International Guide Dog Day special (part 2) - Lester, dogs then & now

00:11 S1

On Vision Australia radio, you're listening to the Seeing Eye Dogs show - with me, your host, Harry Moffat. Today I've got part 2 of our International Guide Dog Day special. International Guide Dog Day was on April 30th of 2025. So in recognition of that, I have Lester Chraim, Client Services Manager at Seeing Eye Dogs, who's going to be talking to us about our 65 years of seeing Eye dogs, some of the recent developments and exciting happenings at Seeing Eye Dogs, some of the things that we're proud of in our history, and our upcoming workshop, living with your aging seeing eye dog, that we're going to talk about a bit more in detail during this show. 

So I hope you enjoy this interview and that you had a happy International Guide Dog Day. Hi, Lester, thanks for joining me on the show today.

01:03 S2

No worries. Thanks for having me.

01:04 S1

Could you please start off by introducing yourself?

01:07 S2

I am Lester Chraim. I'm a client services manager at Vision Australia's Seeing Eye Dogs.

01:13 S1

So it's International Guide Dogs Day coming up. So we're going to be talking... about a few things, kind of I guess broader for seeing eye dogs. And we are this year celebrating... how many years of Seeing Eye Dogs?

01:25 S2

Yeah, it's a big one... 65 years of Seeing Eye Dogs... as it was founded way back when, in 1960, as the Lady Nelson Eye Dog School. But we have come a long way from in terms of size, scope and... what we do in the area, we, the areas we cover around the country. It's, yeah, it's... a big one.

01:47 S1

And how would you say - I guess, and this is, you know, a big one, but - that we've progressed or that we've changed throughout that time?

01:55 S2

It's I think in many ways, in many ways, we've also tried to keep the one of the core ideas which was to this organisation was founded by a handler. Right. And so the... benefit, the goal, the the outcomes have always been very front of mind. So that I think, I hope, that continues in that it shows in what we do today, but in how we do it well, in size as well. We have grown a lot. It was a modest operation right at the beginning, and we, uh, but we have grown considerably even over the last... if you consider last couple of decades, even since... 2005 or so, you know, we were a fraction of the size in terms of staff, in terms of clients, dogs, teams on the field, around the country. 

We were always a national organization. But it didn't mean that back then we had... we were able to actually support people everywhere. We didn't have dogs everywhere we wanted to, but we weren't able to. But slowly but surely, you know, we've... yeah, grown dramatically. So over the last... less than twenty years, we about tripled the number of dogs that we have seen, our dogs that we have, with clients around Australia.

03:08 S1

And in that last, I guess, twenty years or maybe just a bit before that, I'm assuming there's one kind of pretty big historical event in terms of merging.

03:18 S2

There was. Yeah, the... a few things, of course, happened. We focused more of the... last 20 years or so. It's also coincides with the time that we still have staff, you know, who have been here twenty years or so. So we have it's very live, even though it's historical for a lot of people, it's very live. Some of us, the... change of name, I think that was a big one in... 2000 or so when it became known as Seeing Eye Dogs Australia and then in 2008 merging with Vision Australia. So it's a different type of... change in, in allowing us to continue operating but then operating in a slightly different way, not a stand-alone organisation anymore, but part of a of a bigger, a bigger community which is which comes with lots of benefits in terms of how we can support clients, colleagues that we have now or that we have had for this long time around us in other disciplines. 

And just... this true national reach, that Vision Australia has and that we that Seeing Eye Dogs Australia had. But then we continue that on where we continue and really, really build on that. And so that's... been really beneficial.

04:29 S1

I think I was thinking, yeah, I assume that the merging with Vision Australia has been one of those big things that's helped with that national reach. Yeah, kind of branching out of Victoria because, you know, even then we have worked pretty hard in the last few years to really, from my understanding at least... become a bit more New South Wales and Queensland-centric at least.

