The magistrate of the Provincial Court of Seville Luis Gonzaga de Oro-Pulido has become the first judge in Spain to incorporate a guide dog into his life. An ONCE member since 2004 and a cane user since 2018, last February de Oro-Pulido began a new chapter in his career with Pusky, a two-year-old Labrador retriever trained at the ONCE Guide Dog Foundation, who now he is a faithful witness of all his movements and sentences.
Luis de Oro-Pulido (Madrid, 1962), father of four children, comes from a family of lawyers. "In general I've handled it relatively well," he explains. "My parents did not make it very relevant, they downplayed the problem we had. They made us see that a problem ceases to be a problem when it has no solution. And ours did not have a solution, we had to push forward," highlights ONCE in a press release.
The oppositions were not an obstacle either, especially since, at that time, the central visual field allowed him to study successfully to get the position of judge. "It has never stopped me. My mother and my father have always taught me that strength, tenacity and perseverance and effort pay off and indeed it does," he says. Her mother overcame three cancers, one of them skin, and the day after she was discharged she went to her pharmacy to work.
With this example, de Oro-Pulido has been growing as a person and as a judge at the rate of between ten and twelve hours of study a day, before as an opponent, and now as a scrupulous judge scrutinizing hundreds of volumes, filed in boxes, part in ink, partly on disk, to settle the innocence or guilt of the judged subjects.
Now he smiles when he remembers when he came across a dead man who was lying in the mountains during his first removal of the body in Cazalla de la Sierra. "There are many more people with many more problems than us and that they keep going is what has helped me to keep going because it really is hard," he admits.
"The first reaction was exciting, he liked it very much, he loves him a lot and they established a bond very soon, it has been very gratifying from our perspective," summarizes Nuria García, instructor at the ONCE Guide Dog Foundation. García accompanied him on his trips to Seville during his first week, his movements inside the Court, from the office to the courtroom, the entrances and exits through the security control, the ascents and descents of the stairs of the Palacio de Justice.
Although the first few weeks are for adaptation, and he is immersed in the process, de Oro Pulido is already aware of the quality of life that Pusky will bring to his mobility and autonomy, both in the private and public spheres. He used to go tense and stressed on the bus to avoid bumping into other people. "I always ask for forgiveness, although it's not always my fault," he points out, and now he is much calmer.
"I think that with the dog, in addition to going much safer and calmer, I will be much more visible," he says. The magistrate, who has swallowed a couple of bicycles in this time, acknowledges that the administrations should better regulate the use of bicycles and scooters. "The breach of the rules by cyclists and scooters is tremendous," he denounces.
In Seville's Palace of Justice, the scene of so many media cases, "Pusky does not go unnoticed among robes, lawyers, alleged criminals, and the usual media that cover judicial information." The judge's colleagues have welcomed him "greatly". His fellow officials have given him a kind of bed to lie on in the office that he shares with three other magistrates, "in addition to a blanket, a drinking fountain, a brush or a toy to entertain himself." Luis goes out with his classmates to have coffee and Pusky is one of his own. "He has not yet entered a room for a hearing due to the strike of the Justice lawyers, but he will enter", he affirms. "Defendants be careful," he laughs.
As with any other affiliate, ONCE deployed its entire Social Services structure to respond to the needs of Luis de Oro-Pulido when he joined in 2004 due to retinitis that would soon lead to progressive loss of vision. In the first individual care plan that was applied to him, he had a rehabilitation technician who helped him in his mobility in daily life and optimization of visual functioning, a typhlotechnician who adapted his job with whom he delved into the management of new techniques of communication and a social worker among other professionals.
Over time, another plan allowed him to learn the use of the cane and gain confidence in his trips from his house to the Court, especially the section that goes from the last stop of the 34, in the Prado de San Sebastián, to his office in the Criminal Section III of the Provincial Court, which is located just 200 meters from the bus stop.
In 2018, de Oro-Pulido began the procedure to obtain a guide dog. Too many blows, too many collisions with bollards and bumping into other people on the way to the Court pushed him to start the procedure to get a guide dog. A process that begins with the application to the ONCE Foundation for the Guide Dog, accompanied by a report that must be signed by the company doctor, a psychologist, a social worker and a Rehabilitation technician to confirm that it meets the appropriate requirements to be a user.
From there, he entered a waiting list that has lasted for four and a half years, with the parenthesis caused by the pandemic, and at the end of February, after an intense week of coexistence in Boadilla del Monte, the Foundation delivered to Luis to Pusky, a two-year-old Labrador with whom he has gotten along from minute one.
