Just got back from Champaign, Illinois — I gave a presentation to an Animal Sciences class at the University of Illinois yesterday. I speak to this class once a semester, and this time I spent a fair amount of the hour going over some of the qualifications necessary to become a guide dog instructor. Most […]

The snow this week has a lot of people asking me if my dog Whitney likes being out in winter weather. Truth is, she doesn’t have much choice. Poor guide dogs, they never get a day off work! The snow started falling in Chicago Sunday, and it was still coming down last night. Snowy weather […]

I met today’s guest blogger Jeff Flodin when he and his Seeing Eye dog joined our downtown memoir writing class for a few sessions in 2009. Writing has been Jeff’s primary vocation ever since: He is working on a short story collection about vision loss, and a version of this guest post originally appeared on […]

  Hanni’s still spry at 17! Bring out the party hats! Hanni turns 17 years old today. You read that right: seventeen. Loyal dog followers know that after Hanni retired from guide work, she went to live with our dear friends Nancy and Steven. They started celebrating the big day last Sunday with a visit […]

Happy birthday, Seeing Eye! The oldest guide-dog school in America was incorporated this day in 1929 after co-founder Morris Frank returned from a pioneering guide dog program in Switzerland. He and his Seeing Eye dog Buddy are the pioneers of the guide dog movement in the United States, and I have him and everyone affiliated […]