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Forward Together: An Inside Look at Guide Dog Training
Have you ever watched a person who is blind working with a guide dog and wondered how the dog was trained? Forward Together reveals the professional methods behind training guide dog skills, including the accepting the harness and other equipment, leading the handler around obstacles, stopping for changes in elevation, ignoring distractions while working, generalizing behaviors to different environments, and taking action as needed to keep the handler safe from traffic. The book also includes in-depth explanations of matching dogs to handlers, and teaching handlers how to work with their new guide dogs. The author draws on over three decades of experience raising and training guide dogs for different organizations to provide insight into the training behind these lifesaving dogs.
- GenresDisability
614 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 24, 2020
41 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 2, 2025
I started raising dogs for the Seeing Eye 15 years ago (we’re on dog number 13—10 shepherds, 2 labs, and 1 very goofy golden.) As the author points out in the book, the Seeing Eye has a reputation for having very little contact with puppy raisers after the dog goes back for formal training. If a dog makes it through training, the puppy raiser sees the dog for the last time at the town walk, where we observed the dog from several blocks away and never pet or talk to him. I’ve never really minded this separation—-I think it is best for raiser and guide dog user—-but it means that puppy raisers are often kept out of the inner workings of formal training entirely, and class is a mysterious question mark (we don’t even know when our dogs are placed in a class until we get a letter sometimes weeks or even a month or two later.) All this to say that I know quite a lot about the beginning of a guide dog’s life and training and almost nothing about the important end steps. This book would be a fascinating read for puppy raisers and guide dog users but might be too technical for someone with just a casual interest in guide dogs or dog training.
July 19, 2025
Yes, just yes. This book should be read by everyone: the general public, GDMIs, handlers etc. it is going on my Go to Recommendations bookshelf for sure.
Christie is like me in the fact that we are both guide dog nerds. This book was well written and very informative. I love learning new things, and I learned a lot from this book.
I am more than honored to of had the privilege of working a guide dog trained by Christie. The time I spent with everyone at Leader Dog and my time with Brady have given me so much knowledge. I have definitely grown from the experiences I have had. Thank you Christie for writing this book. It may seem overly emotional, but I am crying while I write this. I think of all of the wonderful people that have invested their resources, time, love, and knowledge and how all of it has shaped me. So again Christie, from all of us to you; thank you so much for writing this book.
Christie is like me in the fact that we are both guide dog nerds. This book was well written and very informative. I love learning new things, and I learned a lot from this book.
I am more than honored to of had the privilege of working a guide dog trained by Christie. The time I spent with everyone at Leader Dog and my time with Brady have given me so much knowledge. I have definitely grown from the experiences I have had. Thank you Christie for writing this book. It may seem overly emotional, but I am crying while I write this. I think of all of the wonderful people that have invested their resources, time, love, and knowledge and how all of it has shaped me. So again Christie, from all of us to you; thank you so much for writing this book.
March 11, 2023
I have had six guide dogs, products of three different American training programs. My first guide dog began working with me in 1988, when I was sixteen, and the partnership between me and my current guide began in 2019. So my experience as a handler closely parallels the author's experience raising puppies, training dogs, and working with clients as a guide dog mobility instructor (GDMI) for multiple programs.
There are many books by blind people about their lives with guide dogs, and there are many technical books about training dogs. There is a smaller body of work dedicated to guide dog training or the history of guide dog schools in the United States and elsewhere.
To my knowledge, "Forward Together" is the first book by a GDMI that covers the "making of a guide dog (or not)" from start to finish. This subject was recently highlighted in a feature film and a documentary miniseries, both entitled "Pick of the Litter," which featured Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, CA. But a book of over 600 pages is going to give readers a much fuller picture of training guide dogs than a movie or miniseries ever could.
Bane writes beautifully. Her sentences flow smoothly, and she is very clear and consistent in her explanations, just as she is in training her dogs. Training dogs isn't the most engrossing topic, and this narrative could very easily have become like a two-mile slog with a guide dog through wind, rain, and muddy slush in March.
Instead, we are treated to a wonderful mix of technical detail and fun. As a blind reader, I especially appreciated Bane's frequent descriptions of dogs' body language and reactions in various situations. I laughed out loud at her recounting of a dog's first encounter with a horse and can tell you she got it just right; Guide Dog No. 4 did this with me in New York City after sighting their first horse in Central Park. I may not be able to see all the things Bane describes, but if I'm walking with someone and am wondering about my dog, I can ask my companion what the dog is doing with their ears or tail. I can feel a lot through the leash and harness, but the ears aren't directly connected to either of those things, and if my dog is wagging their tail so much that they're hitting my butt with it, I'm definitely going to know something's going on. It's true blind people touch their dogs a lot, but most people aren't going to try checking ears and tail while continuing to walk. I will do these things at street crossings, though. My current guide is very expressive with her ears, although not quite as much with her tail. Get the harness off, though, and her tail springs to life.
