A lot of people have asked me how dogs and people are matched up. I'll try to describe what I've observed about the process at one school, the Seeing Eye, and maybe other people will fill in or contradict me. I'm sure every school has its own way of doing it.
Before I arrived on July 22, many of my friends asked me what kind of dog I would get. Lots of people assumed I would pick out my own breed or even my own specific dog. Apparently if you feel you must have particular traits in a dog you can request those traits, such as breed, size, or gender. I didn't do this for one major reason, but there are a couple of good reasons not to do it. First, the experts at the school are very thorough and careful in their matching. if they think a particular dog is right for you, they are almost certainly right. I wanted to be sure they were completely free to use their best professional judgment in selecting the right dog for me. Specifying that you need a female shepherd that weighs no more than 55 pounds, it seemed to me, narrows the field of dogs so much that you would have to compromise on other important traits. I wanted the best dog for my lifestyle and environment. Second, if you really need to have a female Golden Retriever, you may have to wait until one that also has all the other traits you need is available in a class.
Some weeks before my class started, before I knew what class I would be in, a trainer from the school came out and interviewed me. She wanted to know what kinds of things I do, including work, recreation, travel, and so on. We went for a walk around the neighborhood where I work, so she could get an idea of how fast and how aggressively I walk and could learn something about how the neighborhood is-- city streets? suburban neighborhood without sidewalks? street crossings without traffic lights? country roads without discernable edges?
After walking for a short time, she held a harness and I held the handle while we walked some more. She explained a lot of what it's like to work with a dog while she evaluated how I handled the pull on the harness and how I followed as she swerved and stopped. She showed me how to hold the leash and how to give a correction. She wanted to know how hard I could pull. There may have been other things she observe, but these were the ones I was aware of. All the trainer's observations went into a report, which helped to determine which class I would be in and, to some extent, which dog I would get.
During the first few days of class we went on many Juno walks with our instructors. These walks, where the instructor holds the harness and the student is lead by holding onto the harness handle, are both to get the student educated about how to work with a dog and to help the instructor know more about the student in order to do the match. Ralph told me I would need a dog with a certain type of personality to do well in the environment in which we would be working. I would need a dog that would be happy to move through crowds of people and would not be reluctant to find gaps in the crowd to scoot through. I would need one that wasn't frightened of things like fire trucks, construction equipment, and trains. With that kind of personality come traits that mean I would probably have to correct my dog a lot for taking liberties. He spent time making sure I would be able to correct the dog.
The second day of class we were each given a "random" dog to walk around with on a leash for a few minutes. I'm not sure whether this was used directly in the matching process, but I'm sure if someone handled the dog very differently from the way the instructor expected, that might make a change. For example, someone who seemed to be afraid of the dogs might get a quieter dog than someone who was very used to being around dogs.
The trainers consulted with each other on the dogs they had trained and the students in each group. There were about fifty dogs and about twenty-four students, so there was no problem like someone having to take the dog no one else wanted. The dogs that are not placed go into the mix for the next class.
What happens if a match is not right? Ralph says it's rare. But, it did happen in our class. After a few days, I'm not sure how long, one of the students and her instructor determined that the match was not right. She was matched with a different dog. For a few days she was behind the rest of the class; while we were beginning to work our dogs in harness, hers was on leash. It took almost no time for them to catch up, though.
A quick update on the first part of week three: We've had an introduction to areas that have no sidewalks, we've ridden the train, and we've taken a bus. We're starting to do things that are not only new or complicated, they're a little bit scary. Yesterday we walked along a train platform. Paige was very good at staying far from the edge, but the whole environment is a little unnerving. Today we walked along the side of a road with no sidewalk. Paige stays out of the way of the cars, but I've never trusted drivers to see me walking and it's scary to have them whizzing by right next to us. Well, in "real life" we'll find ourselves in both those situations often, so we need to get good at them.
