• Message from the President

• Great Partnerships Breed Success

• Published in: Update - Issue 2 - 2010
• Listen to Article

This issue of Update focuses on partnerships. All type of partnerships – people & their Leader Dogs, Lions & Leader Dog, donors & Leader Dog – you get the picture. This got me thinking about what makes a successful partnership. What did Lewis & Clark, Abbott & Costello, and Lennon & McCartney have in common? The answer came from Leader Dog Graduate Richard Holloway, who simply said, “Good partners share a common goal.” Whether it is exploring, making people laugh, or recording great music – it was the shared goal that made the partnerships successful.

Our common goal at Leader Dog is enhancing the lives of people that are blind by providing the means for independent travel. Success may be gaining the ability to return to school or begin a job search, it may be having your dog stop at a corner then hearing a truck drive by, or it can mean being motivated to get up, leave the house, and travel anywhere you need to go - independently. The real measure of our success can truly only rest with the people we serve.

In March we graduated our 14,000th Leader Dog team! This means that we have given thousands of people the chance to succeed – a chance they may never have received if Leader Dog didn’t exist. This is the importance of our partnerships.

I can never say ‘thank you’ enough to everyone that partners with us to reach our common goal of enhancing the lives of people that are blind and visually impaired. But I’ll try – thank you, thank you, and thank you.

More articles from this issue of Update »