Lol Bryan, I believe that, indeed I knew a chap who was very much of the same mold. last I heard he'd had a dog, but basically his mum looked after it and he'd just walkd around with it, and when the dog retired he said he wasn't getting another.

There is no denying that guide dogs are! helpfull, but it is a two way thing, and generally you will get back as much as you put in,  since quite simply if your dog doesn't like you it's not likely to want to actually help you get  round things.

I think the absolute worst I've ever heard was two girls who were at my music summer school before I was, ---- indeed thanks to the view of blind people they gave the principle of that  course them i nearly didn't get a place. They apparently not only constantly winjed, about such silly things as not having an en sweet bathroom (when no room in the entire school did and they'd been put next door to a bathroom), and  apparently not only did they force one of the  instructors to pick up for them since they weren't capable of doing it  themselves, even though the association had built them a dog run at the school (which bad since they were only there one week a year), but also one of their dogs apparently had a wee in the dining room!

how in hell they didn't let their poor dog out so that it was so desperate I don't kno!

I think after them if I'd gone with a dog initialy I would've been refused, and it was only because they were used to me and got the idea that I was compitant before! I had the dog, ---- though now after I went with reever and was fine they're quite happy about it.

@Aaron, there are a lot of out and out myths or misconceptions about guide dogs that I've noticed people  have, especially I might add people who haven't lived particularly with dogs as pets. I'm always happy to despell some of these, indeed they can be quite  amusing.

One of my favourites is when people on the street hear me giving commands to reever and assume she is still in training because I am telling her what to do. When I ask people how exactly  she would! know where I wanted to go unless! I told her people do a rather commical double take, :d.

Oh yes! They do think the dog knows exactly where it's going. I often get the question how does my dog know where we're going, and I have to explain that she doesn't. I have to know, and I give her simple left, right, and forward commands.

Haha. The cashiers in one of the dining halls at my college always asked me how long my dog would be in training.

Wow, I would have very little patience with someone that refused to pick up after their own dog.

Living gps, hahaha!

haha I didn't mean literally, I was just thinking of how sighted people view them.

Your old guide dog will continue to feel a "special" bond to you for the rest of its life, but will stop caring that you're leaving it at home fairly quickly in most cases.  If you are retiring your dog then it is typically for a good reason, and the most typical one is the dog not wanting to work anymore.  I'm going through this right now: I was given my dog when I was in my last year of high school, doing online classes at the college.  She was consequently given to me with the assumption that I would not be very active.  I am now in college full-time, and she can't keep up and doesn't have the desire to work as much as I need her to.  This is my first dog, and I've had her three years.  I'd say that talking about the average really isn't helpful here.  It's typically somewhere around 7 years.  That said, there was someone in my class who was on her tenth dog in ten years, and Guide Dogs for the Blind, as of when I got mine, had a record of a team still working after 14 years.  It depends on you, your dog, and random chance (dog breaks both front legs in a horrible news-worthy act of heroism, etc).  There was one guy in the world trade center when it collapsed; his dog got him out and had to retire because it didn't know to hold its breath when the towers collapsed and the dust cloud came down the street.  Net result, breathing problems.  I don't know his name, but he was in the news for a while and apparently wrote a book about it--the dog got all serious and guided him down the burning world trade center from like the 50th floor or something like that instead of panicking like most dogs would.  A good question, but not one that can be helpfully answered; the retirement reasons for guide dogs are so, so varied.  The most common one is, fortunately, old age and/or a desire not to work anymore.
Is it fair to the dog to keep it yourself?  yes.  You can, if you're really concerned about it, give it to a friend/family member, depending on your school.  GDB lets you have first choice, gives the puppy raiser second choice, and then places it (without euthanizing, ever). Dogs enjoy having other dogs around and will socialize and play together nicely in most cases, so keeping it with you is a perfectly viable option.  In 95% of cases, both dogs will live happy lives and get along nicely and all that.
Is it fair to you is the more interesting question.  You have
to take care of two dogs, now, and one of them is, in many cases, close to passing away.  The emotional "my first guide dog just died" is going to be the biggest thing for me in another 5 years or so; mine is retiring atypically early.  If you don't think you can deal with it, then consider distancing yourself from the dog.  Mine will be staying with my dad, as I live in a dorm. 
Specific procedures and options depend on the guide dog school of choice.  Be aware that they are super easy to place.  Purebred, trained, housebroken service dogs, yeah, great deal: Seeing eye charges to get one from them, and there's a waiting list (that may be failed dogs only, I'm not really sure).  If the school ends up placing them, they will be placed quickly.

