To create awareness and raise the funds needed for this remarkable journey to continue, the Petco Foundation and Natural Balance are partnering together to bring a "Helping Heroes" campaign to life. Expanding from Service dogs and Military dogs to include new animals and programs will maximize the impact and reach of this ground breaking fundraiser.   

Beginning September 28th and continuing though October 20th, customers will be able to donate at the registers of their local Petco store and learn more about "Helping Heroes" in their own communities.    

With everyone's help we can engage the tremendous power of these sentient creatures and reach people previously denied the opportunity to live life to the fullest.

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Comcast's Tom Wlodkowski.

Comcast expects the talking guide to come with its next-generation X2 platform in 2014. The cable giant demonstrated the talking guide this year at a California technology conference and at the cable-TV-industry trade show in Washington.

Our journey with Guide Dogs of the Desert began with the loss of a family pet. We knew we wanted a dog in our lives, but were not sure we wanted to go through the pain of losing an older dog again.

A friend had been a puppy raiser and told us how much fun it was and assured us that we would always have a puppy in our lives, so we decided to apply. A representative from Guide Dogs of the Desert came out for the home interview and shortly thereafter we received the call to pick up the first puppy, Dolce, a beautiful black Standard Poodle puppy.

During our four years with Guide Dogs of the Desert, we have raised (or are in the process of raising) eight Standard Poodle puppies (Dolce, Patrick, Blake, Rusty, Orbit, Roy, McGuire and Yoda). At the moment, the third dog is about to graduate, there is one in formal training, and one ready to return for formal guide training. That will leave us with two puppies in training, one retired guide and one ambassador.

We enjoy many things about raising puppies for Guide Dogs of the Desert including the trainings, outings, and relationships with other puppy raisers. But most of all we enjoy the opportunity to speak with the public when we are out with the puppies.  

Over the course of the 16+ months that we have each puppy, we meet in excess of 5,000 people. A large percentage of the people stop us to ask about the poodles as they are unusual in the guide dog world. People generally think of Labradors or German Shepherds when they think of guide dogs, so we have answered many questions and provided a wealth of education to the public over the past four years.

We often hear "I didn't know a poodle could be a guide dog." The standard poodles are hypoallergenic, so people allergic to dogs (like me) can still have a guide dog. There is no such thing as a quick errand when you take the guide dog puppy with you.

What started out with one puppy has become a way of life. In addition to raising puppies, we are ambassadors, members of the speakers bureau, members of the Founders Club and we were appointed area leaders for the Coachella Valley.

Alan assisted with chartering the Whitewater Guide Dogs of the Desert Lion's Club and has served as president for 2 years. He is co-chairing the Santa Paws 5K run/walk for the second year and revived the Desert Dog Run last year. Needless to say, it has been a very busy and fun-filled 4 years and we look forward to many more years of raising poodle puppies for Guide Dogs of the Desert.

Barbara Norman & Alan Franks