News
Positive Paws Project for Western Sydney Schools
The Positive Paws Project is a program Guide Dogs NSW/ACT has been piloting in Western Sydney Schools. The program gives high school students the opportunity to lend a helping paw to trainee Guide Dogs at the Guide Dog Centre in Glossodia.
The students and the pups attend weekly Positive Paw Sessions involving activities that assist in socialising and developing the confidence of Guide Dog puppies.The project has been running now for just over a year and in 2018 we have increased from running the Positive Paws Sessions from 1 day per week to 3 days per week with 3 different schools.
As of January this year, 73 puppies have now been through the program and the students have been very busy with a total of 254 interactions (which is an average 3 Positive Paws sessions per puppy!) and both the students and the pups have been really enjoying the K1 Puppy Enrichment Area where the students have been working hard to keep the puppies engaged both on and off the lead, navigating through all the different obstacles in this great new space.
The Positive Paws Team have been keeping records and diary notes of all the exercises each puppy does with the students which is then given to our Puppy Development Advisor Team to assist with puppy placements.
The Positive Paws Project is continually growing and developing. Our Thursday group of students have even started to do STEP handling session with in-season female puppies in K1 and with some older puppies in K2. This has had a very positive effect on the progression and socialisation of the puppies.
Throughout the program we’ve seen more students show a high interest in working with animals. Thanks to Kathy Reidy from Richmond TAFE, we’ve been able to organise two TAFE Animal Industry Career talks for the students which covers all the career options in the animal care industry and where to start with your studies.
The Guide Dogs NSW/ACT Team is looking forward to new adventures in term 3 with some new puppies and new groups of enthusiastic students.
