9 January: Guide dogs

On this date in 1929 The Seeing Eye was incorporated in Nashville, Tennessee. Its purpose was to train Dogs to guide the blind. The UK equivalent is Guide Dogs UK. Here are ten thing you might not know about guide dogs.

1. Ancent Chinese scrolls and murals from the ruins of Herculaneum depict dogs leading blind people. In the 16th century, the second line of an alphabet rhyme was "B is a blind man, led by a dog." There was a guide dog training programme at a Paris hospital for the blind in 1780,
2. Guide dogs as we know them today were first trained in Germany to assist veterans of World War I. An American dog breeder living in Switzerland, Dorothy Harrison Eustis, wrote an article about these remarkable dogs for The Saturday Evening Post. Her article prompted a blind man in America, Morris Frank, to write to her suggesting America needed something like that, too. She invited him to visit her in Switzerland and train with a dog, Buddy. When Frank and Buddy safely crossed a New York street in 1928, it made the papers. Frank and Eustis went on to open the first US guide dog training school the following year. In the UK, the first guide dogs were trained in Wallasey, Cheshire, in 1931.
3. A guide dog's training begins when it is seven weeks old when it will be fostered for about a year by volunteers called puppy walkers. The puppy walkers teach the dog basic obedience and house training. It takes 20 months in all for a newborn puppy to become a confident guide dog.
4. Over 4,800 people in the UK have a guide dog. People of any age can have one, from childhood to 90+ and they don't have to be totally blind.
5. Dog owners will know that owning a dog can be expensive, but a guide dog costs its owner just 50p, with Guide Dogs UK providing all the equipment needed and covering the costs of food and vet bills if the owner can't afford them. New owners will also receive full training on how to look after their dog.
6. Most guide dogs are Golden Retriever crosses (56%, with Labradors or German Shepherds)) or Labradors (28%). 10% are pure Golden Retrievers, 5% German Shepherds and 1% are other breeds.
7. These breeds are chosen for their size and intelligence. Not all the puppies which begin the training will graduate as guide dogs. They must learn to obey simple commands, watch out for obstacles in an area wider and taller than they are, and must master the concept of "intelligent disobedience." That means if their owner gives them an order which would put them in danger due to something they can't see, like a car that hasn't stopped at a red light, they will refuse to obey.
8. A guide dog can't be trained to interpret the lights on crossings, however, because dogs cannot distinguish between red and Green.
9. A guide dog in harness shouldn't be distracted but left to get on with their job. Out of harness, they get the chance to romp and play like any other dog.
10. Guide dogs work for around 8-10 years and then retire. When a guide dog retires it will be adopted by a new family to live out its retirement.

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A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

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