Snouts were twitching, tails were wagging, and hands were clapping as Sir Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” careened out of a stereo in a small room of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) in St. John's Friday.
It was Ivy and Maple’s graduation day and there was hardly a seat left in the small room.
Rhea Stark is the nine-year-old owner of the buddy dog Ivy.
“She’s so cuddly,” Rhea said. “She (helps) me get around better.”
Rhea began losing her eyesight just over a year ago, her mother Susan Melendy Stark says.
“We still don’t really know why. We’ve been going through a lot of testing,” she said. “We’re just concerned that if it does get any worse she’s going to need a guide dog at some point.”
A buddy dog helps to prepare owners for a possible move to a guide dog in the future.
Despite being told by doctors it would never get better, Rhea’s vision has improved. But whether it will continue to improve or get worse, is still uncertain because they do not have a diagnosis, Stark says.
As her mother speaks, Rhea stands to the side and tells Ivy to sit. There are conflicting reports as to whether Ivy was a good girl or not, though it has been alleged she was.
Either way, her mother says having Ivy has helped Rhea a lot. As Rhea said in the speech she wrote for the ceremony, “I give her hugs and kisses. She is my BFF. I’m so happy for my buddy dog.”
Lying underneath seats in the room were several veterans of the guide dog business, like Gianna, who owner Margaret Thomson says is the sixth guide dog she’s had.
“Guide dogs have opened up my life,” she says. “They’ve allowed me to travel all over Canada, the United States, Britain.”
Thomson, her husband, and Gianna went to the ceremony because she knows what the specially trained dogs mean for someone who is blind.
“Another person getting a dog and feeling the freedom,” she says. “It’s really like getting a new person in your life… They’re so intuitive.”
But when buddy and guide dogs are off the clock, it is no trouble to tell, she says, as they revert back to normal pets. She takes off Gianna’s harness to demonstrate. The otherwise calm Gianna immediately begins jumping from her back paws to her front paws before running from the hallway where Margaret is sitting, into the kitchen of the CNIB.
“See what I mean, she’s a different dog,” Thomson says.
“It’s like a uniform. Once (the harness) is on, (they are) working.”
Thomson says the dogs love their jobs. But when it’s time to play, they don’t hesitate, as was the case on Friday afternoon at the CNIB.
“Especially with all these dogs around, it’s like each dog is say, ‘so exciting, all my friends are here," Thomson said.
twitter: @andrewlwaterman
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