Stuff You Should Know - How Guide Dogs Work

Episode Date: October 22, 2013

You know how when you see a guide dog leading a blind person to their destination and you think, "There goes a truly great dog?" It turns out you are absolutely correct. Guide dogs are about as special as dogs can get and it's through years of hard work. Learn about the ins and outs of guide dogs in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Just fill and chill. Available at participating retailers and at epson.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from house.works.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck and we hope we sound correct. Yes. Yeah.

What does that mean? Jerry was looking at putting the headphones up to her ears. Oh, so like she's not even paying attention to your, basically what you're saying is we have no quality control going on right now? Well no, we did. Because Jerry had the headphones up to her ears. Okay. Yeah.

Now we don't. She checks in occasionally. She wakes up and says, yeah. Yeah. What? What? So Chuck. Yes.

How's it going? It's going great. How are you? I'm doing good. Good. Good. You look well. Thank you very much.

Healthy fit. Well, happy. Sun kissed. Sun kissed, yeah. Feel good. Chuck, have you ever seen a guide dog? A guy? Dog?

Guide. Duh. Oh. Duh. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Guide dog. See them all the time.

Seeing eye dogs are used to be? Well, because guide dogs specifically, unlike the general term service dogs, are to help guide around people who cannot see. That is a pretty nice story, but it's not entirely correct. I had a feeling. Seeing eye dogs were actually part of a company called the Seeing Eye. Oh really? It was the first American guide dog training company.

And it wasn't the Americans who came up with training guide dogs. It was actually the Germans in Potsdam, Germany. The first guide dog training academy was set up to help veterans that had been blinded in World War I. Wow. And it was successful. It didn't really take off. But a woman, an American woman living in Switzerland, her name was Dorothy Harris Eustace.

She was very wealthy American, heard about this when visited the school and said, this is pretty awesome. She came back, waited a few years before she got around to writing an article, and it was published in the Saturday Evening Post. And a young blind whippersnapper named... Norman Rockwell? No. His name was Morris Frank.

He heard about it, and he got in touch with Mrs. Eustace and said, I would like one of these dogs. Can you help me out? She said, not only will I help you out, I'm going to fly you to Potsdam to Switzerland actually. You're going to be trained with a dog, and we can give you $10,000 to go start the first school in America. So Morris Frank took her up on it, took the $10,000, and started in Tennessee the Seeing

Eye Dog School. So are you saying that Seeing Eye Dogs are the Kleenex of the working service dog world? That's very apt. It's actually a brand name. Interesting. I never knew that. You see? He asked how I liked this, and I said, nothing really surprised me.

It was a good article, but I wasn't surprised, and here you go, surprising me. Kaboom. Right off the bat. Thanks. All right. Guide dogs. Let's get to it, eh? Yeah.

It's pretty straightforward stuff, but it's neat to know the details of things. First of all, if you ever see a guide dog, it's actually working, and you should leave it alone. Yeah. In my house, it's difficult with Emily. Yeah. You're really not supposed to do that. I know, and she doesn't.

But dude, she's like a five-year-old. Like she will, I have seen her fake, like she's going to look for something and just brush up her hand against the dog's head, like in a store. Like let me go look at the cereal, and she'll just brush up and be like, oops, that didn't mean to pet your guide dogs. She's like a frauder. She's like a frauderist for guide dogs. Yeah.

Is that people who rub up against you in public? Yeah. Yeah, she totally is. Weird. She can't help it, dude. She just cannot not touch it. So it's understandable, especially with guide dogs, why Emily would do that, because it's like dogs, and then five echelons up, guide dogs.

Yeah. Right? I mean, not only are they dogs, which are great animals to begin with, but they're dogs that actually help not only just regular people, but people who can't see. So it's like, you just want to pet them and be like, here's the greatest thing on the planet right now. They're not sad, which makes you want to pet them even more, but people, they are not sad.

