Brody is one of six guide dogs in training that will represent VetDogs on Saturday, Oct. 1.
Close your eyes, and try to read this column. Close your eyes, and try to find your way to the kitchen. Close your eyes, and try to enter your favorite restaurant. Not so easy, is it? Imagine that you don’t have a right arm or a left leg and imagine trying to do all the things that you normally do each day. Not so easy, is it?
How can you help? Simple: Come out on Saturday, Oct. 1 for the Pocono Motorcycle Ride to benefit America’s VetDogs.
A VetDog is very similar to what you might already know as a Seeing Eye dog, only trained to perform different tasks than the traditional guide dog. Kay and Dennis O’Grady not only organized this ride, but also are raising a VetDog named Chuckles, a half Labrador/half golden retriever puppy.
The goal of this ride is to raise the $6,000 needed to sponsor a puppy. According to Kay, if you sponsor a puppy, you get to name it. That name stays with the dog for its entire life. The couple believes that Chuckles may have been named by a little girl.
“My husband has four brothers with retinitis pigmentosa (RP),” O’Grady says. “We felt that if we got involved with this organization, they would have a better life.”
Kay explained that GuideDogs.org is the overall umbrella program and that VetDogs spun off from that organization. In addition to Dennis’s four brothers who may need dogs as their RP degenerates, they also have a nephew who lost his right arm in Iraq and got to see the VetDogs in action as he recovered at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.
“It’s the greatest experience to know you are helping people who need (these dogs),” O’Grady says. “For disabled vets, it gives them confidence — people are going to play with the dog and not stare.”
You can find some of these stories on guidedogpup.com, where you can also find links to VetDogs.org and GuideDog.org. There’s a button there that’s calling my name: You can be a puppy raiser to help socialize the dogs before they go into full-time training for whichever area it’s best at, which is what the O’Gradys are doing with Chuckles. You get the dog at about 8-12 weeks old and keep it until it’s time to send it back to the center for training. I know, just when you are getting attached to the dog it has to go to school.
“One side of us is going to miss her, but the other side is glad that we know she is going to go out there and help someone who needs her,” O’Grady shares.
The Pocono Motorcycle Ride will begin at McGinley’s Pocono Trail Lodge (Route 115, Blakeslee) and covers more than 60 miles of the Pocono Mountains before ending back at McGinley’s. Cost is $25 for the first rider and $10 for the second, which includes coffee and donuts before the ride and lunch at the lodge after and free Harley-Davidson sunglasses to the first 50 bikes. In case of inclement weather, the rain date for the ride is Saturday, Oct. 8.
If you don’t feel that you can raise a puppy but want to help, come out — bikes and cars are welcome. Some of the puppies and staff from America’s VetDogs will be there.
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