Hi,
I never considered getting a guide dog, but I wanted to inquire on some things that were not addressed.
How do guide dogs interact with other guide dogs versus interacting with normal dogs, or other service dogs? From what I heard it depends on the personalities of those dogs. I wonder if dogs do things on instinct or if they are capable of thinking like we do. Obviously their brains differ from ours, so I do not know what it would be like to perceive things from a dog's view point, just like there are people with differing amounts of inteligence. One term I hear people referring to a lot os intelligent disobedience. It is when you ask the dog to do somthing and it does not do anything is because something is happening.
Also, since I never taken care of any dogs or cats, except for birds, I heard schools can see if you are fit to taking care of a dog round the clock. What would that be like? Would someone have to have prior experience with normal dogs?
Also, how are guide dogs trained from the time they are borne to when they are working? How many years does it take from stage to stage, and how long do they work before they retire?
Do guide dogs ever bark or growl? I heard two so far when they were either playing or fighting another guide dog.
Also, how good are they at avoiding being stepped on by people who cannot see them?
I have a few more questions but I feel that is enough for one post. Most of the other questiosn are about service animals in the world and the cummunity at large.

Hi all,
I don't have a guide dog myself yet, I have just applied for one, have seen several guide dogs my friends use, and I have started learning and asking my future dog trainer everything I could think of, so I will dare to enter the discussion as well, although, of course ,I have personal experience with and information about just Czech guide dog schools.
I think Camlorn and others have already said pretty much everything that's relevant in a very nice way, I would just like to say my two cents about the dogs recognizing or not recognizing blind people and about how good they are at avoiding being stepped on. Of course, you can't teach the dog to understand the very high-level abstract concept of blindness or anything like that. From my experience (I had a blind and partially deaf guy with a guide dog as a roommate for several months) and from what I have been told, though, they can very much learn to somehow intuitively or instinctively tolerate your handicap if they are intelligent enough, which most of them should be. For instance, even if they have not been trained to pick up your fallen things such as keys or the cane and give them back to you, most dogs, if they like bringing things to people, will do this quite happily, usually with just very little prior teaching involved. And they learn to make a noise, hit the floor with their tail or just get out of your way if you are getting near them. Basically, most dogs that I've either seen or heard of will either let you know that they are in your way or just get out of it. They will soon learn to understand that it's not by intention if you step on them, and if they lie down on the floor in a place where you usually walk, for instance, I believe they are even capable of understanding that it would in fact be their own fault if they allowed you to step on tem, to put it like this, so they just stand up and move over to their resting place if they see you approaching. So I wouldn't worry too much about that.
Of course, it would most likely take them some time and at least a few encounters to realize that another, so far new person has the same strange behavior as you, the dog's owner, so they need to be watched carefully and possibly avoided. :-D
On the other hand, when a guide dog realizes that someone else is blind as well, in this sense, they will usually be willing to guide them too, either following you and holding your arm or even when the other person is holding the handler directly in some cases, unless they dislike that other person really immensely for some reason. Although you would probably have to be near the dog yourself, some dogs would even be willing to obey the commands of the other person if they have already known them long enough so that they could start thinking of them as another member of their pack.
Some time ago, me and my girlfriend met this guy I was talking about when we haven't seem him for ages before. By coincidence, he had to attend a university exploration trip where he didn't want to take his dog with him, so he had let him at home, which we got to know only later. The dog was just obviously too keen to have him around again, so he was running around the place, jumping on us and doing other funny things just out of the pure joy. When we thought it was enough, though, and the guy was talking to someone else and he was not holding his dog's handler at that moment, my girlfriend picked it up for him just to be sure the dog would stay close. The instant he felt her picking up the handler, he immediately stood still, walked over to her left leg and assumed the proper working stance. To me, that's just incredible!
Lukas

Hi Netta.

In the Uk that is quite strict. The guide dog association assess your dog eac year and the dog is retired at age 10, sometimes 11.

As regards keeping a dog, there is another side to it. Remember that that dog has likely been with it's owner close to 8 years, is very close, and thus expecting them to move home as well! as stop work seems deeply unfair. Some people do indeed give their dogs to someone else when retiring, but to me that just seems wrong.

My mum just kept her old dog, who was quite happy to be retired even though my mum had a new dog.

Myself, I don't think I could have another dog after Reever retires, since it simply would not be fair, though I might considder having her live with my parents if things work out that way since then I'd still see her a lot, she knows my parents incredibly well but i'd not have the trouble of having two dogs, indeed my flat would be too small for two dogs I think.

