Israel Guide Dog Center - Part 2

How do guide dogs transform lives beyond offering mobility and safety? Join me, Rabbi Robyn Frisch, as I welcome back Michael Leventhal, Treasurer of the Board of the  Israel Guide Dog Center, who shares some of the heartwarming stories and inspiring journeys behind these incredible animals. First, you’ll hear me share about the "Positively Jewish 2025" calendar, a charming collection showcasing dogs celebrating Jewish traditions – a percentage of the proceeds will be donated to the Israel Guide Dog Center. 

Michael provides intriguing details about how donors can name a guide dog and follow its journey, making a meaningful impact from start to finish. Also, through poignant anecdotes, we explore the life-changing impact guide dogs have on their handlers, offering both independence and a unique form of companionship and social engagement. Hear how families and individuals navigate the emotional transition from using canes to partnering with guide dogs. These stories highlight these dogs' profound role in fostering connections and breaking down social barriers, enriching the lives of those adjusting to blindness.

We also delve into the challenges the Israel Guide Dog Center has faced following the October 7th events in Israel. Learn about the heartbreaking loss of a client and the sudden influx of dogs needing care as puppy raisers were called into military service. Discover how the center's dedicated volunteers rose to the occasion, ensuring the continued care of their dogs and addressing the rising demand for both guide and PTSD service dogs. Despite the hurdles and limited government funding, the center's mission endures with the unwavering support of international donors. Join us in supporting this vital work and stay updated by following Mazel Pups on social media.

I hope you enjoy listening to the Mazel Pups podcast as much as I enjoy making it. If you have an idea for a future episode or want to be in touch, email me at mazelpups@gmail.com.

If you want more of Mazel Pups, you can:
* Follow on Instagram @mazelpups
* Follow the Mazel Pups Facebook Page
* Join the Mazel Pups Facebook Group

And the PAWSITIVELY JEWISH 2025 CALENDAR, which features super-cute dogs dressed up for & celebrating Jewish holidays, and includes Jewish & Israeli holidays, dog holidays & national US & Canadian holidays, is now for sale at www.PrintArtKids.com/Calendars. A portion of the proceeds from the calendar will go to the Israel Guide Dog Center. Check out this awesome calendar and get one for yourself - and they make great gifts for friends and family, while helping to support an awesome cause. 

Finally, I'd love it if you'd subscribe to the podcast and let us know if you enjoyed it by giving it five stars.

Thanks for listening!
Rabbi Robyn

Transcript

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host  

Hi, it's Rabbi Robyn Frisch. Chances are if you're watching or listening to this podcast, that you love Judaism and you love dogs. And if that's the case, then Mazel Pops has the perfect calendar for you: the Pawsitively Jewish 2025 Calendar. The calendar is a collaboration between Mazel Pops and PrintArtKids. Each month features a full-color photo of a super-cute dog celebrating a Jewish holiday or sporting Jewish-themed clothing and or accessories. You can learn more about the calendar or purchase one - or even better purchase one for yourself and a few others for friends and relatives - at PrintArtKids.com/calendars. Best of all, you can feel great about buying the calendar because a portion of our profits will be donated to the Israel Guide Dog Center. You won't just be getting a great calendar, but you'll also be helping to provide guide dogs for the blind and visually impaired in Israel, provide PTSD-trained service dogs for soldiers who've experienced service-related emotional trauma, and provide emotional support dogs for those with special needs. 

01:32

Shalom, welcome. I'm Rabbi Robyn Frisch, and this is the Mazel Pups podcast. If you're Jewish or Jew-ish, however you define it, and you love dogs, then this is the podcast for you. 

I am so excited to be joined for our second podcast with Michael Leventhal, who was the Executive Director of the Israel Guide Dog Center. He is now the Treasurer of the Board and he joined us for our last podcast to tell us about the history of the Center and how it works. We learned all about the dogs and their training and who they serve and all kinds of other things, and now we're going to be talking about the stories, the success stories of these dogs and the people they've helped, the communities they've helped, as well as what's happened at the Israel Guide Dog Center since October 7th and how they've used their dogs and what they do to help even more people. But before that, Michael, first of all, welcome….thank you. Before that, I have a question for you that I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering about: how do these dogs get their names?

