The Good Shepherd Service Dogs

01/18/2025

It's coyotes mating season. Pets, especially in urban areas, are at risk from coyotes attacks. There are two reasons the attacks are worse in urban areas. 2. There are a higher concentration of pets in urban areas. 2. There are a higher concentration of coyotes in urban areas. Yes. There are more coyotes living in urban areas, than in either rural or wilderness areas.

10/26/2024

This is a widespread problem with guide and service dog teams everywhere.

10/26/2024

10/25/2024

There was a problem with the go fund me site and we've and Gilles is canceling it and going to use another platform.

Sorry for any trouble this may have caused.

10/22/2024

I was looking over some old training videos. Here is one of me doing blindfold training at the transit center in SierraVista AZ. This youngster is named Ranger. I was training him as a guide dog. The video starts with Ranger guiding me along the line of bus bays. He brought me to the correct bus. The driver had extended a ramp, and Ranger brought me to the end of the ramp and stopped. I felt for the edge, then gave the "forward" and we went up the ramp inside the bus. The ramp is scary.

I later explained to the driver that using the ramp is harder for someone blind, or wearing a blindfold, to get on the bus, than it is to going to the bus door and up the steps with a railing to hold to. The ramp is open on the sides and has no railing. If you don't walk straight, you can fall off the side of the ramp. It does have a low lip which works to keep a wheelchair from falling off. But it won't stop someone walking from falling. But Ranger saw to keeping me straight.

Sorry for the blurriness of the video. This was taken on a flip phone with a mediocre camera.

10/21/2024

This video was taken in 2020. It shows me in Blindfold being guided by Ranger towards a bus. Ranger stops at the bottom of the bus ramp. I feel for the ramp with my foot. Feeling that I am in the right spot, I praise Ranger and go forward onto the bus.

10/10/2024

Saoirse, with her German Shepherd guide dog Leader, and a Lab puppy, practicing stays at a park in SierraVista AZ.

We had to change locations several times because of active africanized bees. Something had the bees agitated.

10/10/2024

Saoirse and her guide dog Leader doing an off leash recall.

Leader is left on a stay while Saoirse follows voice directions to get to the requested distance. She stops when directed and turns to face the direction she left Leader at. When she calls him, he runs eagerly to her bypassing an adolescent Labrador without a glance.

10/10/2024

No training, but cuteness abounds.

10/09/2024

Dog Training In the Dark with Saoirse Kraft.

Saoirse, who happens to be totally blind, training a black standard poodle in the basics.

https://youtube.com/shorts/0xR-CI8xnjk?si=iIA-JWyEPlplrx2r

10/09/2024

Dog Training In the Dark with Saoirse Kraft

No training, but cuteness abounds.

10/08/2024

It's been a while since I wrote an update. Mainly because after losing our breeding dogs last April in the Williams wildfire, we've had no puppies to relate the development, testing, raising and training of. The litter which was 2 weeks old at the time of the fire developed physical issues from the styrene gas they were exposed to. They were rehomed to loving homes. We had other puppies donated to us, they turned out to be unsuitable to be service or guide dogs, so they were rehomed as well. Currently, we are doing owner assist training. And if anyone needs us to provide a trained service dog or guide dog, we will have to search out a promising dog or pup. Hopefully this will change in the near future. More on that in a later post.

We have been struggling to come back. Money is tight and there are so many expenses we have to juggle. We are very close to dropping all the balls. Now on top of needing to do a lot of work on this property, our car needs some care as well. We are going to be doing a fund raiser to help with these much needed repairs and unavoidable expenses.

Leader, Saoirse's guide dog, has become very intuitive. They (Leader and Saoirse) have become a very good team. They are doing difficult traffic work, handling unanticipated obstacles, there are several places memorized which Saoirse has given a name to for Leader to go to by name. He still likes to play his game of finding the most expensive vehicle in a parking lot when told to find the car. He looks out for better routes such as finding a route which has less up or down steep stairs which Saoirse has difficulty with.

Pilgrim took a long time to recover from the trauma. But he is nearly back to his old self. Pilgrim is a precise worker. While Leader is more intuitive. Not that Pilgrim shows no Intuition. Just that he is not quite as intuitive as Leader. It was nearly a year after the fire before he was ready to work again. But when he indicated he wanted to work by going back and forth from his harness and me, I gave him a try. As soon as I let him get the harness on, he focused on the guide work. He hadn't forgotten anything and worked like a dream.

We have plans for interesting content which we will be posting about in the near future. So as they used to say on TV, keep tuned for further developments.