Pendle Group boundless.co.uk Issue Six Beryl Smith 01200443588Edit
[email protected] 4444Telephone Email How a Guide Dog changed my life Wednesday 10th October 2018 we welcomed David Fishwick and Brenda Midgley with her dog Bodie. David is a puppy walker and has been for many years and at present has his thirteenth puppy to train. The puppy walkers do the basic training with the dogs to ensure they are house trained and socialised as they grow. David began by giving us the history of guide dogs for the blind. During the First World War, a doctor looking after war-wounded in Germany was called away from a blind man with whom he was walking in the grounds of the hospital. The doctor left his German shepherd with the man and was subsequently so impressed by the dog's behaviour that he decided to start experiments in training dogs to act as guides for the blind. By 1923 a guide dog training centre had been established at Potsdam which trained several thousand dogs in the next ten years. This work soon came to the attention of a wealthy American, Mrs Dorothy Harrison Eustis, who was breeding and training German shepherds in Switzerland for the customs service, the army and the police. After visiting the Potsdam centre, Mrs Eustis was impressed and wrote an article for the American Saturday Evening Post of October 1927. A few days after the magazine appeared a young, blind American, Morris Frank, was told about the article. Frank bought a copy of the magazine.