Peconic Landing is going to the dogs — guide dogs, that is.
Once again, Peconic Landing will expand horizons as it hosts the not-for-profit Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind and its sister organization America’s VetDogs for an educational presentation and demonstration.
The Smithtown-based organizations will be onhand on October 27 at 2 p.m. for an informational seminar aimed at raising awareness.
Participants will get the chance to see a live guide dog training demonstration and learn about the organization’s volunteer puppy raising program.
Puppy raisers take a future assistance dog puppy into their home and raise it for its first year until it is old enough to enter the formal training programs as a guide or service dog.
To raise a pup costs the organizations – which exist solely on private donations – about $50,000 to train and place one assistance dog with the right candidate; the organizations provide their services free of charge.
For more than 65 years, the Guide Dog Foundation has trained and placed guide and service dogs to “provide independence, enhanced mobility and companionship for people who are blind, have low vision or have other special needs,” a release announcing the event stated.
And four-legged friends also help veterans in need: The Foundation created America’s VetDogs in 2003 to train and place a wide variety of assistance dogs to veterans with disabilities, no matter when or where they served. In 2015, VetDogs opened its programs to first responders, including fire, police, and emergency medical personnel.
Peconic Landing’s event is open to the public and participants will have the opportunity to meet graduates of the program, as well as puppies in training to become guide and service dogs.
“We are extremely grateful to Peconic Landing for their support and for giving us this opportunity to raise awareness about assistance dogs and the services we offer,” Andrew Rubenstein, director of marketing for the Guide Dog Foundation and America’s VetDogs, said.
Speaking at the presentation will be assistance dog graduates, instructors and other Foundation representatives, discussing how the dogs have the transformative power to change lives.
Also spotlighted will be the growing demand for assistance dogs, training involved, and a review of how donations support the organization’s mission.
“We are happy to host an organization that is in the service of helping others,” said Robert J. Syron, president and CEO of Peconic Landing. “I have seen firsthand the sense of security, independence and purpose a guide dog can bring to someone’s life. We invite you to come and see it for yourself.”
For the past two years, Peconic Landing has collaborated with the Foundation through its “Art Without Barriers” initiative, a program designed to ensure people with vision loss have the opportunity to enjoy art.
Blind and deaf individuals, who, unable to touch a painting or run their hands over a smooth sculpture, never learn to open the walls of their imaginations to experience the beauty of artistic expression, according to Shirley resident Marilyn Tucci, independent skills living specialist at the Suffolk Independent Living Organization,
Peconic Landing’s Art Without Barriers Sculpture Garden, where 18 sculptures from around the world are available for all to explore, kicked off a program for the second time this year to help introduce art to those with physical challenges.
In June, approximately 30 blind guests from the Suffolk Independent Living Organization, including residents from the North Fork, Riverhead, and points west, came to tour the garden, some for the first time.
Blind-deaf interpreters were onhand to help the visitors absorb the experience by listening to the descriptive audio and experiencing the textile elements of the tour.