Another aspect of this book that I deeply appreciated was the explanations of not only the "how" of training particular skills, but the "why" of the training methodology. Reading these made me want to try even harder to become the best handler my guide dog can have by learning how she learned and then trying to stick to that template when I want to teach her something new.
It was interesting to read about how different guide dog schools teach different skills, like holding the leash while the dog is in harness. Most schools instruct handlers to keep the leash tucked under the first two fingers of the left hand where it grasps the harness handle, with a loop extending beyond the hand so one can reach over with the right hand and grab that loop when necessary (such as for giving leash cues or corrections). The Seeing Eye teaches clients to wrap the leash around their left wrist instead, meaning one can do everything leash-related with one hand which is especially great if one is carrying things in the right hand.
Another area where Bane excels is in her way of portraying the different personality and temperament types of dogs and how these can affect training and guide work. I've had the dogs who were steady and methodical, the ones that pulled too hard and had too much distractability, and the ones who were brilliantly smart and either thrived on the work or hated it. My current guide is a soft dog with moderate pace and pull who likes pattern and routine. She's easily overruled, so I've had to become very mindful of how I handle her, being careful not to try to do her job or second-guess her if she's moving more slowly than I would want to.
Finally, Bane vividly captures the complex mix that occurs when a GDMI matches a newly-trained, not-quite-puppy with a new blind handler. She talks about the "paper match" that's made based on the client's application and the knowledge of the dogs available. She reveals the stress of "dog day," when handler and guide are first introduced, and she takes readers through the class experience, including the different types of students and dogs and how these combinations affect the group of GDMI'S working with people in that class. While she readily admits to not fully knowing how a blind person feels on "dog day," she knows how the dogs she trains will become an integral part of a person's life for years after that day. That kind of pressure can get everybody a little worked up and out of sorts.
The author describes observing newly-matched teams beginning to make connections and form bonds. She's not the first person in the guide dog industry to call this kind of transition magic. Even with all the advances in dog-training methods, care placed on breeding exceptional dogs or providing supportive, thorough learning experiences for clients, we will never know how to make every match between human and canine partner successful.
I read this book in audio format from NLS [slash] BARD. The narrator was Kristin Allison, and she's read thousands of books for the Library of Congress Talking Book Program. I think she could make just about anything a pleasure to listen to. The narrator is a large part of how I experience a book, and the match between narrator and book is just about as hard to predict as the one between new guide dog and handler. In this case, Allison's reading of Bane's book is the magic we all look for.
Bane has given the world a wonderful look into the training of guide dogs. This is a great service to the general public, to other guide dog trainers, and to everyone else invested in guide dogs: puppy raisers, volunteers, and clients. The author doesn't pretend to have all the answers and frequently reminds readers that these are only her opinions and experiences. We can (and should) learn from her writing, even if we don't agree with all of it.
I never want to be that handler who thinks that because they've had six guide dogs, they know all there is to know. I never want to be the client who won't try something in a different way because I believe I already know how to do it, or, having learned to do it differently before, believe my way is better. Every time I begin the relationship with a new guide, I want to try to meet them where they are and learn about the things in their character that made their trainer decide they'd make a good guide dog in general and the best guide dog for me in particular.
But after reading this book, I also know that I can go into these future experiences with more knowledge than I had before. Part of that knowledge is the confidence that it's OK to ask questions, especially if I have serious concerns about a match. After all, the matching process requires a dialogue. Decisions made about the two creatures being put into this guide-handler relationship will have a major impact on the dog and the person for a decade or more. Since the dog can't speak, the blind person must. After reading this book, I feel that my voice is stronger because I have a better understanding of the entire process and can better express my own needs as a handler without being ashamed of the things I'm not good at or embarrassed about my shortcomings as a handler. I can try to be the best handler possible, but at the same time, I must also be compassionate to myself and realize that I can't fix or change everything about my handling. Like my dogs, some of it is hardwired in, and some of my tendencies have been reinforced for too long to make change easy.
While I look forward to exploring the affects this book has on my next partnership, I hope that exploration won't happen for a very long time.
There are many books by blind people about their lives with guide dogs, and there are many technical books about training dogs. There is a smaller body of work dedicated to guide dog training or the history of guide dog schools in the United States and elsewhere.
To my knowledge, "Forward Together" is the first book by a GDMI that covers the "making of a guide dog (or not)" from start to finish. This subject was recently highlighted in a feature film and a documentary miniseries, both entitled "Pick of the Litter," which featured Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, CA. But a book of over 600 pages is going to give readers a much fuller picture of training guide dogs than a movie or miniseries ever could.
