SA Guide Dog Association — a Benoni City Times Buco Rietpan Golf Day beneficiary
The SA Guide-Dogs Association for the Blind’s founder, Gladys Evans, who had failing eyesight, brought the first guide dog, Sheena, onto the African continent after training at the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association in the UK.
Evans started the SA Guide-Dogs Association for the Blind in Johannesburg, in 1953.
Since those early days, the association has gone from strength to strength, and now also has a training centre in Cape Town.
Guide dog breeding lines are carefully selected to produce the best possible dogs.
Each puppy’s first year is spent in the family home of a volunteer puppy raiser, where the pup is thoroughly socialised before it returns to the association at age 12-14 months, for six months of formal training.
All applicants and dogs are carefully matched according to factors such as size, character and personalities.
Training of dog and recipient is first done at the association’s residential training centres for approximately two to three weeks, followed by home and neighbourhood training to suit each client’s requirements.
Owning a guide dog is a life-changing experience for someone with a visual impairment – in an all inclusive package of independence, mobility, companionship and dignity – a priceless gift .
The association is now training dogs to assist people with disabilities other than blindness.
Service dogs and autism support dogs are ready and able to perform a variety of basic tasks designed to bring independence and companionship to their owners.
The service dog becomes the physical extension of their recipients by retrieving dropped items, turning on light switches and much, much more, while the autism support dog plays a physical role in preventing an autistic child from running away.
Apart from independence and mobility by means of a dog, the association also has the College of Orientation and Mobility, offering people with visual impairment an alternative form of independence training.
The College of Orientation and Mobility has been providing training to O&M instructors since 1974 and is the only O&M instructor training centre in Africa.
A two-year diploma course , comprising of theory, practical and workplace experience is offered .
O&M practitioners provide training for safe and independent mobility to visually impaired persons – allowing the recipients to live more freely, devoid of reliance on other people.
The college provides direct O&M training to visually impaired persons and schoolchildren, too.
Receiving no government funding , the association operates entirely on donations.
People truly are wonderful in the extent of their caring and in their generosity – both of which make guide and service dogs possible.
Visit www.guidedog.org.za for more information, or join the Facebook or twitter pages.