They are working, and they're delighted to be working, because if they're not delighted to be working, they wouldn't be guide dogs. Exactly. They wouldn't make it through the process. That's exactly right. So it's not to say that you can never touch a guide dog. Normally you want to leave them alone, just rub against the store, right? But if you really can't resist the urge, Emily, you can ask the handler, the guide dog owner,

the person who the guide dog is assisting, if you can pet their dog. That way they can say, not really, he's really concentrating now, or no, you can go ahead and pet him. And then the owner knows that now he needs to get the dog back into his concentration working mode after he's been petted. Yeah. Okay. That's rule number one.

Okay. Guide dogs are rule number two, typically allowed anywhere the general public is allowed, because if they're not, then you're saying, oh no, only people who can see are allowed into these public areas. Exactly. Which is one of the best things about them and why you want, you know, why Emily wants to rub up against them, because she's like, well, I'm in a library and there's a dog. This is a bonus.

Right. You know? It's a great library. The thing is, is since they're allowed anywhere, and they're a dog, and because there's people like Emily walking around who want to pet them all the time, the dog, it's up to the dog rather than Emily to decide like, oh, let's keep things professional here. Right. They don't want to create any kind of ruckus or disturbance.

So the dog has to be extraordinarily well trained to concentrate, and what it's concentrating on is a certain prescribed set of things, specifically how to take a direct route and to stay in front of and just to the left of the handler. Yep. At a steady pace. Yep. You don't want a dog that like runs some and then stops to smell and eat poop and then runs again.

The biggest, I would say probably easily the biggest thing a guide dog must do is have complete mastery of the intersection in the crosswalk. Yeah. That's really where, I mean stairs and cliffs and things like that are important, but the crosswalk in the intersection is when it comes down to brass tacks, that's the most important thing that a guide dog needs to know how to do perfectly every time. The way that guide dog trainers have established the importance of this is the guide dogs are taught universally to stop at every curb.

Yeah. And that's a good way to, I mean you should train your dog to do that anyway. I was thinking, fuck, if you can get your hands on a training manual for a guide dog. Just use that. You could use that for any dog and you'd have like a super terrific A1 dog. Yeah. I bet you could, that sounds like a service, Josh's A1 dogs. Yeah.

And fingerprinting powder. Yeah, that's a good point and that's a good way to train a dog anyway. Like I said, you don't want your dog pulling you into an intersection even if you can see. But back to guide dogs, that is the most important thing. They have to stop at every curb, sit and while they're sitting, and like I said, these aren't just service dogs because there's other dogs if you have like epilepsy or if you're in a wheelchair sometimes, these are specifically for the blind, but they'll come to an intersection and they work together as a unit.

The dog stops and the blind person listens. They listen for traffic and they listen for traffic stopping and then they tell the dog, all right, now we can go forward into the intersection, but here's the cool thing and this is I think the coolest thing in this article about guide dogs. The dog doesn't just say, okay, let's go. The dog says, well, you're saying it's okay, but you can't see. So why don't you let me decide for sure if it's okay? Yep.

The dog is coming. Even if the handler says, move forward, the dog won't do it. The dog will wait, wait until whatever hazard is coming is cleared and then we'll follow the command. It's called selective disobedience. Yes. It's pretty spectacular. Yeah.

When I lived in LA in my first apartment, I lived across from a, I don't know if it was a dog training school or if it was just a school for the blind, but all the traffic lights around me made noises. Oh yeah, like wait. No, it was, that would be good. But it was just like these sounds, like these ticking sounds that they knew. Oh yeah. They knew what it meant.

But yeah, wait or go would be even better. There's ones by Yumi's in my house that say wait when you press the button. Wait. Oh really? And then it'll say what street light is now red and what street you can cross depending on where the intersection is. Is that just a new thing or is it near a school for the seeing eye dogs? That's pretty new.

