How can you – as a visually impaired person – obtain a guide dog from our school?

Please contact us if you are considering ensuring your mobility with the help of a guide dog.

We will be pleased to send you a complete information package: if required, this can also be in Braille or on a cassette.

If the information we send you strengthens your intention, then we would ask you to make an appointment to visit us in Allschwil, where we will be pleased to welcome you. This first session generally lasts about half a day. You may come alone (in which case we would naturally drive you from and to Basel railway station) or with someone else. This can be a member of your family, a friend, or someone from an organisation for the blind, such as a social worker or an O+M teacher.

We like to leave some time for us to get to know each other during this initial contact by also having lunch together.
 

You will learn about the school in person and we will give you information on:

• breeding and selection methods
• foster families
• how dogs are selected
• training method and duration
• what the dog learns during its training
• final examination
• introduction, after-care, further training
• services provided by the school
• information course
• personnel and daily routine at the school
• other guide dogs for the blind schools in Switzerland.
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On this occasion, we will gladly answer all your questions. You will also be able to walk along a simple route with a guide dog in harness. We, for our part, will be keen to learn about your needs and about your everyday life.

We, for our part, will be keen to learn about your needs and about your everyday life.



If you still think, after this initial contact, that you could benefit from a guide dog, we will gladly invite you to attend an information course for applicants.
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Information course (3 ½ days)
Location: Swiss School for Guide Dogs for the Blind in Allschwil
Accommodation in the Seminar Centre, Muttenz

Course programme

• Getting to know each other; establishing a better basis for deciding for or against a guide dog, learning about the guide dog as a support and as a living being.
• Tips on preparing to receive a guide dog. What type of dog would be best?
• Brief information on handling a guide dog and on the spoken commands.
• Practical work with dogs within the group: feeding and toilet training.
• Grooming: theory and practice.
• Obedience tests in a group and individually, with a trainer.
• Walking with dogs in harness.
• Talks: basic principles of keeping a dog; breeding and training; potential and limitation of the guide dog; playing with - and motivating - dogs.
• Question and answer session with 2 or 3 dog users.
• O+M clarification with an O + M teacher.
• One-to-one discussion with an experienced trainer: prospects.
  
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Participation at this information course is followed by an exploratory visit to the applicant’s home and workplace.

Once all the questions have been clarified and we (you and our school) have decided that a guide dog is really what you need, we will select a suitable dog together with you and agree on the handover date. The school will also make the necessary application to the Swiss invalid insurance scheme (IV).

Introductory practice with your guide dog takes place in your home environment and lasts 2 x 1 week. This period is followed by several individual days, as required.

Following a six-month introductory period, a guide dog expert designated by the IV will examine the efficiency of the working unit and arrange for its definitive inclusion in the IV scheme.

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The Foundation of the Swiss School for Guide Dogs for the Blind in Allschwil guarantees the guide dog user free follow-up care for the lifetime of the guide dog; for example by means of advisory visits should difficulties occur, by taking the dog back to our school should the visually impaired person be ill for long periods and by caring for and nursing an ailing or aged guide dog. The dog remains the property of the Foundation.

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© Foundation Swiss Scool for Guide Dogs for the Blind
Texts and illustrations may only be used with our express permission.