04:53 S2

Yeah. Yeah. We've had staff in WA since... in Western Australia since about 2006 or '7. From what I could gather it was, slightly before I arrived up in Queensland, we had staff since about 2004 and in New South, but that's there's been small gaps in both of those states, and New South Wales has been even patchier. We had staff, it's more the opposite. We... rarely had staff there and when we did it was for shorter periods... of time. So we mostly didn't have staff in New South Wales and we well hopefully have stabilised those presences. We've grown our presence in the other, in Queensland in particular, we maintain, being able to maintain it for a very long time over twenty years. 

I think the presence in WA and or almost twenty years and the... New South Wales, to actually have people there, which has given a dramatic boost to clients, existing clients there, but also to all [?] in New South Wales. Great practitioners that we have there now. And puppy development trainer. Puppy development trainer in Queensland. So it's... yeah, there are great changes supporting this growth.

06:14 S1

Yes. True. And I guess that basing of... really full-time staff in New South Wales... has really helped like clients get support quicker and faster and more efficiently to clients.

06:26 S2

That's, that has been a... clients everywhere. It doesn't matter where they are, if they're in country Victoria or Sydney or, you know, anywhere - Alice Springs, they want some sort of, the level, some level of agility, some level of close, you know, what you, what you would consider close support. And so that if someone needs... so there's a few ways that we try to do that in terms of being on the phone and being within reach of people, we want to do that and we want to have that wherever we are. 

But also saying, you know, if I need something tomorrow, you know, are we able to offer that? And so having staff closer to clients and not have to book a trip that's going to happen in the next, you know, say two weeks and then people need to be available in those particular days and times. And it's very sometimes a bit rushed. So it's... yeah, it is different. And we want to do that within reason. You know, we can't have an instructor... everywhere in the country. But we, within reason, we, we want to grow that... presence... outside of Melbourne. Yes.

07:30 S3

What are some of the particular highlights... throughout our, you know, I guess more recent history about things like programs.

07:37 S2

The merger is a... big one. It has, it's been then steadily changing how we, the scope of our operation. And so we've been growing since that 2008 mark. We had three instructors and... maybe around 80, 80 or 90 dogs, seeing eye dogs working in the country. And we have been very slowly... so I know it's a long time, it's over 15 years, but we have been growing and growing and... we had two puppy development trainers at the time and we probably called them something else, puppy trainers. And so now we have about a dozen puppy trainers. We have about 20 instructors, we have about 250 teams, [?] around the country. So that is a dramatic growth from... in this, in 15 years. So we're doing... that part. 

Well, 2014 we inaugurated the new building. So new I mean, they're now ten years old, but at the time they were very new. They... changed a lot of, they've been a big part of how of this growth, from 2014 to now and how many more pups we can breed, how many more dogs we can... house on site means the amount of dogs we can train at any given time. And then the quality, of course, of the service to those dogs, the quality of support, quality of care to those dogs that we've been able to provide. 

So 2014 was a big one. 2017 we inaugurated our, at the end of 2017, our mobility training centre, the Leigh Garwood Mobility Training Centre. It had been in the works or had been in the... in an ideation phase for... a long time. And so it finally came became reality. It's yeah, it's going to be eight years. It's... crazy that it's past that long. At the time it was fairly unique. And we continue to be it, continues to be unique. But many agencies around the world have taken notice and, you know, have visited or virtual visits to... gain ideas and inspiration and made their own,  elsewhere in... other places. So that was really, that was... very nice as well to be able to support the... industry in that way.

09:48 S1

For anyone who isn't aware of the mobility centre, what what are the types of things that make it unique or, you know, the highlights?

09:55 S2

The Mobility Training Centre, what we call the Mobility Training Centre. It's a big warehouse space, which was really under-utilised before. It was largely an open area with... I suppose a lot of pieces and obstacle and training... things that we had to move around. And so it was, it was used in a, it was under-utilised. It wasn't used well enough. And, so we had some storage here, some things there and now or since then what we've been able to build is, go to the drawing board and say, What would this, what would we want, you know, to be, to make it a really useful space for training dogs and for supporting clients and supporting clients, achieving goals that they may be interested in? 