The voice sounds pretty futuristic. But is it tied to the blind or is it just, yeah, I think that's what it's for. Because yeah, it directs you verbally across what street you can take, right? Wait. Wait. And it's funny because you can press the button a few times, it'll be like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Really?

That's kind of fun. I'm sure you've never done that though, right? Yeah, right. Well, what else is there to do while you're waiting for a crosswalk light? I don't say walk. That's right. You can get a ticket for that in Los Angeles, by the way. It's a way of life in New York.

Yeah. Don't do it in LA. Another thing the dog has to do is to know how to bring the handler to an elevator button, a set of elevator buttons. Sure. Stairs. Yeah, stop at stairs. Very important.

At the bottom and the top. Yeah. Until told what to do. Lie there quietly when the handler's sitting, wherever the handler is. Yeah. That's a big one. And part of being a guide dog is you just have to just cut out all of the other distractions that would drive any other dog bonkers and just sit there because the first time a guide

dog acts like a regular dog in a public setting, guide dogs everywhere have a bad name. That's right. You know? Well, and that's why they look sad to me. I used to take Marta and there was a guide dog frequently on the way home with this lady and the dog would just lay down under the, you know, seat on the subway and just look so sad. But I always had to tell myself, this dog's not sad.

When that harness comes off, it's playtime. Were you saying that with like, tear streaming down your cheeks? I might have teared up a time or two. I'm so sad. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right.

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Or yeah, what obstacles are coming up exactly put the two together. You got a pretty great team. That's right. You have the makings of a fine sitcom. So like you said, after hours after they're working, when the harness is on, the dogs at work. Yeah, concentrating. It knows everything to do when the harness is off.

It's just like any other dog. It's belly rub time. You're right. A guide dog is both a service dog and the family pet to that's right. So really genuinely, don't feel like bad for service animals. When you see them out in public, like they're treated just as well and even better than other dogs back at home. And from what I understand, they're really enjoying themselves because they're like concentrating.

They're stimulated. They're going places. They're just like sitting at home all day waiting for their owner to come home and let them out for a half hour on a leash. Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of a lot of people who believe that guide dogs leave far more fulfilling lives than the average house dog. Yeah.

Well, dogs, it depends on the breed, but in general dogs have jobs and if you have a poorly behaved dog, that means it's probably a breed that wants a job that doesn't have one. Or you just got a lemon. Like one of our dogs is really bad. Lucy's terrible. She's 13 and she's still bad. Well, she was bred to be a car dealer. We haven't taken her to Vegas in a long time, Chuck.

She is a Cadajula though and they're herding dogs and she needs a job basically. She's never had a job. So her job has been to poop in the house and to eat books and furniture and stuff like that. Wait, what kind of job are they supposed to do? Well, the Cadajulas were herders, like sheep herders and things. Does she herd you guys around the house? Like does she try to make sure you're all in the same room at the same time or?

No. Okay. No. All right. So let's talk about the process of schooling a guide dog. They're usually free. They will pair people up. They're generally nonprofits who run on donations.

Yeah. If you wanted to feel even better about like guide dog schools, it's free. Yeah, you don't have to pay $2,000 for your well-trained guide dog. They will pair you as a person that can't see with a great dog for no charge in general. Although, it could be a lot of money in that. You start up in private when Josh is able to dog. Yeah. Sure, you could get a free one, but if you want to really give one, you're going to have

to pay for it. So the schools are set up and pretty much handle the whole process from soup to nuts, which includes breeding them sometimes, and if they're like really great guide dogs, they might go into a breeding program afterward. I have the impression that most like major guide dog schools handle their own breeding. Yeah, probably so. They arrange the puppy raising programs, which is where it all starts, which we'll get into in a minute.

They evaluate these dogs along the way. They train them once they're ready. They train the instructors. They train the handlers. They match the dog with the handler. ate them after a while and eventually retire the dogs, which is very sad and happy, which we'll get to that too. That's at the end.