Michael Leventhal   Guest   02:32

Interesting. We name the puppies in a litter with the same letter. So Tammy, Tango, Taffy, you know. So we'll have the T litter. We do that because it's an old-school method to make sure that you're not breeding brothers and sisters. And we also use English names so that a dog isn't accidentally called Moshe. You know, and five people you know, when a mother's looking for her son named Moshe, we don't want the dog to be accidentally called, so we use names that aren't Israeli and aren't Hebrew to cut down on the confusion. Recently we decided to expand our opportunities for donors and for anybody who gives $5,000, they can name and follow a dog. Those who give $5,000, can name and follow a dog so they can choose. They can't choose when it's going to be born and they can't choose the color, because that just is what it is, or the sex even. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch    Host   03:34

But you can choose the name. But they'll say you should have an R name for this dog, and then they can choose that name. 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   03:41

Or if, if we can wait for the next time that letter comes around. Or in certain circumstances, we can break away from the alphabet and, you know, if it's a special reason, a parent who passed or, you know, something like that, we can make exceptions. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch    Host   03:57

Very cool. And when you say they follow that dog, what does that mean besides getting to choose the name? 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   04:02

The dog will have its own web page and you literally will follow the dog with updates quarterly so you'll see how the dog is progressing. You'll see who the dog is matched with. Ultimately, that's where the relationship will end, though we don't require a client to be a pen pal. We've always told our clients they're getting the dog with no strings attached. Sometimes they do create relationships and sometimes they do continue, but once the dog goes with a client you'll know that your dog is working and happy. But you may not be able to follow it after the second year. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   04:37

So I thank you. That's fascinating to me. So I want to share a story with you, actually about my trip to the Israel Guide Dog Center in Beit Oved. As I mentioned on the last podcast, I visited two years ago when I was in Israel with my husband. We took a taxi from Tel Aviv, we went to Beit Oved and we got to meet Noach Braun, who was the person behind all of this, who came up with this idea, who then eventually, as you talked about in the last podcast, after a lot of searching in America, finally found your dad and together they started the Israel Guide Dog Center and Noah showed us around and, as I mentioned earlier, I got to see all those cute puppies. 

And then he had arranged for this woman to come and this was so touching I still get emotional when I think about it and talk about it. She came with her dog, obviously, and she told us she was born blind, and I don't think just legally blind, not that that's not a big deal, but literally blind - could not see. And her parents just didn't want to accept it. They would not accept that she was blind, they would not do anything, they would not arrange for her to have a guide dog, arrange for her to learn how to work with a cane. They just had her siblings lead her around throughout her childhood. Somehow, which I can't even imagine, she went to college, which is so impressive and just impossible to understand for me, but she managed to accomplish that, and then friends would lead her around at college. And eventually, she got married and had children and her young children -when I say young, I mean five, six years old - were leading her around. So not only did she have to deal with having no independence of her own, she had to deal with the guilt. And she said there was a lot of guilt about her own children missing out on major parts of their childhood because they were leading her around so she could get places.

And somehow, I don't remember exactly how it happened, but she got connected with the Israel Guide Dog Center. She got a dog. Her entire life changed; her children's entire lives changed. She became independent. She could go where she wanted to go. Her children could be kids and do what they wanted to do. It had an impact, again, not just on her but on her entire family and it was such a beautiful story. The only hard part of the story is: why didn't this happen to her, you know, why couldn't this have happened 30 years earlier? But she is now able to have this full and meaningful life, and it was such a touching story and I am sure that there are many more - each unique story like that. So I'd love to hear from you if you're able to share some stories with us. 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   07:07

Every client has an amazing story and most of the things about our clients is a desire to get on with their lives. Blindness is a terrible condition. If you ask somebody what they're most afraid of medically, cancer is number one and blindness is number two. Most people go blind over time. It's rare to be blind at birth. People may not know this and it still happens today that a child in an incubator who's forced oxygen, that is a cause of blindness, and it still happens today. My daughter's a pediatrician and I asked her about it. She said: “Dad, would you rather have the baby live or be blind?” And so there are times that because of the oxygen an infant is given, that it actually causes a problem and blindness. But most of the time we go blind later in life and from disease; and most of the time we fight it, we compensate. 

And almost all of the clients that I've met with a guide dog have stories about the day when their lives were in danger and they realized: this doesn't work anymore. You know, whether it's walking into the street or not knowingly, you know, whatever it was, but there's always an incident that causes them to do it. Then we have, as you were pointing out, there was a family. The family dynamic changes. 