Bane writes beautifully. Her sentences flow smoothly, and she is very clear and consistent in her explanations, just as she is in training her dogs. Training dogs isn't the most engrossing topic, and this narrative could very easily have become like a two-mile slog with a guide dog through wind, rain, and muddy slush in March.
Instead, we are treated to a wonderful mix of technical detail and fun. As a blind reader, I especially appreciated Bane's frequent descriptions of dogs' body language and reactions in various situations. I laughed out loud at her recounting of a dog's first encounter with a horse and can tell you she got it just right; Guide Dog No. 4 did this with me in New York City after sighting their first horse in Central Park. I may not be able to see all the things Bane describes, but if I'm walking with someone and am wondering about my dog, I can ask my companion what the dog is doing with their ears or tail. I can feel a lot through the leash and harness, but the ears aren't directly connected to either of those things, and if my dog is wagging their tail so much that they're hitting my butt with it, I'm definitely going to know something's going on. It's true blind people touch their dogs a lot, but most people aren't going to try checking ears and tail while continuing to walk. I will do these things at street crossings, though. My current guide is very expressive with her ears, although not quite as much with her tail. Get the harness off, though, and her tail springs to life.
Another aspect of this book that I deeply appreciated was the explanations of not only the "how" of training particular skills, but the "why" of the training methodology. Reading these made me want to try even harder to become the best handler my guide dog can have by learning how she learned and then trying to stick to that template when I want to teach her something new.
It was interesting to read about how different guide dog schools teach different skills, like holding the leash while the dog is in harness. Most schools instruct handlers to keep the leash tucked under the first two fingers of the left hand where it grasps the harness handle, with a loop extending beyond the hand so one can reach over with the right hand and grab that loop when necessary (such as for giving leash cues or corrections). The Seeing Eye teaches clients to wrap the leash around their left wrist instead, meaning one can do everything leash-related with one hand which is especially great if one is carrying things in the right hand.
Another area where Bane excels is in her way of portraying the different personality and temperament types of dogs and how these can affect training and guide work. I've had the dogs who were steady and methodical, the ones that pulled too hard and had too much distractability, and the ones who were brilliantly smart and either thrived on the work or hated it. My current guide is a soft dog with moderate pace and pull who likes pattern and routine. She's easily overruled, so I've had to become very mindful of how I handle her, being careful not to try to do her job or second-guess her if she's moving more slowly than I would want to.
Finally, Bane vividly captures the complex mix that occurs when a GDMI matches a newly-trained, not-quite-puppy with a new blind handler. She talks about the "paper match" that's made based on the client's application and the knowledge of the dogs available. She reveals the stress of "dog day," when handler and guide are first introduced, and she takes readers through the class experience, including the different types of students and dogs and how these combinations affect the group of GDMI'S working with people in that class. While she readily admits to not fully knowing how a blind person feels on "dog day," she knows how the dogs she trains will become an integral part of a person's life for years after that day. That kind of pressure can get everybody a little worked up and out of sorts.
The author describes observing newly-matched teams beginning to make connections and form bonds. She's not the first person in the guide dog industry to call this kind of transition magic. Even with all the advances in dog-training methods, care placed on breeding exceptional dogs or providing supportive, thorough learning experiences for clients, we will never know how to make every match between human and canine partner successful.
I read this book in audio format from NLS [slash] BARD. The narrator was Kristin Allison, and she's read thousands of books for the Library of Congress Talking Book Program. I think she could make just about anything a pleasure to listen to. The narrator is a large part of how I experience a book, and the match between narrator and book is just about as hard to predict as the one between new guide dog and handler. In this case, Allison's reading of Bane's book is the magic we all look for.
Bane has given the world a wonderful look into the training of guide dogs. This is a great service to the general public, to other guide dog trainers, and to everyone else invested in guide dogs: puppy raisers, volunteers, and clients. The author doesn't pretend to have all the answers and frequently reminds readers that these are only her opinions and experiences. We can (and should) learn from her writing, even if we don't agree with all of it.
I never want to be that handler who thinks that because they've had six guide dogs, they know all there is to know. I never want to be the client who won't try something in a different way because I believe I already know how to do it, or, having learned to do it differently before, believe my way is better. Every time I begin the relationship with a new guide, I want to try to meet them where they are and learn about the things in their character that made their trainer decide they'd make a good guide dog in general and the best guide dog for me in particular.
But after reading this book, I also know that I can go into these future experiences with more knowledge than I had before. Part of that knowledge is the confidence that it's OK to ask questions, especially if I have serious concerns about a match. After all, the matching process requires a dialogue. Decisions made about the two creatures being put into this guide-handler relationship will have a major impact on the dog and the person for a decade or more. Since the dog can't speak, the blind person must. After reading this book, I feel that my voice is stronger because I have a better understanding of the entire process and can better express my own needs as a handler without being ashamed of the things I'm not good at or embarrassed about my shortcomings as a handler. I can try to be the best handler possible, but at the same time, I must also be compassionate to myself and realize that I can't fix or change everything about my handling. Like my dogs, some of it is hardwired in, and some of my tendencies have been reinforced for too long to make change easy.
