes a natural response to a situation.  To  point the dog and command "forward" is the easy part.  Its all the other stuff that's complicated and difficult to remember at the moment when the dog doesn't respond as commanded.  I'm at the point where I've learned the options to get her back on track but I kind of panic at the moment when something happens and can't remember fast enough what to do.  This stuff needs to become an automatic reaction to have meaning to correcting the dog.

Each day we get a little better.  The trainers are amazing and assure us we are doing well and it will come together by the end of the training session.

All for now...

Jeff

June 2, 2002

We are working them in harness to the relieving circle now so I am using this frequent opportunity to practice my hand signals and footwork.  It is actually becoming a little more natural for both of us to work together.  When we do the same thing six times a day, some of the variables are set and we can concentrate on the guide commands rather than the course.

More later…. Jeff

June 4, 2002

 Hobbit and I had another good day working the streets of San Rafael.  She blew two curbs but those things happen sometimes and always need to be corrected with a pause and a correction.  We'll see how she does on those curbs tomorrow morning.  I need to get off to a tooth-brushing clinic in a few minutes.

Jeff

June 10, 2002 | Return to Top

Much progress was made during my second week of training.  Hobbit and I are working much more as a team.  I have gotten more accustom to her pull and I think she has toned it down a little.  Whatever has happened, I feel like we are functioning more like a single unit.  The trainers were right when they said it would start to come together this week.  I feel like we've come a long way in terms of communicating with each other.  If this continues, we should have our act polished by graduation.

One thing that's helped us work on the smoothness of working together has been working the same rout for several days early in the week.  This allowed us to concentrate on form a little more each time we traveled it.  Most of the commands, hand signals, and the foot work are coming more naturally to me now.  I can really see improvement; I hope it is apparent to her too.  We've also been given approval to work the campus with our guides in harness so this helps us practice too.  Early in the morning and after dinner we go walking alone on campus and practice standard travel commands with me having the freedom to decide the route at will instead of having to follow a set course.

Formal training this week has concentrated on working a basic or extended route in downtown San Rafael.  The basic route is about ten blocks long with the extended route going beyond that.  By mid-week we were working bus to lounge routes.  This is when they stop the bus somewhere a ways from the lounge in downtown San Rafael and give you the location and basic directions to follow to get back to the lounge.  Each team is sent off at three minute intervals and watched by trainers along the way.  The trainers do not interfered unless it is necessary.

At the end of the week we were introduced to shopping and completed a traffic check route.  The shopping lesson was pretty simple but the traffic check was very real and more than a little scary.  During the traffic check, the intent is to simulate dangerous traffic situations to check how the guide dogs will react.  It is the responsibility of the guide dog to direct the handler away from the dangerous condition.  Such checks as having a vehicle heading right for the two of you requires the dog to make split second decisions.  In some situations, the dog stops and begins backing up quickly and in others must immediately accelerate to move the handler forward quickly out of the path of the vehicle.  This is all done in real time with real vehicles and it has to be real enough so the dog believes there is a danger.  That's what makes this dangerous.  A trainer is behind the wheel with another trainer working behind the team on the sidewalk but there is a point where you are out there and you could get hit if the dog doesn't react appropriately.  It's a pretty real simulation.  Hobbit did fine and reacted just like she should of, I'm the one who was traumatized.  I really didn't expect it to be so real.  It gave me a new respect for what these dogs can do.  It is pretty amazing.

The final harness work of the week was to navigate a route from bus to lounge through a downtown street festival.  There were lots of people, music, and food distractions to contend with.  Hobbit just focused on getting us through the crowd safely and quickly.  That also was pretty amazing.  She stayed on course and moved briskly through the crowd weaving through all the people moving in all directions.  Her skill at this type of work was demonstrated to the trainers and me.  I'm impressed with her ability more than ever after these two challenging activities.

Next week we are scheduled to begin work in San Francisco.  We will work some routes in downtown and at Fisherman's Warf they tell me.  We are also slated to spend time working the UC Berkley campus and some trails in the area.  It should be a fun week ahead.  While there have been some highs and lows during  our second week of work, the highs have far exceed the lows.  Are we doing perfect work yet?  No, but I don't think the team ever is going to function perfectly.  The team is a constant work in progress, hopefully improving all the time.  However, Hobbit demonstrated when it comes to the big stuff, she can get the job done and it is up to me to refine the small stuff with her over time.  We're a work in progress just like the rest of life.

Stay tuned for my next report at the end of next week...

Jeff

June 11, 2002

Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.  Hobbit and I are doing fine.  We have our ups and downs but continue to get better day-by-day.  This morning was fun.  We were turned loose in downtown San Rafael for about an hour to go wherever we wanted and work our dogs.  It was wonderful to just walk the streets without having someone over your shoulder for a change.  We were being watched, make no mistake of that but we had a sense of freedom.  Freedom is a scarce commodity around here.  I think all of us are feeling a bit controlled at the moment.  As mature adults we aren't use to being told what to do 24x7 for 28 days.  It doesn't sound too difficult until you actually try and do it.  Just take a minute and consider the challenges such a situation would bring to your life.  Throw in being corrected frequently by the instructor/trainers and you have a recipe for high stress.  Another thing we aren't very good at is constant corrections.  We tend to be an independent lot and like it that way.  Just study your Bible and this becomes pretty clear.  I tell folks this is a lot like the Big Brother TV show.  I seriously think they are missing out on marketing potential for this experience.

Sorry if this sounds a bit negative but I just wanted to communicate a little of the unseen challenge in getting through the training program and graduating.  No one talks about this aspect much and it is a real challenge for many of us who aren't use to this level of control.

Thanks for all your prayers and support... Jeff

June 16, 2002 | Return to Top

This has been an interesting week.  It is Hobbit's and my third together and there have been some high and low points along the way.  Fortunately, I think I have learned from both.  Overall we are doing very well, so the trainers tell me.  We are kind of at the point where all the basic stuff should be in place and flowing.  The week was focused on taking the training to new environments and adding specialized training to the basic stuff.  I'm happy to report Hobbit was excited to take our skills to new environments.  I think she has become bored with the same training routes and that's why she seems to have become a little unmotivated to travel them.  Taking her to new places certainly causes her to act more perky and enthusiastic when working.

Early in the week we made our first trip to San Francisco with our dog guides.  The weather in the city was cool and cloudy and the dogs loved it.  I think they like the cool weather better.  We worked a route a mile or so long by first riding a city bus in one direction and then walking back through a business and shopping district.  There was a lot of action with both vehicles and pedestrians to manage.  Hobbit did great.  She went right to task and kept on it with only a few corrections all the way back to the bus.

Since I'm getting quicker at catching her when she gets distracted and loses focus on the job, I am able to correct her immediately and act more as the leader.  For example, for some reason during our work in San Francisco, while walking down the street, she decided to make an immediate and deliberate left turn into a store.  I didn't turn and follow her; rather I held my course and direction and gave her a firm "NO".  I used a collar correction to the right, followed by a Hobbit hupp-up command; we were right back on course.  A week ago, I would have followed her wondering what to do to get her back in the direction I wanted her to go.  This week, I assimilated the command and immediate correction into my handling skill set.  I really didn't even have to think about what to do.  It has pretty much become a reaction.  I didn't drop my command note cards and panic when the situation happened.  I just reacted with the right response and on we went.  This is real progress from my end of the leash.

Later in the week we made a second trip into San Francisco's financial district to work with revolving doors, escalators, and subway platforms and trains.  Once again, the cool weather and new adventure was stimulating for both of us.  Hobbit was alert and on top of her game.  She safely navigated the downtown area with a lot of pedestrian and noisy vehicle traffic.  We learned the tricks for getting through revolving doors with our guide dog.  We then used the escalator to get down to the BART subway platform.  She did great on the escalator and platform.  The guide dogs are trained how to ride escalators and work a subway platform before we get them.  This training is to teach us how to work with the dog in these types of demanding situations.  We boarded the train from the platform and traveled a few stops before exiting the train and returning to the street level.  We walked back through the financial district for several blocks to get back to where our bus was parked.  She loved this.  She just sailed through the traffic keeping me safe and sound while moving at a brisk pace.  I was very impressed.  That was a fun training activity.

We also visited a super market this week.  Hobbit did well as long as I kept her moving.  As for all of these guide dogs, they are dogs first and I wouldn't recommend becoming distracted talking to someone and not keeping a close eye on them while next to the salami rack or rotisserie chicken display.  They can become tempted and will take advantage of the handler’s inattentiveness every chance they get.  As they say over and over around here, “Where's your dogs head?"  That usually means they are sniffing, licking, or eating something they shouldn't be.  It's the handler's job to always keep track of the dog’s head and what they are up to.  That's why they want the guide at your side sitting and not wandering around at the end of the leash.

Other training adventures of the past week included several longer bus-to-lounge routes, a night route, and several opportunities to freelance on our own.  Most of the working routes are over a mile with one up to two miles.  The night route was about a mile through downtown San Rafael.  When we work all these routes, the bus drops us off at a different location each time and we are given the drop-off location and directions to the lounge.  It is our job to follow the directions by ourselves with our dogs and get to the lounge in a reasonable length of time.  So far, Hobbit and I have done well not getting lost or failing to follow the prescribed routes.

One new challenge that was added to the training obstacle course this week was the overhead barrier.  It is overhead to the dogs, not the handlers.  It is the guide dog’s job to respond to the overhead obstacle and stop slightly ahead of contacting it so the handler can then probe with their right hand and identify it before smashing into it and possibly becoming injured.  Apparently, this is a difficult thing to teach a dog to do reliably.  It often requires teaching the guide dog about each overhead obstacle individually as they come up along the route.  Some dogs get good enough to pick these out themselves over time but that isn't common or expected of them.  What is expected is their remembering them and stopping for them once the handler has pointed them out to them.  Hobbit is reliably stopping for the one in the obstacle course after two introductions to it.  From what I've seen of her classmates, she is in the top percentage of her class at learning this skill.  Hopefully, she will become one of the few who learn to identify new overhead obstacles before I find them with my head.  I've been working with her on this daily after formal training has ended.

The low points of the week were related to inconsistencies in training methods between different instructor/trainers.  If it isn't hard enough to learn this stuff already, having different trainers correct you for doing something the way the last trainer taught you to do it gets to you after a while.  When you are trying so hard to follow instructions and do something right and then have another instructor tell you that you aren't doing it right because they want you to do it differently, can be frustrating and discouraging.  When you finish a training session of an hour or so and all you have heard is corrections, it can be a low point.  The valuable lesson to all this is knowing there is often more than one acceptable way to do something and no individual way is necessarily right or wrong.  After three weeks of this, I've learned to go with the flow more on this stuff and not take corrections personally.

Over the past week Hobbit and I have continued to make progress.  We have gotten enough of it down to be able to actually put it to use and refine it as we go.  It has been a week where our confidence in each other has become stronger.  I have also learned to take the training we have learned and realize there is some flexibility to its implementation depending on the environment or situation.  We are looking forward to our fourth and final week before graduation next Saturday, June 22nd.  There are two trips to San Francisco, a trip to Berkley, as well as several other fun outings.  This should present us with some new challenges and make the week pass quickly.

Thanks to all of you who have been emailing us with your words of encouragement and support.  Also, thanks to all who have kept us in their thoughts and prayers.  We are looking forward to being home soon.

Jeff

June 18, 2002 | Return to Top

Well, it's finally arrived.  The fourth and final week of training with graduation in sight.  It will be so nice to get home and back to my normal life again.  However, I now realize my old normal life is now going to be significantly altered with the addition of Hobbit so we will need to blend the old with the new and make a new normal life with us both in the picture.  After these past three weeks of living and working together 24x7, I think we’ll both be OK with that plan.  Now is the time I can start counting the days until next Saturday when my wife arrives, we graduate, and the three of us head home.

This week has been filled with more advanced guide work activities like downtown San Francisco and UC Berkeley.  Hobbit has done well with most of the challenges put in front of her.  The thing that has become crystal clear to me is we won’t be a perfect team when we graduate.  The work that needs to be done for that to happen will take time beyond this week.  It may take years in some cases to really get this thing right.  At this point, I realize there aren’t too many perfect guide dog teams.  That is ones that know it all and never make mistakes.  In fact, there may not be any.  From those we have trained with, they all seem to have their little difficulties and challenges to continue working on.  The thing that has changed in regard to this is my comfort level with this.  I’m OK with this and realize we are a work in progress.  The perfect team probably doesn’t exist but ones that can adapt to new situations and know how to react to change appropriately, perhaps with a few mistakes, are the ones that demonstrate team success and efficiency.

 Much of what is going to make a safe guide dog team has to do with the dog's ability to read the situation and the handler's ability to trust the dog's judgment while maintaining the dog's behavior.  Reading one another is so much of what this is all about.  Hobbit can be perfectly trained but she is a living animal with feelings and a mind of her own.  She doesn’t always react to the same command the same way.  For example, if I give her a forward command first thing in the morning when the air is cool and crisp, she perks up and prances forward pulling into her harness.  If I give her the same command late in the afternoon when it is hot and she doesn’t particularly feel like getting up and doing it, she behaves much less interested in working.  There’s no prancing or pulling into the harness going on.  It's more like turning her head around and looking at me as if to say, “Oh man, why now? I really don’t feel like doing this right now, how about we just lay back down and nap a while longer.”  This is where my handling skills need to be a bit more persuasive.  Since I can read her mood, I know how to handler with a little more understanding and get her to cooperate to get the job done even though she would prefer not to  at this exact time.  That’s the part of the teamwork that’s starting to come together.  That’s what’s going to enable us to go the distance and continue to get better over time.

Hobbit did very well with her formal obedience training this week.  This is something she has been doing pretty well since the start of training with me.  She definitely knows the drill.  She can do her heal, sit, down, stay, and come just fine while on her leash and during the formal obedience training session.  However, she continues to become distracted at times while working.  Her number one distraction is other dogs.  Particularly dogs smaller than her.  She just doesn’t seem to be able to stand passing them by without becoming engaged in a major distraction.  I always have to correct her and it usually takes several corrections to get her focused back on guiding me safely.  This is something we will probably have to work on for a long time to come.

It is getting to where I can usually tell when she has spotted another dog by her attentiveness to the distraction communicated to me through the pull of the harness handle.  Dog distractions have their own level of pull beyond most other distractions.  It is not a take-it-or-leave-it pull like many other minor distractions.  It is a strong deliberate pull that increases in force as we approach the other dog where most other distractions are a slight increase in pull with a simple no hopp-up Hobbit being all that’s required to get her back on track.  The dog pull usually means there’s going to be some serious collar corrections needed so get down close on the leash and brace yourself because it may get ugly before it gets straightened out and she gets her attention back on me.  This is a lot of what dog handling is about so I’ve learned to do it with as much grace as possible.  I think over time she will realize, the correction is coming so she might decide not to even go there.  This is the behavior we are looking for.

June 22, 2002 | Return to Top

The end of this week brought the long awaited graduation day and reunion with our families.  Pulling out that suitcase and packing up made it difficult to sleep the final night of training.  Seeing my wife in the morning and getting to go home with Hobbit were such exciting thoughts I felt like a kid the night before Christmas.  While there was a little sadness about leaving the others in the class, I was going home with Hobbit, the one I had started my life-long bond with.  I was a little anxious about how I was going to successfully manage integrating my feelings for Hobbit with my feelings for my wife and how that would all work out.  I figured if others did it I would figure out a way to do it too but it was a significant concern to me when facing seeing my wife in the morning.  I wanted them to like each other so much and not feel as though they were rivals for my attention.

By about 9 AM on the day of graduation, things were starting to take off.  While on a short walk around the campus, Hobbit and I ran into Pete and Mary Jo who were up in San Rafael to watch us graduate and for the Guide Dogs for the Blind 60^th anniversary celebration.  Shortly after we met Pete’s cell phone rang and it was my wife and she was in San Rafael.  Pete and Mary Jo went and picked her up from the airport shuttle stop and brought her to the campus.  From that point on, my day was charged with emotion.  Being reunited with my wife, introducing her to Hobbit, meeting Hobbit’s puppy raisers, and the graduation ceremony were a lot for us to handle all at once.  I think we did pretty well but I certainly felt drained once we were on the airplane heading home.

Getting to meet and spend a little time with Hobbit’s puppy raisers was very special.  I think they enjoyed it too.  Having them there to see Hobbit in harness working was I’m sure quite a satisfying thing.  I did my best to provide them with an impression their well-loved little puppy was in good hands and would be well cared for and loved.  I think they were pleased with us and went away feeling good about Hobbit’s future.  It is a wonderful thing the puppy raisers do to prepare the puppies for guide work.  At the end of their hard work, they must turn their little pups over to Guide Dogs for formal training with some uncertainty of their future.  I’m sure it's always a relief to the puppy raiser when they feel their puppy has been well matched.  I think this is important and brings a sense of satisfaction to the puppy raiser.

With the graduation completed, the bags were loaded into one of Guide Dog’s vans and we were shuttled off to San Francisco International Airport for an early evening flight home.  All went well and Hobbit did fine during the flight.  We were provided VIP service from the United flight and cabin crew.  I’ve never been so well attended to than during that flight.  The plane wasn’t full so Hobbit had a little extra room to stretch out.  That was actually the first time all day my wife and I could relax and talk to each other.  By the end of the flight home with my two girls, I was feeling very confident the three of us were going to get along just fine.  So, even though this was the most difficult thing I can ever remember taking on, it ended well and it looks like we have a bright future ahead of us.

My sincere thanks go to all who made this possible.  Those would include friends and family who supported me, all the trainers who did such a fantastic job of training Hobbit and me, the puppy raisers who readied Hobbit for training, and all the folks at Guide Dogs for the Blind and the generous folks who provide the funding to make this program such a success.  There is much more to this than a person and a dog.  While Hobbit and I are regarded as a team, the real team is much bigger than the two of us.  It incorporates the entire Guide Dog for the Blind organization, its donors, and wonderful puppy raisers.  This is the extended team who makes this all possible.  Thanks go to each and every one of you for making this possible.

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Our life together... 
 

Taking a break	A grooming session

On a cruise.... hitting some of the ports!