Dress down day benefits guide dogs

Each month, the Oneida City School District Oneida Teachers’ Association and Oneida School Employee Union hold dress down days.

ONEIDA >> Each month, the Oneida City School District Oneida Teachers’ Association and Oneida School Employee Union hold dress down days. The month of March donations benefit Freedom Guide Dogs, a non-profit organization based in Upstate New York, which breeds, raises, trains and places guide dogs with the blind and visually impaired through a distinctive programcalled Hometown Training.

Freedom Guide Dogs was founded in 1992 by husband and wife team Eric and Sharon Loori. As experienced guide dog trainers, they took their knowledge of a new homebased style of training and applied it to Labrador Retrievers.

Hometown Training allows staff members to bring a trained guide dog directly to the blind person’s home and train with them for 2-3 weeks in their own, familiar environment. This is all at no cost to the client.

Freedom does its own breeding in order to produce quality, healthy dogs that will make excellent guides. Over the years Freedom has had the opportunity to work with several different breeds of dog.

Freedom sends out the puppies to Puppy Raisers, volunteers who agree to raise a puppy in their home for Freedom Guide Dogs so that it can one day become a guide dog. At about eight weeks of age, the puppy goes to live with the Puppy Raiser for one year to a year and a half. During that time, the Puppy Raiser plays a key role in the socialization and development of the puppy which greatly increases its chances of graduating from the guide dog program.

Freedom receives its funding through foundations, organizations, corporations and individuals. For more information, visit freedomguidedogs.org.