While I look forward to exploring the affects this book has on my next partnership, I hope that exploration won't happen for a very long time.
November 28, 2020
Truly educational and insightful book!!!
This was such an amazing book. The explanations were well thought out, but not overly descriptive. The author was honest and realistic, without painting too rosey of a picture. The writing was down to earth and a pleasure to read. I would seriously erge anyone who has anything to do with the guide dog movement to read this. It will increase knowledge and understanding for puppy raisers, handlers, GDMI applicants, other staff, and even the general public. I really really enjoyed this read.
This was such an amazing book. The explanations were well thought out, but not overly descriptive. The author was honest and realistic, without painting too rosey of a picture. The writing was down to earth and a pleasure to read. I would seriously erge anyone who has anything to do with the guide dog movement to read this. It will increase knowledge and understanding for puppy raisers, handlers, GDMI applicants, other staff, and even the general public. I really really enjoyed this read.
February 3, 2021
As long-time SD handler—though not a GD handler—I found this book quite interesting.
I had heard that the trend in GD training was moving away from using compulsion & punitive equipment and toward force-free methods and more humane equipment.
While that appears to be true, I was disappointed to find that it has less to do with concern over the GD’s welfare and more to do with optics.
However, that did not affect the rating I gave the book. It was very well-written. The author knows how to engage the reader and to maintain their interest.
I had heard that the trend in GD training was moving away from using compulsion & punitive equipment and toward force-free methods and more humane equipment.
While that appears to be true, I was disappointed to find that it has less to do with concern over the GD’s welfare and more to do with optics.
However, that did not affect the rating I gave the book. It was very well-written. The author knows how to engage the reader and to maintain their interest.
January 3, 2021
Ambivalencia
Más que un libro sobre técnicas de entrenamiento, después del tiempo en el que los cachorros están con las familias, es un relato personalizado de una magnífica instructora de movilidad con perro guía. Hay diversos libros con mayor base científica al respecto, a saber Bruce Johnston, Walter Rupp, Emanuel Sarris, etc.
Más que un libro sobre técnicas de entrenamiento, después del tiempo en el que los cachorros están con las familias, es un relato personalizado de una magnífica instructora de movilidad con perro guía. Hay diversos libros con mayor base científica al respecto, a saber Bruce Johnston, Walter Rupp, Emanuel Sarris, etc.
April 24, 2021
I really enjoyed this information
June 14, 2025
I finished reading Forward Together by Christie Bane. It was added to BARD on Wednesday. Reading time is about 20 hours, and the narrator is Kristin Allison. The only issue I had with the book was the choice of narrator. Most of the reading was monotone with the exception of when the author described how one commanded the dog to walk at a slower pace. This command is “steady,” whicj is familiar to any guide dog handler. I suspect Ms. Allison used the context to determine how this should have been read.
Other than the quibble I had with the narrator choice, the book was well written and explained concepts well.
Christie Bane is a Guide Dog mobility instructor, GDMI. Most of the book describes in fascinating detail how dogs go from energetic adolescent dogs that are returned from puppy raiser homes to “class ready” guide dogs. This gives me a greater appreciation of the hard work that is put into preparing these dogs for matching with a blind person.
The last part of the book talks about class from the GDMI’s point of view. She talks about the stress of dog day and the importance of solo training when the team is ready.
I’ll be honest and say much of the time I was listening to the book, I was lying on the bed petting Yankee. Ms. Bane’s writing has given me a whole new appreciation for my loyal yellow Lab.
Other than the quibble I had with the narrator choice, the book was well written and explained concepts well.
Christie Bane is a Guide Dog mobility instructor, GDMI. Most of the book describes in fascinating detail how dogs go from energetic adolescent dogs that are returned from puppy raiser homes to “class ready” guide dogs. This gives me a greater appreciation of the hard work that is put into preparing these dogs for matching with a blind person.
The last part of the book talks about class from the GDMI’s point of view. She talks about the stress of dog day and the importance of solo training when the team is ready.
I’ll be honest and say much of the time I was listening to the book, I was lying on the bed petting Yankee. Ms. Bane’s writing has given me a whole new appreciation for my loyal yellow Lab.
November 30, 2020
I really enjoy reading books about guide dogs and their training. Nearly all of these books were written from the perspectives of the student in training, with a few written from the dog's perspective. However, this book is from the instructor's viewpoint. I found it very informative. At times it was very academic, but over all I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to know more about what goes into becoming a guide dog instructor. Or, others like myself who have wanted to know more than the bits and pieces we get at different points during our own training. insertion point at end
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews