Hawkesbury is home to a state of the art Guide Dog Centre designed so that all the needs of the dogs can be met in one place and they can live their best life while doing so. When you are out and about in the Hawkesbury (and even further afield) you may see some of the resident Guide dogs in training, shopping centres, train stations and our town centres make great training grounds for them.

It’s really important that people don’t break the concentration of the dogs and trainers, so if you see them out and about admire them from afar and continue with your day. Never pat or touch a guide dog – no matter how cute they might look.

The Guide Dog Centre

The Glossodia Centre opened in 2000 and has 90 onsite kennels with reverse cycle air-conditioning and even heated floors for the winter. The Centre has service buildings, administration buildings, gardens, training tracks and recreation areas for the dogs. The service buildings are equipped with a food preparation area, grooming areas (designed to be able to groom 30 dogs each day), a laundry (for all of the towels and blankets), and veterinary clinic with an operating theatre, recovery area, reproduction room and even a radiology room that boasts a state-of-the-art digital x-ray machine.

The Centre’s award-winning garden holds more than 23,000 native plants and was carefully designed to create shade for the dogs in pleasant surroundings. The 1.4 km training track at the centre meanders through the landscaped grounds. The track is designed to simulate situations for the Guide Dogs training including, seven different surfaces, landmarks like telephone kiosks, bus stops, traffic lights and crossings, also different obstacles like bridges, manholes, textured grids and construction path.

The recreation areas in the centre are different fenced off areas so that the dogs can run off leash while supervised and socialise with other trainee Guide Dogs. In these areas there is drinking water and most have shade sails to protect the dogs from the sun in the warmer months. There are also 12 external runs outside each of the kennel blocks where the dogs spend most of their time when they are not working.

The Centre is not open to the public, however you can see inside by taking a virtual tour with Maddie!

What is a Guide Dog?

Guide Dogs are working animals specially trained to help people who are blind or have low vision travel around safely. A guide dog gives a vision impaired person, confidence, independence and of course companionship. Over 200 trained dogs are needed each year and demand is increasing. In 1950 Dr. Arnold Cook arrived in Western Australia with the country’s first Guide Dog. Dr Cook had been abroad in England training at Britain’s Guide Dog association, where he was pared with his Guide Dog, a black Labrador named Dreana. Arnold and Dreana gained a large amount of attention from other vision impaired people in WA who were eager to be paired with their own Guide Dog. In 1951 the first Guide Dog Association was formed in Perth, by 1957 there was an association in each state making up Guide Dogs Australia today. Guide Dogs Australia oversees state and territory-based organisations ensuring that people are getting the essential services they need throughout the country.

The Guide Dog process

Puppies born through the centre are placed with a volunteer carer from 8 weeks of age for 12 months. During this time the puppy becomes part of the carers family and the volunteers are responsible for socializing the puppy, teaching basic skills and attending weekly training sessions. Once they reach 12 months of age the puppies are returned to the Guide Dog Centre and assessed for their suitability to become a guide dog. This assessment takes two weeks and during that time the instructors are making sure that the Guide Dog is healthy, eager to work, has good concentration and can control the temptation of becoming distracted by food and other animals. Once assessed, they’re off to 5 months intensive training with an instructor. It’s at this age we tend to see the dogs around the Hawkesbury in training, both on the streets and in our shopping centres learning the important skills needed to be a Guide Dog. The change of scenery allows them to learn, concentrate and navigate around different obstacles in a setting other than the centre. The instructors’ job is to make sure that the dogs have the confidence and consistency to become a Guide Dog but also observing their personality so that the training can be tailored to suit them so that it is the most effective.

Guide Dogs NSW/ACT

Guide Dogs NSW/ACT is the leading provider of Guide Dogs in Australia. It takes 2 years and $50,000 to transform a playful energetic puppy into a Guide Dog. Guide Dogs Australia receives less than 10% government funding. The Guide Dog Centre in Glossodia relies on the public support of volunteers and donations to provide assistant dogs for free to those that need them. The Guide Dog program would be much harder without the people willing to take the puppies for 12 months to get them socialised and basic behaviors. Guide Dogs NSW/ACT also train therapy dogs. If you would like to find out more about Guide Dogs NSW/Act or Guide Dogs Australia please click the links.

This is just another example of great things happening right here in the Hawkesbury.