October 2012 is the time to celebrate hero dogs in America

Like October 2011, October 2012 is the time to celebrate hero dogs in America. The American Humane Association held its second annual Hero Dog Awards ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on October 6. Last year, my guide dog from the World Trade Center, Roselle, won the overall award in addition to winning the Guide Dog category. This year, Gabe, the military dog winner won the overall award. Congratulations to Gabe. I got to meet him and his handler. They are both wonderful creatures.

While at the awards, I got to spend some time with one of my favorite people, Betty White. Betty presented the guide dog award to Roselle, (actually Africa in absentia of Roselle), last year. I first met Betty when she came to Guide Dogs for the Blind to adopt a career change Golden named Pontiac. This year we had a great chance to talk and catch up. If you want to see some of the photos of our time with Betty as well as the rest of the Hero Dog Awards extravaganza go check out my Facebook page and the thunder dog page on Facebook.

The day after the AHA ceremony I got to do one of my favorite things, visit and talk with a bunch of high school students. I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the CARE, (California Association of Renaissance Educators), conference in Ontario California. Over 1300 high school students along with some faculty spent the Columbus Day holiday meeting and discussing ways to improve academics and their schools. This is an event sponsored by the Jostens Corporation which provides most of the caps and gowns used at high school graduations and what sells many of the other kinds of high school memorabilia most of us acquired in our high school days. Some photos of the conference are up on our Facebook pages. Also, I will put an audio copy of the conference speech in my audio library.

Around the above events and the annual National Federation of the Blind of California convention all of us have been planning for the upcoming NACA conference and other November events. I’ll right more about them in an upcoming blog.