But you're talking golden retrievers, labs, German shepherds are generally who you're going to see because they're all whip smart and generally pretty nice. Loyal, obedient, very trainable. And confident too. That's one of the A number one, again, qualities of a guide dog is self-confidence. And that self-confidence is built up as a puppy. That's one of the main things in a guide dog in training or pre-training puppy guide dog raising person.

Yeah, I think Alicia Hoyt wrote this. She interviewed. Nope. Tom Harris joined. Oh, was it? Okay. Tom interviewed someone at a place called Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, New York.

And we're going to be referencing them a lot as far as, or that's who we're talking about when we throw out some of these common stats. Like 20% of the original puppies aren't suitable for to even enter the program. Like they start weeding them out really early. They sell them as pets if they're not, you know, if they're part of that 20%. Or they may just not be, they may be okay for service dogs, but not good for guide dogging. So they'll maybe send them to another organization that will help people like with epilepsy or

in a wheelchair or something. Yeah. The ones that do make it though, the ones that are like, okay, you're a six week old puppy and we can tell already that you are probably going to be worth a shot. So we're going to send you into training school, pre-training school, puppy raising. Yeah. Is what it's called. Which is regular people.

Like you can go out and do this as if you have the time and you have the patients and you have the resources. You can actually get puppies to the point where a year later you will then turn them back over to a proper school. A year to a year and a half depending. Yeah. And along the way you're going to be trained on how to raise a puppy according to the standards of the school.

They're not just going to say, here's a puppy. Don't screw it up. There's usually weekly, monthly, quarterly meetings with other puppy raisers where all the puppies get together to ensure they're socialized, update things to make sure everybody's on the same page with raising their puppies so that there's evaluations. And like we said, what they're trying to do is they're not training the puppies at all. The main point of puppy raising is to start to set up how a puppy can become confident, make it feel good about itself.

And I take that back. They are training them sometimes. They train them in the basics. Sit, stay, lay down. That kind of thing. Yeah. Nothing advanced. Just good basic obedience.

Exactly. And then they're also getting the puppies used to the idea of training for extended periods of time on a daily basis. And they're doing that by taking the dog all over the place. Anywhere that they can get a dog into, they're going to take this dog to expose it to new experiences every week. Yeah. And after a certain amount of time, they'll get their little coat that says, I'm a puppy

dog in training. Yeah. Very cute little situation there. And that's when they can really take it anywhere they want to go. As I understand it, not necessarily like by law, by law you can't. And you're supposed to ask. Right. But for the most part, it's like, yeah.

But socialization is a big deal. Like you said, they try to expose puppies to at least five new experiences a week. So everything from other dogs being around, to being in a shopping mall, to going to Jim Burry and having screaming kids, you know, throwing their poop all over the place. I would guess so. Actually, I don't know if I'd take a puppy to be trained to Jim Burry. That's probably like the proving ground. Yeah.

They can ignore that. But basically what they want to do is develop a good relationship with a dog, which will eventually transfer to their handler. And we were talking about learning obedience, like just basic obedience. All guide dogs are taught, not with treats. Yeah. And there's a very, very good reason why you don't want to teach a dog with treats. Sure.

Because if you have a guide dog that's like food is a reward, and I think a lot about food, as a matter of fact, you could say, I'm fixated on food. Is that your dog voice? Yeah. And you take that guide dog into like a diner. Yeah. Or a Nathan's. That guide dog's going to have some real problems concentrating.

Yeah. So you use a praise and then correction through like just a tug on a leash. Yeah. That's typical like Caesar Milan stuff. Yep. Yeah. One of those two. I saw one the other day where he was training a dude who's scared of dogs.

An adult. He had grown kids. Yeah. He was like in his probably late 40s, and he was still frightened of dogs. And it was like every stupid episode of that show. Very emotional. Well, that music is pretty. Oh, man.

