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Guide Dog Coming Soon!
by Jeremy Curry on Monday, April 6 2009Anyone who reads this blog, or who has met me at our various tradeshows, trainings, and other events know that I am low vision. Over the past year, I have experienced a substantial decrease in eyesight. Shapes I used to be able to see are no longer there, and my eyes have become so sensitive to light that I must wear sunglasses almost all the time. And, even then, my eyes get so overwhelmed that I usually have to close them. Last year, I went through the period where I had to stop bioptic driving, and start using a cane to travel. The experiences that I have had with losing my eyesight are similar to many of your stories. And, now, going through this significant loss of sight is probably something else that many of you have gone through. As I travel down this path, I made the decision to get a guide dog. If you have ever taken a Window-Eyes training, we have usually become friends to talk about things like these. As this situation has progressed over the past few months, many of you have asked me to write about this experience. So, over the next several months, stay tuned to the blog because I will be writing about some exciting things that are happening. I was contacted last year, and told that I was accepted for home training at Guiding Eyes for the Blind (www.guidingeyes.org). This was an incredibly exciting piece of news. Since then, I have been on pins and needles until I made it up high enough on the waiting list. Once I made it toward the top of the list, the search was on for a dog. Not only am I a fairly big guy, but I also travel about eighty-percent of my time for GW. I’m in cars, planes, trains, buses, subways for traveling, and often at a new hotel in a new city each week with a brand new environment. Needless to say, I needed a very, very smart dog to be able to keep up with my literal walking pace as well as my pace while on the road. Guiding Eyes for the Blind (GEB) did a fantastic job at listening to the type of dog I needed, and then went on a search to find one that would match me. So, I am ecstatic to let you all know that GEB has found a dog for me, and my training begins on May 6! It also happens that I was planning on doing a private demonstration of our current GW technology to GEB next week, even before I knew the dog had been selected. So, while I am there, they have offered to let me meet my first guide dog. I am told he is a male black lab named Darren, and he weighs sixty-eight pounds. I am more than excited; I am so on fire about this that words cannot even begin to describe it. I just cannot wait to meet the dog that I feel is going to change my life for the positive in so many ways. As things progress, you can bet that I will keep you all updated right here on the blog, so stay tuned!