The whole thing about fairness is totally backwards.  I know this sounds harsh, but it's true.  The dog will stop caring after a few weeks at the most.  Most of their mental process goes a bit like this: if I expose my chin just so, someone will scratch it.  If someone picks up my leash then I am going for a walk.  They don't have any memory of being taught this; they don't even have memory of yesterday.  They build up associations of cause to effect over time.  They don't have concrete memories and such and can bond to another person if needed.  We humanize them way, way too much these days; three hundred years ago, they were considered prized possessions.  I don't think viewing them as such is correct, but we've gone way, way too far the other way.  Your dog remembers you, probably by your scent, and associates you with petting and going for a walk; there can be, if you will, withdrawal when moving to a new owner, and they will remember you forever, but it isn't like us and our families.  I hesitate to use the word as, due to the Werewolf fiction and the like, it's got negative connotations and people think a lot of incorrect things when they hear it, but you are their alpha[1].  When their alpha changes, they get sad and depressed, but it passes after a little while, and they adjust just fine.
As for picking up on the fact that you're blind: they will, kind of.  They don't know why you need to be treated differently, but they ill learn both that they don't get in trouble for activities that are silent and that the puppy eyes and such don't work on you.  This isn't just guide dogs, it's other dogs too.  The unfortunate part is, they don't always move for you; some dogs don't care that you're going to run into them because it means attention.  The biggest mistake you can make is stopping and making a big deal out of it; the dog likes that, a lot.  Apologies are praise to them.

1: basically father-figure, or guidance, in this context.  A dog looks to the most experienced dog of the pack for safety and hunting and the like, and when you get a dog you take the place of said most experienced dog.  Unlike most dog fiction and werewolf fiction, this has almost nothing to do with being dominating and more to do with providing stability and clear guidance in a form they can understand.

@Camlorn, how much exactly have you had to do with dogs? frankly, your statements of mechanistic dog behaviour suggest not very much, indeed from your comments I gather that you are more reacting to centimentalist accounts of dogs in the media than actually anything based on experience.

Speaking as someone who has grown up with dogs, including personally training a puppy as well as being a guide dog owner living on their own, (I've also studdied animal psychology), I'd agree that it is not correct to humanise dogs as warewolf fiction does, however it is equally a mistake to go the other way and think of a dog simply as behaving only entirely selfishly or mechanistically.

Dogs do have a very strict higherarchical structure it is true, ---- though this occurs in some dogs more than others (jess, my staffordshire bull terrier was very higherarchical and I had to play a lot of pack leader games with her), however equally a dog does not behave simply! according to this higherarchy. A dog is quite able to recognize people, to have likings for certain people and not others, to have emotional reactions. Jessy indeed tended to think most people were a lower form of life accept me and my dad, and even if a person did! give her attention she was not in any sense interested.

Also, attention! does not simply mean paying attention, rather it actually means a form of communication, albeit communication expressed physically. you can see this when two dogs who are very close are together, Jessy indeed took on my mum's guide dog as her pup, and the attention jess gave to my mum's dog was quite unique, often fierce, but had distinct purpose, directing her to go certain places, making sure she was clean, making sure she got fed etc.

It is rue that a dog who is not! getting attention from their owners will specifically do things to get yelled at, but a dog can very much tell the way a person is feeling, at least in broard terms. This morning for example I was playing with reever with a rag toy. She accidently hit my finger with her teeth and I said "ou" she then instantly stopped playing, sat down on the floor and started looking up at me. When I went and sat down she came and laid her head on my lap, her ears back, clearly wondering if she'd done something wrong. yes, this is a standard dog behaviour and something puppies regularly do while playing, however to claime that the reasoning behind it is purely devicive is like saying all humans are selfish and the only reason you do something for someone else is when your going to get something out of it.

Also bare in mind that were dogs incapable of basic, logical judgements, they would be utterly incapable of any job such as guiding at all. This logic is instantanious, I can't imagine a dog doing higher mathematics, but does also mean a dog is quite capable of deciding and making judgements about things and about people.

Lastly as regards emotions and abandonment, well frankly you are just incorrect there.

When I was at university, I left jessy at home with my parents, often for months at a time, yet, whenever I got back, jessy instantly! knew who I was, was pleased to see me and became extremely attached to me personally. Furthermore, she is also the only dog I've ever known who I could actually speak to on the phone! most dogs, if they hear a familiar voice coming out of the phone, they'll assume the person is somewhere and run off and look for them, Jess however actually worked out that I wasn't there, yet at the same time she would be extremely pleased when i phoned, sit down and be attentive, even though she did not actually believe I was physically present.