It was a little ratchet. Yeah. Right at the right time. So. Wait. Hold on, Chuck. Yeah. We have a quick service for our listeners out there and teach them the whiz bang A1 no

fail method of house breaking a dog in as little as one day. All right. Let's hear it. Do you want me to do it? Yeah. I've had my dog poops every day and eats it herself. So I've done a poor job, buckly peas when it thunders. Do you have a thunder shirt for him?

Yeah. We call this thunder buddy. It helps a little bit. But if we're not home and it's thundering, he'll pee. Do you give him sedatives or anything? No. It's just, you know, I just clean up the pee. Gotcha.

Okay. All right. So yeah, if you have a puppy, yeah, they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I don't know if that's true or not, but with a puppy, it's easier. I think that should be, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, comma, I don't know if that's true or not semi colon with a puppy. It's easier. That should be the full adage.

That's the A1 slogan. So you take your puppy outside once an hour pretty much and you take them to the same place outside and you wait until they finally start to go. And when they go, you say puppy's name, insert it here, do your thing or whatever you choose to say. And then you praise that dog like it just saved your life. And then the next time you take the dog out again and you wait, you do that a couple of times.

And maybe by the third or fourth time, you take the dog out to the same place and you say puppy, do your thing and that dog will probably peer poop on command for the rest of its life. Yeah. I say go potty and it works still. Yeah. Especially when it's thundering. Yeah.

Go potty. He's like, dude, perfect. And again, the reason why you want a dog to that will only peer poop on command is because again, you can't have a guide dog pooping in public because people be like, well, what's we need to legislate guide dogs? Yeah. If your dog poop in a library, yeah, exactly. This lady over here is rubbing against the dog while it's pooping.

Yeah. Plus, you know, you don't want your dog taking a big dump in front of forever 21 because little kids at the mall will be turned off by that. So like you said, puppies are evaluated every few months during training and eventually, like we said, at about the year, year and a half mark, the saddest day ever happens and you have to take that puppy that you raised and turn them over to a school. And they did an interview with a lady who raised a dog named Sonar. Her name is Mary Contando.

Yeah. And it sounds like she does this a lot and she had a really good attitude. She's like, here's how I look at it. I had three kids and I raised them and eventually sent them out into the world. So I'm going to do this with this dog and they provide a service and we don't look at it as losing this dog. We look at it as like we've given someone a gift of a well-trained puppy. And a lot of people will get another one right after that and start all over again.

Yeah. Also, once you prove yourself as an able and capable guide dog puppy razor, like they'll keep coming back every time to ask you if you want to do it again. And you may one day, actually maybe one day soon, get that dog back if it gets kicked out of the program. Yeah. Because like you said, 20% right off the bat aren't even trained as puppies of the ones that go through puppy training and are brought back after 12 to 18 months, 50% of those will

just be like turned down. Yeah. And a lot of times they'll offer them back to the original puppy razor to, hey, do you want this dog? You failed. Would you like the dog back as a token to commemorate your failure? Or the sweetest thing ever, perhaps when that dog retires, you might get it back. Yeah, usually if the person who has the guide dog, the handler, because they need another

guide dog after that one retires, if they can't keep two dogs, keep the other one as a pet, then I think you have a first shot if you raise it as a puppy. Yeah. Could you imagine like raising this puppy giving away and like 10 years later getting it back as a retiree? It'd be like Christian the lion or something, but with dogs. That's right. So once your puppy has been raised and it goes to regular school, they're going to basically

reinforce and train everything they've already learned and then introduced like all the serious parts of schooling. Like here's an intersection. Here's a cliff. Here's stairs. A lot of the schools have fake intersections built so they can really, you know, do like hands-on training there on the campus. Right.

And this is like intensive training. And this isn't like whenever some burnout who like lives at the school gets around to it. This is intensive training like every day from multiple people, one of whom the dog trainer, the master trainer, is actually assisted by other apprentice trainers and it's a very intensive months-long training. Yeah. About six months, I think.