 Let's say we have a husband and wife and the husband is slowly going blind and the wife slowly, slowly, is taking on more and more and more responsibility for her husband and she has become a human guide and he is so dependent on her. Now, the idea of a dog coming into their lives and suddenly she thinks: “Well, I'm not going to be needed anymore.” Believe it or not, that is a big problem. So people are resistant to getting a dog because they feel that their role in the relationship will change. As strange as that may sound when a client gets a dog, it's absolutely amazing how it's changing their lives, and every client I've ever met - and I'm talking about every single one - has told me that their life just turned around and they never realized how much the dog would make them more social. This was something that they didn't even conceive. Because think of it as you walk with a cane and you're going down the street, what is your reaction to a person walking toward you with a cane? 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   09:30

You want to be out of their way. 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   09:42

Matter of fact, here's a great story. There was a guy named Moshe Weiss who told me that he went blind suddenly overnight. That one day he was a software engineer for Microsoft, and had a great job, high-end, well-paid job. And he loved the opera. So he went to the opera with his wife and he noticed the lights were twinkling - something wasn't quite right. And the next day he woke up stone blind. Now this is very, very rare. I mean, normally there's a progression, you have time to think about it. But this guy was sighted today and blind tomorrow, and he was devastated. 

And at first, you must learn to walk with a cane. First, you can't go from blindness to a guide dog. You need to learn mobility. You need to learn awareness, and spatial awareness. Where am I, what direction am I facing? So you need to have mobility before you can lead a dog because a dog doesn't know where you want to go, it's just going to get you there safely. So this guy, Moshe, told me a story. He walks in a mall near his home and the malls are just like our malls beautiful: tile floor, well lit. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   10:51

Same stores. 

 Michael Leventhal   Guest   10:54

Same stores….And he walked down the hallway of the mall and he could feel people separating like the Red Sea and people got quiet and nobody wanted to talk to him and nobody came up to help him. The same guy gets a guide dog. The same guy walks in the same mall, down the same aisle way, but now people approach him: “Oh, your dog is so beautiful. Can I pet him? What's his name?” And now he has a chance to say to them: “What's your name? Where are you from? Do you have a dog?” And it created a relationship where suddenly he's now talking to people again and not afraid, and this is something I love to tell people about us. We don't say to people: “Don't go near our dog, don't pet our dog.” Now, when a person is walking with their guide dog, actively walking, don't disturb them, don't pet the dog, don't distract the dog. True. Nut if they're sitting on a park bench, if they're sitting in a restaurant, if there's, you know, if the dog is not actively working, then you can say to our client: “May I pet your dog?” And almost always he's going to say “yes.” Why? The dog's going to be happy, the tail's wagging. That's a good thing. But now we've trained our clients to talk to you, to strike up a conversation, to have a personal relationship. One of our clients has a funny thing. She says her dog is a social lubricant, and that it was a way for her to talk and meet with people. 

These are parts of the stories. Oh, I had another great story of a guy with young children and he had diabetes and became blind. And he said he wanted to curl up in a ball and die. He didn't want to go out of his house. He just he didn't want to do anything. Finally, he got a dog and he said to me: “Now I have a relationship with my children's friends. Before they were afraid of me, they wouldn't come near me. They saw the cane. They didn't want to come near me. Now I come to the school to pick my child up at lunch or dinner or at the end of the day and the kids all run. Can we come over to your house? Can we play with your dog?” And he said: “I know my children's friends because of the dog.” So it's the relationships that the dogs help the client to create. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   13:09

That is so life-changing and this is something that I never even considered. And I would imagine, for the children, instead of having to feel, because they're kids, there's some sort of embarrassment that dad can't see and he's not like the other dads. Suddenly it's like: there's something cool about my dad and you want to come to my house because we have something interesting that can have a tremendous effect on kids, correct? 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   13:29

Because they often don't like when their parents are different than someone else's parents and our clients who went from canes to dogs say: “You know, when I'm walking with a cane it's like waving a flag: Hey, everybody, look at me, I'm blind.” because you see the cane. But when you're walking with the dog, very rarely do you realize that it's a blind person. You know, you see a person. It looks like a leash kinda, and you don't realize it until you really get up close and see that it's a rigid harness and understand: “Oh, that person can't see.” 