So we went with things like, we want, we intend, you know, as much as we can make it real of a footpath, of a pedestrian cross, a controlled pedestrian crossing of steps and different types of steps and staircases... someone set an escalator and we thought it was pipedream. Someone said we should have a train in there, or a bus. And then we eventually got a mock-up of a train with real furniture, and we got a real escalator that works on command and that we can use it really easily to introduce dogs to it. 

We have... much better storage space and much better... places to to introduce dogs to some of these training concepts, but also where we can bring where our colleagues, colleagues, orientation, mobility specialists in Melbourne fairly frequently bring clients in to practice these things. It's a train that doesn't... we joke that it's a train that doesn't leave the station. It's always there. There's no rush. The escalators, same thing. It's... on command. You can spend as much time as you want. A pedestrian crossing, a controlled pedestrian crossing on a button could be as simple as. Because it has happened is... young kids introducing young kids to what? Traffic, to cross, road crossings. 

And what's it look like? What's the sound like? What? It's what it's actually like. And so all that intro in a very controlled, safe, quiet environment. It's really, really valuable and it's... yeah, it's been fantastic.

12:04 S1

And sorry, I think you were about to talk about another highlight as well.

12:08 S2

I was, where was I going - after '17, we'd had changes. It's... maybe hard to pinpoint. I think around 2018 it was when we had... we made some... changes. But we've always been tinkering with everything in terms of our operating program, and how... and the impact that has had in... how in the dogs that we get and the quality of dogs that... we get or we've been able to get more dogs, but also more dogs, not only breeding more, but getting more dogs to be successful through the program, to be successful as breeding dogs, as working dogs, or as assistance dogs with partner organisations who are able to take the dogs who we think they might not be successful as a seeing eye dog, but they might be successful as an assistance dog elsewhere. 

And we don't do those services, but we partner with with really good organisations, who do... we, within time, we got to, I guess, as part of our journey as and as our staff gains in, in practice, experience and maturity, professional maturity as well as personal, being able to look at what else how else can we expand our practice. And so we've been looking at other types of seeing eye dog programs and dog guide programs that exist... elsewhere in the world. And to more on the same vein, they're not that recent actually, the, from... one of them is from before this decade. 

But the... so things that we know have given us a lot more and have opened our horizons a little bit and how the the cohorts, the groups of clients that we can work with. So young people, it's something that for a long time we said we would not, you know, as many other agencies do. We we we didn't know how to. And so we said, No, we don't work with people under a certain age. And we just went, started looking against that. And what's, how come other organisations do it - so other organisations do it, why can't we do it? And we started researching. 

And now we have a well established seeing eye dog youth program who is not designed, which is not designed to give necessarily give dogs, seeing eye dogs to young people, it's designed to give information and training to young people to be able to make the decision themselves. So that's been really successful. People go through a year-long program that involves camps, coming to to our centre and having experiences, half week experiences of, as if they were training with a...  dog - and at the end of the year, making their decision if that's what they want for their lives, getting a real good taste of what it is. 

But regardless of their choice, they will have gained a whole year of of training information practice into into mobility so it doesn't at the end of the day, you know, it's even though it's a seeing eye dog program to us, the outcome's for the... clients, it's an individual outcome. And we don't care if people are interested in a dog or not because they have gained something similar, not a similar program, but a similar type of thinking. We also know that... organisations worldwide do... work with wheelchairs, clients who need a seeing eye dog and also use a wheelchair. 

And so we started looking into that after speaking with the clients. This was in in 2019, to start researching how it is that other organisations do it. You know, before that same thing we didn't know. And so it would it would make sense to say we don't do it because we don't know how to. And so, but we moved from that into, We should have a look at how it's done - and had a, you know, once we got past that to say that we're going to look into it and we think we can do it. 

