It’s been a long year. For many guide dog programs, their training and placement of guide dogs has come to a screeching halt. The opportunities to train dogs have been limited, because they may not be able to access shopping malls or other crowded places; the types of exposure a guide dog might need… just might not be happening.
As for students, many have been accepted to guide dog programs prior to the global pandemic, but are still waiting for a class date nearly a year later. For a prospective student, such as myself, the ability to obtain all the documents required is complicated at best, and for some a risky proposition.
What? You mean, you don’t just throw your name out there and someone somewhere in the world hears your story and matches you with a guide dog? A perfect guide dog that totally knows what you need, despite the individual never having made contact and figured out what your needs might be?
You watch too many movies!
No no no. It’s a fairly straightforward process, but it requires a lot of documents from a lot of different places. To be honest, I’ve filled out fewer documents when getting married, or applying for almost any job I’ve ever had. And while many programs understand that you might be applying in other places, the requirements are slightly different, and might not translate across the board. In my case, some stuff went smoothly; other stuff? Not so much.