While Pick of the Litter was a cute and heartwarming film, I felt that the guide dog training program was a bit like a dog factory. When one of the dogs was evaluated for the breeding colony, the program staff measured her hip width, among other measurements. This felt cold to me, as if the dogs were just breeding machines. Even the training process felt cold, in that dogs who failed guiding tests were called “career changed,” and that they were in some ways treated like guiding machines who were given a certain amount of time to learn commands and failed otherwise. Of course, overall I do agree that this program is beneficial for the blind (and the dogs aren’t mistreated in any way of course). I was just surprised at the calculated nature and “factory efficiency” of the program. It was very different from what I had expected.