And we now do. We now support a handful of clients around the country and more clients. Of course, the more exposure that program gets, the more contacts we have, or more inquiries. And so we are we are talking - I think this week we talked with two other people and and we are more regularly fielding questions from... people who may be who may be interested in this. It's been really, really positive.

16:18 S1

I know that one received a bit of media coverage recently with one of our younger clients... in a wheelchair, and it was an amazing story that she... was already paired with the dog and then received the additional training.

16:31 S2

Yeah, yeah, it would have been a very different outcome if we didn't have that. Her case was, yeah. Talk about timing being being everything in life! We had in 2019 when we started talking, when we started this conversation with another person, it took us... that was the very first contact in 2019. And so really took us. And then when COVID hit, we of course focussed on that. And so by 2020, when we had time and some some kind of time to to look into it is when we...  went through a number of steps in the very, very initial research. When we started really developing the program, it was already 2021. 

And that's when... we were contacted by this client. By 2021, we had already agreed. We said, this is, we had a plan. We had the next, the... phasing very clearly to what we were going to do. And then we, and we thought, you know, this is the one person we're going to work with. And all of a sudden we had two. And because we one of our existing handlers was going through that that unfortunate process and it was... amazing. It was great... that things, that we were able to do that and it felt of course, we were able to justify it very clearly - this is why we should be doing it. It's not, it wasn't that far-fetched. And all of a sudden thinking that we might be doing this once in a year or once every two years, and all of a sudden we were doing twice, you know, and then...

17:59 S1

Maybe there is a need.

18:00 S2

Yeah. That's right.

18:03 S1

So I guess that kind of goes on to... the next thing that I was curious about, which was... listening to client feedback. Can you tell us a bit about the client surveys?

18:14 S2

Yeah. We've started, it's going to be five years probably now that we we revamped the type of surveys that we did before. We had done surveys before that had been a little ad hoc, I suppose. And so we had in... both in timing and scope, we had some really in-depth great ones, but not regularly. And then we had some more light touch ones that were more frequent. So we tried to land maybe somewhere in the middle, have it happen every two years between 18 and 24 months and be reasonably in-depth and reasonably... giving people a chance to tell to to give feedback about their specific circumstances. 

And so if someone has had a dog has gained a new dog very recently, there's a set of questions. If someone has had a dog for over a year, but also under under six years, there's another set of questions. And if someone has had a dog who is over eight years of age, it's another set of questions. And so try to capture those, at least those three cohorts, so that we can tailor our response to that. And the two year being that we gain some time to respond, you know, to the... some time to implement change if change is needed to, of those responses. 

And so we are, we also saw so we have only done it twice so far. We've already seen the needle has moved already from where people were in the first one to the second one. And we are both times we are taking that feedback where we can some, as with any feedback, you know, some some are really, things are really easy to implement and quick and we can do those changes. And some are things that we can implement the change, but we won't see the results for maybe a year or two. And so those things are in the works as well. 

One of the things we heard in we heard about times, but we... and maybe that's... been part of the, the idea, we know we can do more people who people are happy, but people who... have dogs over eight years of age, that group is a little less happy than than our other groups. And so we want to pay more attention to that. Of course, this year, we, since the end of 2024 or early this year, we started talking and toying with the idea of what a... workshop of seminars, some sort of... group, in, you know.

And so this is where we landed, developing this aging dog workshop that we're going to have in in the winter this year with that focus of everything involving a dog getting getting older and the impacts on the handler, of course. And what with the transition to a next level, including a transition to a next dog, and impacts to the to the older dog impacts the handler. So we want to try and have that in, that's the first for us something this, with this type of focus. We've done plenty of workshops and to, for staff and... been in plenty of conferences you know for staff and we have seen of course, how the... client oriented workshops and seminars work and so we, this is a this is an interesting one, a first for us. We think we think it will be successful.

21:34 S1

We have done webinars before, have we not, years ago?