Our dogs. We train them in Israel and it's very important to train them in Israel so they get an Israeli mindset. In America we stand in line, we wait politely in line. If we're going to buy a movie theater ticket, if we're getting on a bus, we all stand in a nice straight queue. Israel's not that way. People push in. It's a crowd of people. Now an American dog wouldn't understand that. They need to have a Yiddish comfort, need to have an Israeli mindset to push in. We literally train the dogs to push in. 

I had another great story. We're in Toronto at an event. We said we have an office in Toronto and they do fundraising for us as well. And we went to an event and it was a really crowded space - I mean really crowded - and the client needed to go to the bathroom. And the trainer said to me: “Mike, would you hold the dog here? I'm going to take the client to the bathroom, and you know it's just too many people to go into the restroom, it'd just be easier. Sure, no problem. So they went downstairs, they went to the restroom and they came up on the wrong side of the theater, and, and when I tell you, it was packed. It's shoulder to shoulder packed. 

So, um, he calls me on my phone and he says: “Mike, we're on the other side of the theater, can you come to us?” And I said: “Well, how am I going to get through the crowd?” “Mike, hold the harness, close your eyes, and say Kadima, which is forward in Hebrew.” And I did, and the dog pulled me through the crowd. Now the people were jumping to the side and offended you know why are you bumping me? Until they looked down and saw that I was working with the dog and they all understood. But this dog pulled me through the crowd like I wouldn't have been able to do myself. So we teach the dogs to have an Israeli mindset and to push through crowds. So another cute story. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch Host   15:59

But it does really emphasize again the importance of the dog being trained in Israel, not in another country. Being trained certainly in Hebrew. And I love the idea of not having a Hebrew name because that could create a problem in Israel as well. 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   16:13

And think about it. Unfortunately, most of our dogs are raised in Beersheba and there are a lot of rocket attacks in that part of the country. This is a good thing for our dogs to hear the booms, hear the sirens, know what to do, and be desensitized to it. Now, my dog, if there had been a boom, would have been cowering under the bed. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   16:33

I was just going to say my dog Bo would be right under the bed, except now he doesn't fit, so he's under the night table.

Michael Leventhal   Guest   16:44

But in Israel, if there's a boom, what are we going to do? The dogs have to lead them where they need to go. They need to lead them to safety, lead them to shelter. 

Or lay down on the ground. Get down if you don't have a safe place to go. One of our clients I asked: “Tell me about the sirens and how does your dog react to the sirens?” He says: “Lynn loves the sirens.” I said: “What do you mean she loves the sirens?” Every time the siren goes off, they leave their apartment, go down into the basement, into the shelter where all the other people from the apartment congregate and there are children there. So the dog gets to play with the kids. And to the dog the siren means: “OK, I'm leaving the apartment, we're going down and we're going to play with children.” And at the end, when all clear as sounded, they let the kids run outside, and the dog Lynn ran ran with the kids. And so the dog saw this was a good thing, the siren is a good thing. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   17:39

It really is quite remarkable. So that's actually a perfect transition because we wanted to talk about October 7thth and clearly there have been a lot more sirens and a lot more of a dangerous situation and a lot of people suffering as a result of what happened on October 7th. So how does Israel Guide Dog Center deal…do they just go carrying on business as usual, because they're doing something so important they can't stop doing? I imagine there's a very much increased need for especially emotional support dogs and dogs, not necessarily guide dogs, but dogs for other reasons to help people. There's obviously a limited number of dogs, and more need for help from people here in America and throughout the world financially. But what have they been doing and what have their additional requests of people coming to them been for? 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   18:26

October 7th rocked our world and if you live in Israel, it was so devastating. We did lose a client. There was a client at the music festival. He and his girlfriend were killed. They didn't have the dog with them because the girlfriend could help and the loud music and they didn't want the dog to be disturbed by the music. 

So the dog was not with them, but so it hit home. In addition, remember we talked about all of our puppy raisers are university students? Well, they are recently out of the army, which meant they all went back into the army. Suddenly we had 100 dogs without puppy raisers. This is highly unusual. I mean this is a very important aspect of care for the dog is the socialization and doing all of these things each month to become prepared to be guide dogs. So suddenly we had a hundred dogs back at the center. Training had to stop. 