And that's after a year to a year and a half of puppy training. So by the time a handler gets it, it's, you know, a couple of years old. Well, not only is there, so there's puppy training, six months of intensive dog school training. Yeah. And then when the handler's finally matched, there's a whole month where the handler and the dog are trained together. Yeah.

And the matching process takes a little while too. You know, they don't just throw any dog with any person. It's got to be just like adopting any dog. It's got to be a good personality match for you. Right. So Chuck, let's go back to dog training school. We got a little excited. Okay.

We're back in school. Right. So like you said, a lot of places will have their own intersections built, simulated. Yeah. The first step before they ever get to that point is learning to walk like a guide dog in a straight line, a little forward ahead of the handler and slightly to the left. Up and to the left. And this is a big one.

The guide dog has to be taught to think of the world in human size, not dogs I view any longer, but human size because apparently they pick up pretty easily like, well, there's a garbage can. I need to make a wide arc around the garbage can so that the guy I'm leading doesn't run into the garbage can. But what about that narrow crevasse that I can fit through no problem? But my blind guy's a big fatty. There's no way he can fit through there.

Right. Look at this guy. Right. Exactly. I'm going to have to go around the block because he can't go down this alleyway. Right. A dog has to think in terms of its world like that and that's enormous to be able to train something like that.

And for the dog to be able to learn like that, that's just really, my head is off like over and over again. I'm just not even putting it back on for the rest of this episode. Yeah. The one that really knocked me out was the headroom. Like the dog, even though it's two and a half feet off the ground, will be able to look up and say this guy might or lady might bang her head on this low hanging beam. I shouldn't go into this.

She shouldn't go in there. Stay out of the sewer. So that's just amazing. Like the dog has to look up and know how tall the owner is and gauge how low that beam is. Yeah. Unreal. Just again, with the most spectacular thing in the world, selective disobedience, stopping at all curbs, all stairs, learning all of the commands, go to the right, go to the left,

forward. You and me and I watched Short Circuit last night. Holds up pretty well. Except it's just as crappy as it was when it was working. Exactly. The Fisher Stevens character, the Indian programmer, is so racist in this contest because it's a white guy doing like the worst Indian impression ever. It's like Nicky Rooney and what's it called?

I have no idea. Breakfast at Tiffany's. He played Mr. Modo or whatever the Chinese guy. No. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. I have to watch that. Very famous racist portrayal.

But anyway, they couldn't get Johnny Five to come for Alishiti, couldn't until she stumbled upon Forward. She's like, come here. Come this way. Walk. And he was just standing there. And she's like, Forward. And he's like, oh, Forward goes forward.

So guide dogs and sentient robots, you have to say Forward. From the 80s. All right. So we said before, 20% of the puppies are weeded out off the top. Out of those puppies who go to school, about 50% of those are kicked out of school. And then finally, once those remaining are in school, only about 72% of those graduate. So they really weed out. To say out of 400 dogs that go through puppy training, you got like 140 that are gonna

eventually graduate and go on to be matched with a handler. And you know, there are a few things that'll weed a dog out, even if they're pretty good. If they're like aggressive toward cats or something, you know, that'll weed them out. So they really get the cream of the crop. Drug problem. Drug problems. Gone. They don't want any drug abusers in there.

No. So they get the cream of the crop at the end. Make sure they're compatible with their handler. Train the handler with the people. And then boom, you've got a match made in heaven. Yeah. In the article, Tom Harris says, like, if you're taking a first time handler, somebody who hasn't had a guide dog before, by the time the handler comes and you're putting it

together with the dog, now you're basically in people training mode. Your guide dog is already trained. The process is training the handler in the commands that the dog already knows. Training the handler how to walk and basically taking this person and this dog and teaching them how to work as a team. Yeah. And the dog has, you know, this is their new master. They've had their instructor for six months or more.