21:37 S2

Yeah. Webinars, exactly. So this one is we... it will be interesting because we want to do... something a little a little more than that, than just talking at people. But we'll see. Yeah. We'll see.... where we land. But we we hope that, yeah, it'll it'll hit the mark in terms of even someone of course, who has a young dog now, they... might not be their first dog. So they've already have gone through this type of process. Or if you have a young dog now that's your first dog, you will, you know, it's part of the process. You will go through that, that part of the process as well. It's one of... the aspects of having a, working with a living animal, is that they will retire at some point.

22:23 S1

And is that... workshop going to be open to people? Just our handlers, or kind of any dog guide handler? And do they have to have an old dog?

22:33 S2

Yeah. No. So yeah, that's right, they don't have to have an old dog... we want to advertise primarily to that group and make sure that people are aware it's happening. But we also don't want to say, you know, the dog must be at this age or you must be a seeing eye dog dog handler. We want to leave it, make it as... put it as a resource out there for people to leave it. If people are interested in joining, they can join. The teams we want to talk about are just teams. You know, these people and dogs. It's not about where, yeah, where you have it or where you don't have it. 

So and we want to make it quite broad in, like I said, not just talking about dogs, talking about people as well and talking about other impacts to people. And so we'll hopefully have component not, hopefully we will have components of training of other human welfare, animal welfare, potential therapies. And what kind of vet supports dogs can people should be looking out for, for... dogs of a certain age and so on and so on.

23:39 S1

So just to finish off, is there anything else that you wanted to share in recognition of, you know, Seeing Eye Dogs, International Guide Dog Day or the work that we've been up to of late?

23:48 S2

I think we're in a good spot. We're really proud of the work we're doing. Or maybe I should say we're really proud that our clients are happy - you know, our clients are letting us know that they're happy that with the work we're doing. So that's... really encouraging. And we I mentioned we've been growing for the whole time I've been here. We've been in this... growth path of, you know, just by doing what we're doing nowadays. We're not saying that we want to... breed more dogs or, you know, hire tons more staff. That's not what we're saying. But even by staying, course, we are growing. And so, it's been really nice to hear that clients are happy with the service. And we're getting, we are able to provide that service to a few more... people out there year in, year out. So that's yeah, that's been great.

24:35 S1

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the show today, Lester.

24:38 S2

Thank you.

24:45 S1

You've been listening to the Seeing Eye Dogs Show on Vision Australia Radio. I hope you enjoyed part 2 of our International Guide Dog Day special with Client Services Manager Lester Chraim. 

If you'd like to find out more about Seeing Eye Dogs, the work we do, or how you can help, head to our website at visionaustralia.com ... for information about our Living With Your Seeing Eye Dog workshop, you can head to our website. This will be a very exciting one day workshop all about caring for your retiring or aging seeing eye dog. This event will be free and open to anyone who is blind or has low vision, and currently has a dog guide. 

The workshop will be held on Saturday, 19th of July at 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time. And you can attend the workshop in person at Seeing Eye Dogs headquarters in Kensington in Victoria... Vision Australia, Coorparoo in Queensland... Vision Australia, Caringbah in New South Wales... Vision Australia, West Leederville in Western Australia. You can also join the webinar online via Teams webinar. The workshop is free, but please register via the website. 

The day will include five sessions by senior experts, a veterinarian, grief counsellor and a special guest from Melbourne's Rehabilitation Vet Clinic, plus an interactive client panel. The topics will include recognising signs of aging in your dog guide, common health conditions in older dogs, personal experiences of retiring a dog and transitioning to a new one, coping with grief and treatment and care options for older dogs. The workshop is free, but registration is required. Register today to secure your spot and you can register at the link on our website in our store as a news page about this webinar. If you have any questions, please email clients at Vision Australia dot org. 

Thank you for listening to the Seeing Eye Dogs Show - and don't forget to tune in same time next week. Have a lovely week.