Its A Dog's Life

On Sunday at the Dutch Festival I actually left a bit early to go to another event that was happening in Kew. Its the Guide Dogs Victoria's annual Open Day and its open to anyone who might want to know about guide dogs or even anything to do with dogs.

As with every year the event was a sell-out and there were cars everywhere trying to get a park closer to the entrance. No chance but there were plenty of car parking at neighbouring premises and free shuttle buses to bring you to the centre and back again. I opted for that option.

Guide Dogs Victoria's objective is to raise awareness of what it takes to train a guide dog for a vision impaired person and to raise money to keep the program going. Much is need to train these dogs and they rely heavily on donations and charities.

The puppies were bred here at the centre and adopted out to good families before they return for their full trainings. Labrador puppies are best suited for guide dogs like this sooooo cute little doggiee..!

This is a mature greyhound that was also part of the day's event to promote some kind of greyhound adoption program or something I don't quite understand coz I wasn't paying attention, too busy trying to capture a good shot of the dog..lucky the handler helped by distracting it.

Here's another labrador puppy who will start its socialisation program in the loving home of a volunteer family when its 7 weeks old. During the year it will learn basic obedience and be gradually introduced to a range of sights and sounds to fit it for its future role.

They had a Guide Dog Training Demonstration where they show how the pups were taught to learn the things in their surroundings and how to deal with such obstructions like ignoring a kid's toy by the side of the road and not to leave mess everywhere in the general public.

They are also trained to solve a multitude of problems they might encounter out in the community like how not to get distracted by people paying attention on them and even how to lead the owner away from potential dangers.

This is a short hair Retriever I think, bit like Che-cheh's Chester! Here it demonstrates its ability to manoeuver around obstacles. Wish some of the kids I see at the shopping centres would be as well behaved and clever like this dog here!

Let's give a big round of applauds to the trainers and the guide dogs! After the intensive trainings at the centre these wonderful guide dogs will graduate and be matched with a blind or vision impaired person to form a loving team that will last up to 10 years.

Next we have the dog obedience demonstration by the Croydon Dog Obedience School. The demonstration is done by its members and their dogs. The school actually trains both the owner and the dog so as to create a closer bond between the two.

All these dogs are trained to behave and not go off sniffing other dog's behind like what dogs usually do when they meet! They aren't allow to do anything unless told by the owners to do so but during the demonstration a lot of tricks didn't go according to plans! LOL! But they were mainly a well behaved bunch. And the dogs too! Hehe..

They had this trick where they get the big dogs to line up in a row and get the little Jack Russell to run underneath them like going through a tunnel. Good dogs! And if we can get the owners to do the same...


3 cheers for the doggies! I used to have dogs for pets when I was little but we never had so much trouble like nowadays where you are supposed to send them to training school and spend heaps of money taking care of their health, etc, etc...I think I'll just stick to goldfish.