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April 2014 Raising a Guide Dog Puppy
A cute puppy always grabs people’s attention. Danville resident Yvonne Gilchrist and her family have raised five puppies over the last few years. The family provides love and training for the puppies for about a year, and then the dogs return to where they were born at the Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB) facility in San Rafael where they will finish their training and hopefully be qualified to be put into service as a guide dog for those who are site impaired. Locally, Yvonne has helped San Ramon Valley Unified School District write, and put in place, a policy to get puppies in training into the schools alongside their puppy raisers. The Mat and Ross Gilchrist bring their GDB lab experience of being in the schools Harry to the airport. helps the dogs learn and adapt to new situations every day. Alongside the puppy raising, and with a photographic eye, Yvonne has published a book about the dogs and the job they do. The book, Harry - A Puppy with a Special Job to Do: A photo guide to raising a guide dog puppy, is available at www.amazon.com. The book is a fun and informative photo-story of a guide dog puppy called Harry. It shows all the training Harry has to do before he can do the special job of being a guide dog. All proceeds from the sale of the book are being given to Guide Dogs for the Blind to support puppies in training. The book has also been approved to be in all the libraries in the district, and a copy Yellow lab Mazda in his puppy has been donated along with an assembly jacket and gentle leader. opportunity to read and teach kids about their role in helping with public awareness. For more information about GDB, visit www.guidedogs.com. Odyssey of the Mind team, Fear the Brain, took 1 st place in their problem (It’s How We Rule) and division on March 1 st , and will compete at the state level on April 5th. The team is excited this year to have sponsorship from the Alamo Rotary. Pictured left to right: Ellery Lewis, Sae Joon Oh, Kieran Woerner, Hayden Neustadt, Cayla Quinn, and Kristian Woerner.
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Serving Danville Bringing Back the Natives: Gardens Good for Life By Jody Morgan
Each of the 35 gardens on the Tenth Annual Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour offers a different perspective on how the owner’s lifestyle has been enriched by trading a traditional home landscape for an eco-friendly habitat. Open free from 10am to 5pm on Sunday, May 4th, gardens range from new installations professionally designed to mature masterpieces created over the course of decades by self-trained amateurs. More than 40 short talks offered throughout the day touch on reducing water bills, luring birds and butterflies to your yard, eliminating the need for pesticides, and choosing native plants to suit your personal priorities. Requisite pre-registration gives participants a chance to thoughtfully plot their self-guided day. Kathy Kramer had no idea that organizing the event Judy Adler in her lathe house where she offers would evolve into a full-time workshops on sustainable gardening practices. volunteer job when she launched the first tour as a reaction to her own frustration at the lack of readily available information. “After reading Sarah Stein’s Noah’s Ark in the early 1990s, I was eager to turn the small garden space around our home into a habitat for wildlife,” Kramer recalls. “Unfortunately, at that time, finding native plants and advice on which native plants to select proved difficult. I wanted to make the process of gardening with natives easier for others.” A tour of pesticide-free gardens in Portland, Oregon inspired her to develop an East Bay version, focusing on the use of American Lady butterfly visits verbena. locally appropriate native plants to create water-conserving, pesticide-free, wildlife-welcoming gardens. Kramer characterizes the start-up process the first year as “horrific,” but her diligence was rewarded by an overwhelming response. Aiming to get 1,500 attendees, Kramer was delighted when 5,000 people registered for the inaugural tour. What can you save by adhering to principles exemplified in tour gardens? A Volume V - Number 6 nine-year study of two adjacent Santa Monica 3000F Danville Blvd. #117, bungalows found the native plant garden used Alamo, CA 94507 83% less water, generated 56% less green waste (925) 405-6397 and required 68% less maintenance than the tradiFax (925) 406-0547 tional lawn with a modest border of exotic plants. Most yards don’t require the massive move- Alisa Corstorphine ~ Publisher editor@ ment of materials needed to revamp Kramyourmonthlypaper.com er’s 40’ x 50’ backyard. In 2009, she and her husband Michael May followed advice The opinions expressed herein belong the writers, and do not necessarily from two designers who regularly donate toreflect that of Danville Today News. Danville Today News is not time to the tour: Michael Thilgen and Kelly responsible for the content of any of Marshall. Forty thousand pounds of concrete the advertising herein, nor does
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publication imply endorsement.