Sunday, Oct 14th. Today we visited the Israel Guide Dog school. As some of you know, we are pretty passionate about our volunteer work raising puppies for Guiding Eyes for the Blind in New York so it was only natural for us to visit the guide dog school outside Tel Aviv.  The school was founded in 1991 by Noach Braun to help blind people in Israel achieve independence and mobility through the use of guide dogs.  They provide dogs free of charge to those who need them.

They have a lovely, well-organized, peaceful campus.  We spent time talking with Noach, and his wife Orna. They are very passionate about helping the blind and visually impaired in Israel and clearly love their dogs.

They breed and train mostly Labrador retrievers, and a small number of German Shepherds and lab/Golden Retriever crosses.

Their kennels are spotless! They keep 2-3 dogs to a run because dogs are happier if they have a kennel mate to play and sleep with!

This is the training course where they train the dogs to help people avoid obstacles high and low!

This is another training area and also where they let the dogs out to play and run.

This is the community run that connects all of the kennels together. This is where the dogs are let out numerous times a day to interact with other dogs and people.  It’s pretty warm year round near Tel Aviv, so they have a tarp over the top to filter out the sunlight.

All of the dogs were happy and relaxed.

A view of the kennels from the outside.

The entrance to their on-site veterinary clinic.

This is me and Marty with Orna Braun, co/founder, Puppy, Breeding and Kennel Manager.  And that is “Daria” a yellow lab brood from Guiding Eyes for the Blind in NY (Guide dog schools often trade breeding dogs to enrich and improve their gene pools.)