Well our little girl has made it to the very last phase of her formal training, Phase 8!
In this phase Gabrielle will be taking her final exams shall we say. She needs to pass a final obedience test where an instructor is under blindfold and she must preform a series of obedience exercises, which include a recall and a down stay with the instructor out of sight. A final blindfold test where she works an urban route of 40-50 minutes long in challenging areas with her handler blindfolded. She is also tested with her handler blindfolded in a mall setting where must work through the food court, escalators, stairs and elevator. A final traffic test is also done where she must work through several staged traffic checks with her handler under blindfold and she must show that she can demonstrate all types of traffic avoidance responses. She will also be worked by less experience handlers.
Lots of things for Gabby to pass to make sure she is ready to be a full fledged guide dog.
This is the last phase report update we will get. She may stay in phase 8 for awhile until she is matched with a partner as this can take sometime to find a perfect match. So our next update on Gabby will either be that she has been placed in class with someone or career changed for not passing her exams. If she doesn’t pass the first time she will get retested. This is so exciting!
