A Guide Dog Is for Life

By John Hilbourne

‘I thought I was applying for a guide dog; what I actually got was my life back.’ So said a 35-year-old woman from Telford I met some four or five years ago. That about sums it up. That’s what a guide dog has done for the 4,500 blind and partially sighted people who have one. That is what my guide dog has done for me. It is to raise money for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association that I am publishing this book. It’s not great writing. What your will find is a series of short stories, parodies, satirical pieces and limericks. It isn’t even good writing but the bits and pieces it contains have amused my family, my friends and the creative writing group to which I belong. It’s meant to be dipped into rather than read through at one sitting. I hope it amuses you. The profits from this will go to help other visually impaired people enjoy the same freedom to get around as you and I have.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291952698

Book preview

A Guide Dog Is for Life

A Guide Dog is For Life and Other Stories

Disclaimer

All the Characters, except those in Guide Dogs Are For Life are the product of my imagination and are do not refer to anyone living or dead, except where a quotation is acknowledged. 

Copyright © 2014 by John Hilbourne

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2014

ISBN 978-1-291-92196-0

Acknowledgements

I am highly dyslexic so I am deeply indebted to my wife Marion, for proof reading the manuscript and to Mrs June Brough for formatting it.  Past and present members of the Harborne Creative Writing group, and other creative writing groups in Birmingham have made constructive comments on many of the pieces, and Guide Dogs for the Blind Association has edited A Guide Dog is for Life to make sure that is factually accurate when it refers to the training process and services that the association offers.

Introduction

‘I thought I was applying for a guide dog; what I actually got was my life back.’  So said a 35-year-old woman from Telford I met some four or five years ago. That about sums it up.   That’s what a guide dog has done for the 4,500 blind and partially sighted people who have one.  That is what my guide dog has done for me.   It is to raise money for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association that I am publishing this book. It’s not great writing.  What you will find is a series of short stories, parodies, satirical pieces and limericks.   It isn’t even good writing but the bits and pieces it contains have amused my family, my friends and the creative writing group to which I belong. It’s meant to be dipped into rather than read through at one sitting.  I hope it amuses you.  The profits from this will go to help other visually impaired people enjoy the same freedom to get around as you and I have

A Guide Dog is for life -Spencer the Guide Dog’s Tale

(ghost written by his butler)

My name is Spencer.  It’s my picture on the front cover.  I have been with my owner, John, for six years.

My job is to make sure that John has the same ability to get around as other people. I am very good at it.  The better a guide dog is, the less his or her partner should notice what they do.  John does not know half of the ways I help and protect him, and I don’t want him to. It might damage his confidence and self-esteem. Just occasionally other people tell him how I have avoided a disaster and he admits he had not the faintest idea that there was a problem.

Like most guide dogs, I was born in the home of a family who agreed to look after my mother, where she was much loved.  These people are called brood bitch holders.  Looking after a litter of some four to ten puppies for the first six weeks of their life is not easy. Managing these puppies who are anxious to explore and chew the world and who are not toilet trained must be a nightmare at times. We stay with a brood bitch holder for six weeks, and then go to the Guide Dogs National Breeding Centre in Leamington to undergo thorough health checks.

One of the things I admire about Guide Dogs is that they care as much about us as they do about our human partners.  If our partners are to rely on us, it is important that we enjoy our work and want to do it.  As my owner says, If you are prepared to walk through central Birmingham or London in the rush hour with a dog that does not want to guide you, you are very foolish.  That’s why, as well as the health checks at Leamington, we take part in a series of games that test whether we have both the potential and the temperament to be a guide dog. It would be unacceptable as well as unsafe for the dog, his partner or the general public if dogs who are unsuitable proceed to training.  It would be cruel to train a dog who is frightened of loud noises, a dog who is very self-willed, who shies away from traffic, who cannot concentrate or is easily distracted. 

I passed my tests with flying colours and for the next year I stayed with Madge and her family.  Madge is what we call a puppy walker and I was her 36th puppy.  During that year I learnt all the things that any well-trained dog should know, plus some of the things that a guide dog must know.  It was, if you like, my primary school, and Madge and her family were my primary school teachers. They made sure I was well behaved, did not beg, pester or sit on beds or chairs. They took me to all sorts of places to get me familiar with the environments in which I would work and taught me basic skills like sitting, lying down, waiting and sitting at kerbs.  I was really lucky because Madge lives in Birmingham, and that is where, as luck would have it, my partner lived. 

My partner frequently says that if he had known about the way that Guide Dogs train dogs - by encouragement, reward and positive reinforcement - he would have been a much better parent.  From what I have seen of human parents, most of them could learn a trick or two from my puppy walker and the people who trained me. 

At the end of a year it was time for me to leave and go for advanced training.   I was really sad to leave Madge and her family.   We still see her occasionally and my partner keeps her up-to-date with what I have been doing.     

The first three months of my training were spent at the Guide Dogs Training School in Leamington. Here we were taught all the things that any guide dog has to know. It was fun. Our trainers saw to that. We also had plenty of free time and plenty of opportunities to relax, doing what we wanted to do.  The trainers took great care to ensure that any dog who was unhappy, temperamentally unsuited or lacked the abilities to be a guide dog was not asked to go on any further.  I lost one or two friends, but the overwhelming majority of us made it. 

For the last three months or our advanced training, we were with someone called a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor (GDMI).  By this time the GDMI would have a pretty good idea of what sort of work we would be good at, and more importantly, what we