Today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants will be presented in Spanish, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Thai and Spanish.

Welcome excellent viewers to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today we’ll visit a guide dog school in Madrid, Spain which is operated by the ONCE Guide Dog Foundation. The Spanish National Organization for the Blind, or ONCE, was started over 70 years ago to offer aid and social services to blind and otherwise visually impaired Spaniards.

The Foundation, which began in 1990, currently has a staff of 60 and trains approximately 100 guide dogs a year. Mr. Eloy Aranda, guide dog instructor for the Foundation will now kindly give us a tour and introduce the school.

We are at the ONCE Guide Dog Foundation, an entity in charge of training guide dogs for blind people and supervising these dogs with their human users for the dog’s entire working life. The school is located at the end of Boadilla del Monte, here in Madrid, in facilities of about 100,000 square meters in size. This entire complex would not be possible without ONCE.

ONCE is our biggest supporter and is in charge of the expenses related to the process of training these animals, and afterwards, of their adaptation to working with blind people.

How do canes, which are used by many blind and visually impaired people to get around, compare to having a guide dog for assistance?

Guide dogs are different from a cane in several aspects. In the first place, a cane is a cold tool for movement; the guide dog is a living being, warm. A cane, too, when you make the decision to cross a street, if one makes a mistake in crossing the street, the cane won’t ever stop you, and the dog will. And above all, as to what a dog is for, they facilitate social help, they are going to be a bridge, a link with the rest of the sighted people.

How many times have we seen a person with a cane on the street, at the crosswalk lane and we found it hard to get closer to him or her to offer our help? The dog on the street acts as a bridge. Some people are interested in the dog and they end up talking to the blind person. So, we can say that they are a link to society.

The guide dog spends many more hours in a day in the company of a human being than working. The guide dog might work three or four hours a day, for example, yet there are another 20 hours in which his social behavior must be exceptional more than anything else because actually, the blind person won’t know whether that dog gets up on the bed, etc., etc.

Which dog breeds are best suited to be guide dogs?

The ones that adapt the best, the most reliable and above all the most likely candidates to be trained from the start are all colors of Labrador Retrievers. We use yellow, black, chocolate; we don’t discriminate between colors, just as we don’t discriminate between races.

We also use Golden Retrievers; we also use German Shepherds and we also frequently use a cross between the Labrador Retriever and the Golden Retriever, a mix that gives us very good candidates when it comes to working as a guide dog. We have to remember something that is fundamental, a guide dog is not born, he/she is made.

We need a whole range of temperamental qualities from which we can select between their sensitivity, their ability to concentrate, their will to work, their flexibility, and based on these qualities we shape the behavior the dog will have later on; that is to say, what we really do is to shape what the guide dog’s job is, because the dog is not born knowing how to guide.

Mr. Aranda will now introduce us to the school’s wonderful, intelligent guide dogs!

This is a Labrador dog, three blacks.

They are so beautiful. Wait, I’m going to say hallo. Hi, hi baby, hallo, hallo, hi.

We are now with the dogs I have in training. As we can see there are many sizes, a variety of breeds, a variety of sexes, because what we are interested in is a diversity of individuals. Here we have a black Labrador; this one is a yellow Labrador.

Oh, she is so cute.

Sure, this one in here, she is a Labrador crossed with a Golden (Retriever). I previously mentioned that they look like a Labrador on the outside but have only one difference: a bit more fringe on the tail. And here we have a German Shepherd.

Very good.

Tuste, Tuste, he is good, eh? And Kaspian? Kaspian is good, yes! Kaspian is good and more handsome, Kaspian is good, eh? Sure. Hi Seika, Seika is good. See, here they are all Labradors.

Yes.

These are pure Labradors; we have all of them: yellow, white, through to cinnamon, even though this one is almost brown.

Yes, yes.

When we return, we’ll have more from the ONCE Guide Dog Foundation school in Madrid, Spain. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Let’s go see Lay, who, as I’ve been told, has had puppies recently.

Yes, three days ago.

“Three days,” Patricia says. Patricia is one of our co-workers.