So it takes a little while to adjust to this fact that, hey, this is my new alpha dog. Yeah. It takes, I think, on average about a month, that's about the time that's set aside. And so these nonprofit guide dog schools have facilities for blind people to come live while they're spending a month learning how to work with their guide dog. Yeah. Some of them have dorms. That's pretty cool.

That's very cool. And again, we should say, all of this is free. The nonprofit group is shouldering all of the financial burden, the puppy razors. Yeah. They're given a stipend for food. All bills are paid by the guide dog school, everything, everything that has to do with the training and the raising of these dogs is paid for by these nonprofit groups. So if you're looking for a place to leave an inheritance, you could do worse than a

guide dog school. Yeah. I'll give you my tax information if you email me directly. So if you want to be an instructor, it's going to vary depending on what school you're going to try and go to. But generally, you have to have two to three years experience as an apprentice, supervised apprentice, and then different states have certification processes. You're probably a college graduate, even though the job doesn't pay, it's still really hard

to get this job. Yeah. People want to do this. Yeah. So it's weight-listed a lot of times, not a lot of openings, and it's a tough job to get. It's very demanding physically and emotionally, and it's a real challenge as a trainer, but super rewarding.

Sure. Wouldn't you think? Yeah. And if you are interested in becoming a master trainer from what I understand the best route to take is to start by being a puppy raiser, work your way up to apprentice trainer and then to master trainer. Who knows, you may just feel like topping out at puppy raiser. Anybody can do it.

Yeah. File an application, have to be pass, of course. Yeah, they're going to screen you. I would imagine you, I don't see how you could have a job, like a regular salary position. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you're exposing a dog to five new things a week, yeah, I guess you could balance the two if it was like my work and this puppy, you know?

But even still, I don't know, I would think you'd probably get bumped off a lot easier. Sure. And they're screening you too to make sure you're like a super awesome person. Right. And you're not like, I'm going to expose them to the back of my hand. Right. Do you have like stains on the sleeveless undershirt that you wore to that puppy raising application meeting?

Yeah. Give me like four of them puppies. Right. I'll train them good. They may pass you by. Yeah. Yeah. I guess anybody can do it, I guess, is what we're trying to say.

Almost anybody. Yeah. And I don't, I don't know if they, how heavily they screen as far as like if you have kids or you can have other dogs, even other puppies, but your puppy has to be, I think, seven months old. Yeah. And I guess the whole point is they have to deal with those distractions. Right.

Anyway. That's not a bad thing. Yep. That's exactly what the mind thought process is behind that. And like we said, they retire generally eight to 10 years old, although that doesn't mean they're like old and feeble, it just means it's probably time to get a new guide dog. Right.

They, they are sharp mentally, typically, but they're starting to slow down a little bit and they have to be able to keep pace with their, their handler. So yeah, I think about eight to 10 is the usual age that they're retired. Yeah. And like you said, they'll offer it to the handler. If the handler is like, yeah, I can handle like keeping this dog and still get my new guide dog. Then great.

If not, they may offer it to the original puppy raiser. Or you might be lucky enough. It's another waitlist deal because people want to adopt retired guide dogs because they're pretty much the best. Yeah. And you may not have as much time with them, but it's, you're providing them with like, it's almost like, you know, taking in an old person and giving them something great in their twilight years.

Right. Like just letting them whip cream right out of the can anytime they want kind of thing. Poop wherever you want. Sure. And they're like, dude, what's wrong with you? Poop, poop into my hand. The dog just thinks you're crazy. It's like, I remember my, I used to work.

Yeah. You asked me to do things like that. I love that blind guy so much more. Did you, I can't even mention it on this, I think. All right. All right. You got anything else about guide dogs? This one's a little wackier than I thought it was going to be.

Sure. Okay. Well, if you want to learn all about guide dogs, you can type guide dogs into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said, switch bar, it's time for friends, a message break, hit the jingle. 2023 is already well underway everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com.

