When Guy Simchi went blind, he lost more than his sight. He lost his place in society.

The Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind has graduated more than 350 dogs  in Israel.

“I’m a very social person. I love people. I like to talk to people, to know people. I started to walk by myself [with a cane]… The feeling was that I’m alone. Nobody’s talking to me, nobody’s coming close to me. It was very unpleasant.”

More than his ability to socialize, Simchi, who went blind from diabetes when he was 32, lost his ability to run, to identify his son’s friends and to easily move around his house.

“When I got blind, it was hard to understand… if you can do anything. I decided I wanted to continue life, because I love life,” he said. “But it was not very easy to continue. I had to know my house again. It was hard for me to understand where I am. I had to learn everything again.”

Simchi, now 39, is a social worker in Ganei Tikva, Israel. He has two sons, aged  five and two, and is currently pursuing his PhD in social work.

He was also a speaker at the Canadian Friends of Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind’s first annual Evening of Miracles, a reception that highlighted the importance of supporting the training of guide dogs in Israel.

For Simchi, it was a guide dog, a calm, cheerful black Labrador that changed his life.

 “When I met Turner, I held his harness. I started walking. I felt that I could fly,” Simchi told a crowd of more than 300 at the Beth Tzedec Synagogue in Toronto.

Simchi, who used to run and play tennis before he became blind, hadn’t played any sports for two years.

“With Turner, I could run,” he said before his speech. “I started to cry… It was amazing.”

Turner also helped Simchi step back into society. Suddenly, people in the street weren’t avoiding his cane – they were petting his dog.

This is all thanks to the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind.

The centre was founded in 1991 by Norman L. Leventhal, its president, and Noach Braun, a former paratrooper in the Israel Defence Forces who used to train dogs for military purposes.

 When Braun found out that Israel had no guide dog program, he approached Leventhal, a prominent member of New York’s Jewish community, and together they founded the centre, which is funded mostly through donations and has so far graduated more than 350 dogs.

Leventhal is pleased with their accomplishment. “We’re helping Israelis to regain their lives. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it is when they’re blind,” he said before the speeches at the recent event. “A guide dog is a bridge to the sighted world.”

Guide dogs are bred specifically for their intelligence, even temperament, physical strength, stamina, loyalty, trainability and non-excitability. Labrador and golden retrievers are preferred, and some are brought to Israel from Canada.

Puppies are given to foster families until they’re one year old. They’re exposed to busy Israeli streets and traffic and taught to meet new people and sit quietly for long periods of time.

They’re then tested by the centre to see if they are suitable to become guide dogs, and trained for five months. Only about 60 per cent of possible guide dogs graduate the program. Then they are paired with a blind Israeli and take a four-week training course.

The total cost of a guide dog, from birth to its retirement at 10 years of age, is around $25,000, although all of the centre’s services, from training to veterinary work, are free.  The Canadian Friends event, held on June 21, raised about $80,000, enough for more than three dogs.

For more information, call 416-577-3600 or e-mail [email protected].