Hi, how are you all today? I’m OK, a little apprehensive about
tonight. It is Hubs work event where by they are hoping to raise lots of money
for Guide dogs. Funny isn’t it that guide dogs and the RNIB, also for the blind
and those with sight problems is a charity? In a guide dogs lifetime, it costs
over £50,000. For training food and vet bills just to name a few costs. My
Husbands team this year have to find and train as well as match about 32 dogs
to hand over. Each day people apply and he decides who gets prioritised, for
example, someone living with parents or a sighted spouse who is there with them
most of the time, will be put on a list like a waiting list, but someone who
has to get to work and lives on their own, or who has no one to help them but
needs to get to the Doctors/shop or just out from their prison walls, will be
prioritised. I think that is fair. Sometimes though the demand is high and not
enough dogs
Also the staff who train the dogs, well they can’t just be
picked from the streets, they have to be trained also there is a mobility team,
who train people with the white cane and things like when people first go
blind, obviously the shock is dreadful and the most simplest of things to maybe
you and me, will be a mounting to others newly blinded, or if you have
additional difficulties or challenges, like if you are hard of hearing or have
had a stroke and are in some way paralysed, then again you will need some kind
of training by the mobility team like to make a cup of tea? Again, these staff
have to be trained and it’s a two year course, so again, can’t just be picked
from a job centre for those looking for work. My Husbands team have two
mobility workers lovely people and both right now, pregnant, so will be off
work for a while. What happens then, as I said, it’s a two year training course…
So events like this raise money so we can get more people on these courses and
be able to afford to pay their wages when they do work for guide dogs.
When you think of guide dogs, you just may think of dogs,
but some dogs don’t make it, they don’t qualify. Perhaps they won’t tolerate the
harness? Or they don’t want to work. I mean, at the end of the day, they are
dogs/animals and what they do is amazing, but they have feelings and if they
chose not to work, they are not forced. The staff don’t give up on them easily,
as so much money has gone into their early months, but sometimes the dogs just
can’t finish their training for whatever reason. Then what happens? Well, they
go to be either buddy dogs, where in one case I heard of through a friend, a
little girl had a brain hemerage, she was three. The surgeons said that she
would die without an operation. The parents said yes to the procedure and
afterwards, the little girl was blind. Born perfectly sighted. For three years,
the little girl didn’t talk or even walk. A buddy dog was given to her, and
wow, now she talks, laughs and even helps to groom her dog. For the parents,
this is life, this is a gift to see their little girl, want to wake up and see
her buddy.
Some of the dogs who don’t make it, visit people in
hospital, if they have a dog at home and miss their dog, well hospitals just
can’t have dogs running through the hospitals, so a trained calm almost guide
dog is welcomed. This has proven to have been successful in the recovery of patients.
The staff who work for Guide dogs do so much more too that
is not really common public knowledge.
My husband is the only blind manager and I think it would be
great to have more, ` because then the organisation will have people
on the team who know what blind people need!
Oh more phone calls to do. I was on the phone forever yesterday;
the music was as though the radio wasn’t tuned in properly and kept going off
the station with shushing sounds. In and out of the music, it was dreadful,
well them to call back.
Yesterday whilst browsing for Christmas on line, at Amazon,
I saw a note book for sale sounded nice until I read… “Used!” Well, the price
was under that, a penny. Hahaha. Heck, on Amazon? I mean, imagine getting a
note book for Christmas, let me explain, I have a friend who loves that for a
gift and all she ever asks for. I get her loads of stationary each year, so
this was going to be a start. She loves hedgehogs and this had them on the
front and each page. So she get’s it and it has loads of notes from a stranger?
Hahaha. Who would buy that?
OK, off to do Hubs lunch as he’s working from home today and
off to our charity event later…. Our neighbour is going with us so bless her
she is driving.
Tomorrow is the birthday boy’s day. Hub is home and let’s
see what kind of day we have? Later gators. X
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