We are geographically direct, on a direct line between Gaza and Tel Aviv. We are directly in the middle. So you know, as the rockets were being sent over toward Tel Aviv, we can't continue to operate as a Center. So everything stopped, life stopped, and the world changed. We suddenly had to find a lot of volunteers to take the puppies and there was a sudden need. All of the kibbutzniks who were taken out of the south and moved to the center of the country. Many, many of the people in the north were taken out of their homes and moved to the center of the country. 

Suddenly, we had these tremendous refugee centers, if you will, of our people who had to leave their homes and have just been through this traumatic experience. So we decided to bring the puppies to them, and that's what we did. So the first thing and, by the way, several of our trainers had to go back into the military as well, but the first thing we did we had vans and volunteers and we took the puppies to the relocation centers. I shouldn't have said refugee, it's really a relocation center for our people. And let the dogs be with the people and help reduce their stress, and just the interaction with our puppies did that for us. Since the war began, four soldiers have been blinded. It is unusual to be blinded in both eyes, but we have four soldiers who have become completely blinded. We know that they will eventually be on our radar for getting a dog when they're ready. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   21:05

Are they in the hospital now? Are they home? 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   21:07

They're all in different stages. And, as you pointed out, PTSD is going to be huge. This is a major, major problem, way bigger than us. We can't supply enough dogs for the number of people that are going to need them. So what we do is the Ministry of Defense helps us identify the most needy, the people who have tried to commit suicide, the people who are in the deepest depression. They are the ones who will get a dog first. And so our lives have changed and we are slowly, slowly getting back to normal. We are slowly, slowly getting back to training guide dogs as well. 

Our main mission is guide dogs, but we will do as many of the special needs dogs and PTSD dogs as we can. And again, with the help of people around the world, because this costs money, it's not an inexpensive process. Because this costs money, it's not an inexpensive process. And something else I want to mention. I didn't mention in the first podcast: if you look us up on Charity Navigator or GuideStar, we are the highest rated. There's nobody with a higher rating. So you know that the money that you give to us goes to where you want it to go. Last year we had 96% going to the cause, 4% going to administration and overhead. That is an incredibly low number If you're a giver. 

You should know. So, when you give to the Israel Guide Dog Center, be very comforted in knowing your money is going where you want it to go. It's helping people. It's changing lives in a profound way. And we can't do it without your help.

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   22:49

In Israel, who pays for the service dogs? Once you have the client who gets the dog, does the client have to pay the full cost for the dog? 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   22:55

Our clients pay nothing. There is no cost to any client. We ask a small donation from children with autism on, you know on, the autism spectrum, from the families and that's as much as they can. Or, you know, again, no dog is going to be denied because there's no payment, but guide dogs and PTSD service dogs are absolutely free to our clients. We get about 8% of our budget from the government. If a soldier has been wounded in battle, the government gives us about $18,000 for that dog. Each dog costs us about $50,000. Our cost. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   23:31

So the government's still. They're paying a nice amount, but not even half a fraction. 

Michael Leventhal   Guest    23:37

In the PTSD service program, they are giving us $10,000 per dog. Our cost for those dogs is about $18,000. Again, it's a help and we're glad, but it doesn't cover the full cost. It's again because of generous people around the world who see the value in what we do that we're able to do what we do Now. Israel is very unique in that once we certify a dog and we say to the government - and it's only for guide dogs - once we certify the dog has been properly trained, the Israeli government gives a stipend to the blind people of $100 a month and this is to pay for food, medicine, toys and, frankly it's more than they need. So there's an Association for the Blind in Israel and they pool their money that they didn't need for food or medicine and if there's a major need you know, unfortunately, a dog gets cancer or has a major medical issue, they pooled their money to help each other and cover the cost. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   24:42

Is that voluntary? That's amazing. 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   24:44

But they all do it and it is, and it's with our help and with the vets that we direct them toward. And so, yeah, it's so. In America, you're on your own and it depends on what your financial ability is, but in Israel, you don't. You're never at a loss for a dog because of money. It's only because of your inability to care. In order to maintain a dog, you've got to be able to walk at least two miles a day. The dog needs exercise, needs to get out, needs to walk, and so somebody who becomes elderly and unable to walk that far no longer qualifies for a dog, because the dog needs that to be healthy, and we want to make sure the dogs are in a healthy, quality environment. 

