History

Guide Dogs of the Desert was founded in 1972 by Mr. Lafayette "Bud" Maynard with the goal to provide quality guide dogs to the blind and the multi-handicapped blind. He began by training students one at a time from his home. With the help of the Cathedral City Lions Club, Guide Dogs of the Desert was incorporated and licensed under California State Law and the Department of Consumer Affairs.

By 1975, the demand for guide dogs outgrew Mr. Maynard's capacity to train from his home. At that time, Guide Dogs of the Desert leased a two-bedroom house with a detached garage located on the current school property.

In 1976, several individual members of Canyon Country Club in Palm Springs, California backed the purchase of the property and renovations commenced. The demand for specialized guide dog training and individualized instruction soon required larger facilities.

In 1982, Lions Club members, local businesses and a grant from the Lions Club International Foundation served to expand the kennels and dormitory. The adjoining six acres was purchased to provide for future expansion.

An additional five acres was purchased in 1995 for the development of a breeding facility and additional kennels.

Student housing was completed in the fall of 1997, with accommodations for 12 students. The dormitory was designed with the input of students and graduates. The facility offers single bedrooms for each student with a shared bathroom for every two students. There is also an auditorium with a kitchen and a dining room. The dorm also has a recreation room equipped with a talking computer with Internet access, exercise equipment, musical instruments and a television. Microwaves and laundry equipment are also available.

An additional kennel was built in 1998, made possible by the Mary Stuart Rogers Foundation. This facility is used strictly for the care of breeding dogs and their puppies.

The History of Guide Dogs

We all know the ancient Romans left an incredible legacy in the development of art, language, literature, technology and more. But who knew their culture also played a role in the history of guide dogs? In fact, there is evidence that people with vision loss have been working with canine companions, protectors and guides for centuries. The earliest recorded example of the guide dog/ human bond comes from the Roman city of Herculaneum (now located in present-day Italy), which was buried along with Pompeii in AD 79. Herculaneum's ruins, still being unearthed today, contain a mural showing a blind figure being unmistakably guided by a dog.

The Middle Ages offer us a similar record, in the form of a wooden plaque depicting a blind man being guided by a dog on a leash.

The first known attempt to train guide dogs happened at a hospital for the blind in Paris in 1780. And in 1788, a sieve-maker in Vienna was said to have trained a dog so effectively for his own use that people thought he was sighted.

In the 19th century, the concept of guide dog training made it into print. Johann Wilhelm Klein, the founder of a school for the blind in Vienna, wrote an 1819 textbook that describes the training of a guide dog using a rigid leash, although no one knows whether his theories were ever used.

The modern guide dog movement, however, began with one remarkable German Shepherd in the early 1900s.

THE HISTORY OF GUIDE DOGS

Wartime heroes on four legs. The story begins during the First World War, when thousands of soldiers lost their sight, usually as a result of poison gas.

One day a German doctor named Gerhard Stalling was walking the grounds of a veteran's hospital with a patient who had lost his vision. Called away suddenly, Stalling left his German Shepherd with the man to keep him company. When he came back, he got the distinct feeling his dog was trying to help the man, and Stalling was impressed. By 1916, Stalling had opened the world's first guide dog school, and soon there were branches all over Germany. Some accounts state the school matched dogs not just to German war veterans, but also to people in Britain, France, Spain, the United States and Canada.

Stalling's facility shut down within a decade, but in 1923 another large school opened in Potsdam, near Berlin. And it was this school that attracted the interest of Dorothy Harrison Eustis, a wealthy American who was training and breeding dogs for the customs service, army and police in Switzerland. Eustis spent several months studying at the Potsdam school, and wrote about it in an article for the Saturday Evening Post, published in the United States in 1927.

Little did she know, she was setting the groundwork to bring great joy and independence - on a large scale - to people with vision loss all over the world.
(see information board on Buddy)

GUIDE DOGS TODAY

Today of course, guide dogs are working all over the world. And dogs are now helping people who have many different disabilities, acting as hearing dogs for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and retrieving items, operating light switches and opening doors for people with mobility issues. Assistance dogs can even help with seizure response, psychological illnesses and autism.

Countless people through history have been transformed by the special relationship that a guide dog provides and the freedom it allows them.

"Man's best friend"? We think so. In more ways than one.

Famous Guide Dogs

Of course every guide dog is inspirational and many of us know one who has become our favorite. But check out some of these hardworking pooches who have distinguished themselves in guide dog history.

Millions of people in the United Kingdom were introduced to the idea of guide dogs in 1965, when a guide dog named "Honey" became the subject of a popular BBC children's television show.

American horror and suspense novelist Dean Koontz owns a retired guide dog named "Trixie Koontz." The bestselling author even published one of his books, Life is Good: Lessons in Joyful Living, using Trixie Koontz as a pseudonym in 2004.

Two heroic dogs brought their handlers to safety after hijacked airplanes struck the World Trade Centre on September 11, despite working in the most noisy, dangerous and chaotic conditions imaginable.

Faithful Dog Leads Blind Man 70 Floors Down WTC Just Before Tower Collapses

Photo Courtesy of Reuters / Caracol TV

Glass was shattering around my head and people were rushing past down the stairs."

At that point, Dorado was swept away by the rush of people fleeing down the stairs, and Mr. Rivera found himself on his own for several minutes amid the pandemonium. But then the unexpected occurred, in the form of a familiar, fuzzy nudge from knee-high.

Mr. Rivera explains, "He returned to my side a few minutes later and guided me down 70 flights and out into the street, it was amazing. It was then I knew for certain he loved me just as much as I loved him. He was prepared to die in the hope he might save my life."

Inside the egress stairwell, they found some additional assistance from a co-worker. "I took hold of her arm. She went down on my right side and the dog on my left," says Mr. Rivera.

The narrow stairwell was extremely crowded, and confusion exacerbated the situation. "People were pushing and shoving past me. Everywhere there was a sense of terror."

But according to the man, order gradually prevailed: "...most people behaved quite prudently and grasped what was happening, so we walked down in an orderly fashion, but it was slow going. It was slow going because there were so many people struggling to get out but Dorado kept nudging me down step by step."

It took more than an hour for Dorado, Mr. Rivera and his co-worker to descend those 70 flights of stairs. Not long after they had reached the ground and gotten to safety, the tower collapsed.

Says Mr. Rivera, "I owe my life to Dorado - my companion and best friend."

Heroic Guide Dog Retires

Yellow Labrador Retriever had led blind man out of the World Trade Center after terror attacks.

Roselle, a guide dog who led her partner, Michael Hingson, from the 78th floor of the World Trade Center and away from the collapsing buildings to safety on 9/11 is hanging up her harness.

The Yellow Labrador Retriever will spend the rest of her life as a pet in the Hingson home in northern California and will volunteer as a good will ambassador, greeting visitors to the campus of her alma mater, Guide Dogs for the Blind.

On March 9, San Rafael-California-based Guide Dogs for the Blind threw a retirement party for Roselle, complete with a 21-gun salute.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Roselle was asleep under Hingson's desk in the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks, and helped lead Hingson, who is blind, down the 78 flights of stairs, to the street and through a hazy maze of debris and chaos.

But the inhalation of particulates outside the World Trade Center eventually took its toll on Roselle, and she now has to retire due to a blood disorder. Her place as Hingson's guide dog is being taken by a male dog named Merrill.

Although Roselle is retiring, Hingson will continue his current work - speaking appearances where he talks about guide dogs, misperceptions of the blind and the value of trust and teamwork.