International Guide Dog Day

Guide dogs do many important tasks for those who are visually impaired. Guide dogs are celebrated worldwide on April 26. Not many people know how much work it takes for a dog to become a guide dog. There are so many classes and training courses that dogs have to go through. It will typically take a dog around four months to become an official guide dog. There are some cases that the dog's training will take longer, but it just all depends on the dog and what they are being trained to do. There are some dogs that have to go through training for one to two years, and these dogs are going training to become a traditional service dog that can detect irregular heart rates, seizures, and even blood sugar. The dog's breed doesn’t have an effect on how they are trained. Multiple different breeds are trained to be either guide dogs or service dogs.There is also an average six month waiting period before you can actually receive a guide dog. It’s not as easy for the visually impaired to get access to a guide dog as some may think. There are so many important tasks that guide dogs can provide to those who need it.

Some of the tasks that guide dogs provide are navigating around obstacles, retrieving objects on command, providing a path of travel, taking directional commands, indicating a change in elevation, and helping to avoid oncoming traffic. The main purpose of a guide dog is to provide these services to help the visually impaired. With the help of a guide dog, people who are visually impaired are able to complete their daily tasks by relying on other people.

Eventually, there comes a time that the guide dog will have to retire after the dog has provided about six to eight years of service. In most situations the dog retires because of their age. There are some situations where the dog might become ill or have to have a major surgery done. When getting ready to retire a dog, the owner will start to prepare to receive a new one. After their dog has officially retired, the owner will have an option to keep the retired dog as a pet because of the bond they have created. In some cases after an owner retires their dog and gets a new one, sometimes the retiree will help the new dog learn the ways of the person they are guiding.