Guide and service dogs perform an important service, but those skills aren’t something they’re born with.
On Wednesday, Oct. 29, the non-profit B.C. and Alberta Guide Dogs took a class of more than half a dozen puppies to Nanaimo’s Departure Bay ferry terminal to train on the important task of learning how to use an escalator.
While the local program is based in Parksville, the relative scarcity of escalators on Vancouver Island meant working with B.C. Ferries to use theirs during a low-traffic day, said Matthias Lenz, B.C. and Alberta Guide Dogs director of puppy raising.
“It’s a really weird thing for a dog to experience and it’s a really good thing to introduce early on,” he said. “We find if we introduce it early on and we take our time and let our dogs set the pace we encounter less problems, because with an older dog in advanced training we don’t have a lot of time.”
To get familiar with the escalator, first the puppies use it when it’s turned off. The volunteer trainers let the puppy walk around and sniff it, before walking up like stairs.
The volunteers raise the pups until they are about 15-18 months of age, then they enter advanced training for four to six months, making the dogs about two years old when they graduate. Once they become certified, they are sent to their new homes.
“It’s not just guide dogs. It’s guide dogs for the visually impaired, autism service dogs for children with autism and OSI-PTSD service dogs for veterans and first responders…” Lenz said. “There are some who can do anything, and some that are more suited to one than the other. We don’t decide that early on, that happens at some point when the dogs are about 14-15 months we have to send them into advanced training and then we have to decide, in the puppy raising department, we decide if they go to service … or guide.”
Volunteers don’t need any prerequisite experience, with each of them being taught alongside the dogs they help train. B.C. and Alberta Guide Dogs requires volunteers to attend group classes, as well as additional meet-ups, training and online support.
One of the volunteers, Danielle Swanson, brought the 13-week-old labrador in her care, Gibuu, to the escalator training.
“When I became self-employed I got a dog and then I found out I was really good at training dogs,” she said. “So I did it first with St. John Ambulance as a therapy dog … Then I saw an ad in the paper for B.C. and Alberta Guide Dogs and I thought I would give it a go.”
This is her 12th puppy through the program, and while it doesn’t make her sad to see them go to their new home, she said she does tear up when running into the dogs she trained out in public, seeing them assisting people and doing the important jobs they were trained for.
“You go into the mall and you see your dog with a vet with PTSD or a first responder with PTSD and you see them working, then you [cry] … Just knowing how they change people’s lives so completely.”
As a retired single woman, Swanson said being a volunteer trainer is perfect for her.
“We need puppy trainers so badly, that is where the bottleneck is, volunteers like me who have the time and the energy to do it. Really, it has always been a wonderful socialization [opportunity] for older people, most of us are in our 60s or 70s.”
Shannon Graham, puppy training supervisor, told the News Bulletin that a big portion of her job is coaching volunteers to train the animals.
“It’s a lot of fun working with the volunteers and watching them help their puppy along, learning the ropes,” Graham said. “Aside from teaching their dog basic obedience, it’s really building calm, confident and connected dogs – letting them be dogs but teaching them they can try different things and be resilient and they can look to their person for direction when it is needed, because in the puppy stage if we can build that foundation they can take it to the advanced training stage and teach them all the things they need to know.”
While a human may see an escalator as a simple machine, for a dog, Graham said it looks funny, smells funny, sounds funny and moves.
“We have to sort of break the experience of the escalator apart.”
More information can be found online at http://bcandalbertaguidedogs.com.