Hallo Patricia, are you going to show us the new puppies?

Look, this is the mum.

She will say “hi.”

What a beautiful mum! Hallo! Hi!

And you will hear…

Yes, yes.

You will hear the puppies

Yes, yes

She is acknowledging all of us as usual, in order to find out if we are trustworthy people.

Let’s go and see your babies, okay? Ay, ay, what a cute little thing. Look, look.

Ole, ay, nice, you’re very good, huh?

What a cutie. You have such beautiful babies, huh? How lovely they are! Look.

Welcome back to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants as we continue our tour of the ONCE Guide Dog Foundation school in Madrid, Spain. But first, let’s meet Runa.

Runa, what are you doing here again, little Runa? Look at the cute little thing. You’re so gorgeous.

Her name is Runa, and she has just been born. Her mother Tania is a special dog. The ONCE Guide Dog Foundation selected her based on her good health and attitude. This is because her pups will have an important function, to work as guide dogs.

Now we’ll follow Mr. Aranda to the kennel halls.

Now we are at one of the big windows of the central part of the kennel halls and in one of the outdoor parks. We can see one of the early stimulation zones for puppies. For us it is very important that the dogs not have fears or become fearful when they are adults. To achieve that we rely on this type of facility where the school staff, along with those puppies, teach and help them to develop confidence in terms of, say, textures of the floor.

We can see that there are different textures, plastic, with holes, and then another important factor for us is that the dogs not be afraid of heights, that they do not feel vertigo, because dogs also suffer from vertigo, like people. They are living beings and we have many behavior patterns in common.

Then we can see that we have small children’s sleds, we have areas where there are corridors and tunnels, and this is what helps to improve and develop the dog’s confidence.

Runa, you are out again?

Having hardly learned to walk, Runa spends the day playing. She doesn’t know it but she is taught from a young age to adapt to different surroundings and situations. Her education starts as a game. As an adult, she must be an intelligent, decisive and obedient dog. Runa meanwhile is unaware of her future, and she spends the days amusing herself with her brothers and sisters and minders.

After a month and a half, the puppies transition to a new living environment and stay with a loving family.

Now, I’d like to mention something that is extremely important; and that is, from the time these 45-day-old puppies are placed in a family, the family receives free support in every aspect of raising the puppy like in the following areas: maintenance expenditures and veterinary costs are for free (the school takes care of all of them). Besides, they have guaranteed access to the subway, bus, train, department stores, any place within Madrid.

This is only for the city of Madrid at the moment, since it is a requirement that all dog trainers live within a 50-kilometer radius of the school at the most; that way our co-workers from the puppy section can make two, three visits daily to different puppies.

Today is a very special day. Anna and her two daughters Sara and Anita have come to the Foundation to pick up Runa.

The dog always has to go out with his vest on.

And can you take her to the cinema?

Yes, yes, wherever you want.

From almost 10 months, they will be her adopted parents. And as such will be responsible for her education. To that end, they’ll always count on help from the school supervisors who will be watching the puppy’s progress closely.

After 10 months with their foster families, the quickly growing puppies return to the school.

The day when Runa has to return to the school to begin her training has arrived. She is twelve months old and not the puppy she was at first.

Well, you knew it already, right? It’s her turn to start working. That’s why you’ve raised her with all the love and all the affection in the world, Have you liked the experience, yes? Sure? I am sure you want another puppy, yes? Ok, but don’t be sad, okay?

From this point on what she saw is a game, is to become specific training to turn her into an excellent guide dog. There will be several months of training, after which she will be taken under the guidance of an instructor. After that the dog will have to assume some responsibilities.

The ONCE Guide Dog Foundation is doing a wonderful job in readying canines to assist the blind and visually impaired of Spain. To find out more about guide dog training, please join us tomorrow for Part 2 of our program, where the kind-hearted Mr. Eloy Aranda will give us more insights about the ONCE Guide Dog Foundation school and its canine students. For more details on the ONCE Guide Dog Foundation, please visit

Sweet viewers, thank you for your company today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. May you always be blessed with Heaven’s grace.