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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.

ONCE Eloy Aranda: 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.

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

Eloy Aranda: 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.


For more details on the ONCE Guide Dog Foundation,
please visit http://perrosguia.once.es/home.cfm/