As I said, while I agree humanising dogs is a bad idea, dehumanising! dogs is almost worse, especially when you are reliant on a dog for something as crytical as mobility. This is exactly why I talk of fairness in terms of dogs, since if you are physically responsable, and to a great extent emotionally responsable for a dog, you need to treat that dog responsably as well.

@jabawoki, I'm not sure whether a dog actually works out that it's owner is blind in the literal sense of lacking vision, but a dog is quite capable of working out a person's capabilities from watching their behaviour, whether they make eye contact, whether they walk into objects etc. My mum's guide dog (who is exceptionally intelligent), can even find objects if my mum drops something. Guide dogs over here give out bells, though they don't usually recommend people keep the bells on all the time since constant jangling can be a bit bad for the dog, mostly they recommend just using them when you give the dog a run. If I want to know where reever is I just need to call.

As to missbehaviour, well the best method is usually just to not let it happen, or to find the cause and stop it. Reever had a spate of steeling food, even getting up on her back legs on the surface. When however we changed her food to something more complete she was fuller and thus less desperate, so wouldn't risk the intensive amounts of trouble she'd get into if she tried getting up on the surface or taking something off a table, indeed reever is a fairly good dog generally in terms of obedience, (the stealing food thing was the only major hassle and that's well and truly fixed).

Ah, I gotten a few of my questions answered. All this discussion about dog and guide dog behaviour is very interesting, however like I said I have never owned a dog. But based on understanding, we as humans hold the highest level of intelligence on planet Earth, and many of us want our dogs to be just as good as we are, but people often misconceive that. If dogs have the memory of a two-year-old, that would almost be the same as not being able to be aware of one's body and one's surroundings. I remember my memories from when I was two and everything was like if it was a dream. I knew they happened and I could feel and hear the things that went on, but I did not know what they were or how to associate them until I grew up and learnt to recognise what they were. But for a dog they are going to stay like that, in that state.
what about guide dogs interacting with other guide dogs, either while they are working or free? When you refer to someoen who first raises a guide dog as a puppy raiser, does that mean that someone owns a pack of dogs, and when someone has too many they decide to donate one to the nearest guide dog school and learn about how to train them as a puppy to get used to their surroundings and what they wil do?
There were a few things I was going to say but at the moment I forgot.

@Casta, the system works similarly in the Uk, however they are with the puppy walker (as they're called over here), for roughly 14 months, and will spend three to four months in training at a center before being matched with someone applying for a dog, which is doing very much on personality and life style.

I'm not convinced on the two year old front either Camlorn. A two year old has little physical concept of their body in space, hence why they fall down while walking etc, plus a two year old has a far shorter attention span than most guide dogs.

Dogs have to have a physical concept of themselves and where there own body is otherwise they could not perform the logical judgements necessary to involve guiding. Also, I'm not convinced on dogs and the past either, simply because I've seen dogs react to very long ago memories or people they should not naturally recognize if their memory process was as short as you suggest, indeed again the fact of guiding and what I've seen some guide dogs learn would disagree with this, Zia my mum's dog for example can! actually be told a place name and go there without any other prompting even if it has been a long time since she went.

While you are likely correct about reminiscence, again this is difficult to think of without language since much of the thoughts we ourselves use to structure past experience are based upon linguistic knolidge of what happened when, for example I have memories from when I was two, but can only place their origin with reference to other events that were going on at the time.

Also bare in mind dogs can and do attribute emotional states to other people and beings, Jessy deffinately knew! what I was feeling in broard emotional terms, which is something most two year olds have difficulty wity with.

As I said, humanising dogs is a bad idea I agree, but to me your analysis goes far too far the other way particularly in seeing dogs as so exclusively mechanistic. Alpha is a roll, not a familial description, something more akin to lead in a play or head weightor. It is something that naturally occurs to some extent but which you yourself put yourself into, which is why it's not usually something that occurs in conversation, and usually when a dog is emotionally close to you you rarely need to play those games anyway, they are mostly only used to show who is in control.

And as regards fairness I'm afraid I do simply disagree, since if you have! had a working relationship with your dog, then it is! unfair to simply harp the dog off elsewhere. Dogs are adaptable, but so are humans, but that doesn't necessarily automatically make it right.

Perhaps you are less close to your dog, which might explain the situation, though I will say having a very close bond does! aide with guiding or any other form of training since it makes the dog far happier to do what is asked, and to learn new things.