Saturday, 30 June 2012

First day-Guide Dog Training Course at Nottingham


The first day was about orientation regarding the layout of the hotel. It looked relatively easy to navigate as the corridors as they were long and straight, lined with doors on both sides but I did notice that in the area between the two fire doors where the three hotel rooms of Simon, Kevin and my hotel room were situated the light was dimmer than the bottom half of the corridor. I navigated my way down and up the corridors by walking alongside the wall with my finger or hand on the wall and feeling my way to my hotel room by counting the doors as I walked by.  My hotel room was at one end and the lounge was at the other end of the corridor on the opposite side, both between two fire doors. I was very surprised to find that I had difficulties in locating the lounge and my hotel room in what should have been an easy task and there were times when I got exasperated however with some help from my instructor, I was eventually able to navigate my way around the corridor and only occasionally got it wrong.

Later in the day, we attended our first talk in the lounge. The instructor gave each of us a bag containing some equipment and asked us to empty the bag and she then told us what to feel for ─ the first thing that we had to feel for was the harness and then we were shown how to handle the harness. Other pieces of equipment were a lead that is used when walking with the dog when not in harness, in other words when it is not working. There were two collars, one of the collars had two bells on it and is regarded as a play collar. The second collar was for when the dog was working and finally a feeding whistle and grooming kit.  This was followed by a discussion of the Guide Dog Agreement.

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