Rabbi Robyn   Host   25:30

But again, that just shows your care for the human, but also that there's great care for the dogs and the dogs are being treated in a really wonderful way. 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   25:37

And we follow up with every dog at least every six months and we watch. We don't let you know we're coming. We sit outside your house and we watch you leave and we watch how you work with your dog and we're looking at the dog and making sure it doesn't have a bad habit. You know they're supposed to stop at a certain point at an intersection, and if they're not doing that any longer, we're going to follow up and help you to get the dog back on. You know steady track. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   26:03

So I could talk to you forever and I'm going to have to have you come back in the future. But in the meantime, is there anything else you want to make sure that we know that you want to share about the Israel Guide Dog Center? I do want to ask you again to share how we can give to the Israel Guide Dog Center, both financially as well as things that we can do, but also if there's anything else you'd like to share. 

Michael Leventhal   Guest   26:22

Well, you know that Israel just released four hostages. We've already heard from one of those four who had suffered terribly. Apparently, we're not hearing the stories. I'm not allowed to share with you what happened, but the horror that these people went through during captivity - and they feel that he is deserving of a dog. And the government has asked us to move this person up on the list and we of course will. But this doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's $4 million a year to maintain the Center, to run the Center, and every year we have to start fresh. Every January 1st, you know, we begin again to try to raise $4 million. So to get your help, anybody, anything you can give, you can follow a puppy now. You can give monthly and get regular updates on a puppy. You can donate to name a puppy and just give because you want to give. You know the money is going to the right place. You know that we're using it well. 

Another thing I think we wanted to mention was blindness does not discriminate, and neither do we. We have had Muslim clients, we've had Druze clients, Christian, Arab clients. As long as you show us that the dog is going to improve your life, you will become a client of ours, and I have wonderful stories about how Arab clients have said to me: “I can't wait to go back to my village and tell my friends we've been lied to. I can't wait. You know I expected to be treated poorly, but I wasn't, and that there are good Jews.” And they fully anticipated being treated as third-class citizens and couldn't get over how nice we were to them and how home welcoming we were and how helpful we were. And I have so many stories. I wish we had more time for those stories because this is bridging the gap. 

One of the clients said to me: “I want to be an ambassador for peace. I want to tell people in my community that we can live peacefully with the Israelis, that they're not all evil.” And this is what they've been taught, though he was taught that we can live peacefully with the Israelis, that they're not all evil. And this is what they've been taught, though he was taught that we were evil and an 18-year-old kid. We turned his mind around because we treated him with kindness and respect, and if you want to support an organization that does that, we're the one for you. If you go on the website, it's israelguidedog.org. 

We again invite you to come visit the center. We love to have visitors. Just let us know you're coming and we'll arrange for a tour. You can't just show up because we're a working school, but this is a great cause. And if you know, Bar or Bat Mitzvah students, we have wonderful projects for them and they just have to get in touch with us in our office in Pennsylvania and we'll be happy to supply them with a full boat of materials. 

Rabbi Robyn Frisch   Host   29:22

And I'll say: also follow them on social media. And follow the US Israel Guide Dogs, follow Israel Guide Dogs in Israel. I follow Canada, I follow England. Not only will you learn what they're doing and all the important work, you will see the cutest dogs ever. It's just fun and happy and wonderful. Michael, I can't thank you enough. I hope you'll come back in the future. Obviously there's so much more to learn and to do and you know you really did teach us not just about the impact on the individual, but you know how this could help lead to a better situation in Israel, that it doesn't matter if you're Arab or Jewish or whatever you are. If you're a person who needs a dog, you get a dog, and hopefully, one day that can be the society that just people can respect each other as people and realize that Israel, as a Jewish state, also can be good for other people as well. 

So thank you for the small lessons, the big lessons, everything that you did with us, all the great stories. I truly hope that people will support Israel Guide Dog Center. It's a really, really important organization and I'm so thankful to you for being here. Hopefully, you heard our last episode as well, featuring Michael with different information about Israel Guide Dogs, and I'm sure we'll have him back in the future. As I said, there's so much more to learn, and again, thank you to all of you for your support of Mazel Pups and for being here with us for this episode.

 Hi again, I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. If you did, don't forget to hit the subscribe button, and I'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a five-star rating and follow Mazel Pups on social