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Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code stuff. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, gate one travel has been providing more of the world for less. Visit gate one, handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours in European River Cruises and right now through January 30th, use promo code heart 20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code heart 20 through January 30th.

Visit gate one travel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code heart 20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Now Chuck, it's time for listener mail. That's right, and this is dog centric, it just worked out that way. This is from an ER doctor whose passion is animal rescue and her name is Jane M, G-N-A-B? Never heard that.

J-E-N-A-B? Yeah. So Jane says, I have a charity knitting site guys where I donate 100% of the proceeds from selling my hand knitted items to an animal rescue in your neck of the woods actually. Angels Among Us Pet Rescue in Alpharetta, Georgia. Do you remember them? Yeah. How do I know that name?

In either maybe like the can dogs detect like death or can dogs tell when you're going to die or can dogs detect illness? Oh yeah. Yeah. Remember the chihuahua that could detect breast cancer? Yeah. I feel like we talked about that organization in that episode. I think you're right.

So Angels Among Us in Alpharetta. They rescued thousands of dogs and cats from kill shelters right before being euthanized and found them loving homes. Last year my knitting site donated $5,000 to their cause and this year my goal is $6,000 and this is like she's just knitting, selling this stuff and giving all the money away. Knitting knitting knitting at all times. That's pretty neat. A few days ago I lost my 15 year old rescue girl Rika, Japanese for beautiful girl.

I rescued her when she was eight weeks old and she was with me through marriage, divorce, medical school, residency and first four years of practice. She moved with me from Denver to Tulsa to Kansas City to Grand Junction, Colorado to Mendocino, California and back to Denver. Her loss has broken my heart but it has also inspired me to work even harder to accomplish my goal for other homeless animals including asking for help spreading the word. So guys I would love it to make you both some hand knitted hats for the winter if you think you'd enjoy them.

The links to my page on Facebook and to Angels Among Us are below. You can see pictures of the hats, baby hats, dog sweaters, all kinds of things I can knit. Thanks for your consideration but more than anything thanks for a fantastic podcast that keeps me entertained and educated. So this is from Jane Jeanab MD, owner of Jane's Creations and we would like to challenge people to go out and buy one of her knitted gifts because that money is going to go to Angels Among Us Pet Rescue. That is so cool.

So go to our Facebook page, facebook.com slash janescreations or just check out Angels Among Us Pet Rescue at facebook.com slash angelsrescue and let's help her reach that goal of 6,000 bucks because that's pretty awesome. Let's do it. Let's make it an official SYSK thing, okay? And hey, you know what? Jerry adopted her cute little dog Tully from Angels Among Us. Don't want to jump, kind of.

Yeah. And that washed out a guide dog school. Yeah, the tweaker. But yeah, so we have a personal connection too and let's do it Chuck. Let's make it an official SYSK thing to raise some money for this. Yeah, so go to facebook.com slash janescreations and Jane corresponded with her on email. I'm very sad to hear about Rika, but she's got other animals because she's an animal crazy person just like me.

Nice. Animal crazy people are the best crazy people around. Agreed. If you want us to help try to raise some money for a very worthy cause via you, get in touch with us. We don't have to check you out. Make sure you're legit, make sure you're not, you know, making money off of other people's goodwill.

Yeah, tacky. And we get a lot of these. So unfortunately we can't, like, get everyone on the air, but we do our best. We try. Yeah. You can get in touch with us via Twitter at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email directly to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com and you can join us on our website,

which is pretty awesome. It's called stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gait One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. So let Gait One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours in European River Cruises.

And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit GaitOneTravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's GaitTheNumberOneTravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, Volume 3. It was my first time traveling alone, packed my car with hiking boots, a camera, and my

dog Randy. I don't know what I was searching for. Maybe it was something new, with adventure. Maybe it was the idea of vacation I would never expect, filled with wildlife, national parks, rivers, whatever it was I set out to find, it was all there and more. Because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.