Last week, the organization Guiding Eyes led a puppy petting event, in which they spoke briefly about the Guiding Eyes program, and brought in some of those trained dogs to play with students. The Guiding Eyes presentation was very informative, detailing how the puppies are specifically bred for the program, and how extensive the training process is. The puppies start their training when they are only a few months old, and have to go through multiple rounds of tests before they are qualified to help patients in the program. It definitely sounds like a difficult task to train those dogs in not only obedience, discipline, and responsiveness, but also in empathy, and sensing the owner’s needs. Training takes years and tens of thousands of dollars. The presenter also showed us some interesting tricks to manipulate the dogs to discipline. It was nice to hear about the rigor of the training program and the lives of some of these dogs.
The only complaint I have about this event was that there were not that many dogs for all the people who showed up. There was a massive turnout for the event, so it would be nice if everyone had a chance to participate.
I agree that it would have been nice if there were more puppies. I thought that there was still a decent amount of interaction though! The training does seem pretty intense– it was also interesting to hear about what happens to puppies that don’t have what it takes for the program, I had never realized that it was quite that selective!