Guiding Eyes For The Blind—

Sit, Heel, And Look!

By Jan Howard

When Barbara Hartz goes to work at Tail Waggers in Bethel, Lydia, a one-year-old golden retriever, goes with her.

Lydia has become quite a celebrity in the store, a dog grooming facility co-owned by Kathy Taylor and George Spatta in Dolan Plaza. People who work nearby stop in just to say hello to her, pet her, and play with her. She greets customers, and Ms Taylor takes her out for walks.

Lydia is a very special dog. She may someday bring new freedom to a person who otherwise might not be able to get about independently in the world. Lydia is a puppy in pre-training for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, an agency that has been supplying guide dogs since 1954.

Ms Hartz, a resident of Newtown since 1973, has been a puppy handler for Guiding Eyes for the past ten years. Lydia is the fourth puppy she has raised. Ms Hartz hopes the fourth will be the charm and that Lydia, unlike the three other dogs she raised, will make it all the way to becoming a full-fledged guide dog.

How would Ms Hartz feel if Lydia aces all the training and she has to give her up? “It’s kind of a win-win situation. You go in with a mindset that this is not your dog. She’s just living with you,” she said.

“It’s an experience. It’s enjoyable and rewarding,” Ms Hartz said. “I would be proud to have succeeded at what I’ve worked so many months at.”

The relationship between the dog handler and the dog doesn’t have to end, Ms Hartz said. “Raisers are invited to the dog’s graduation. If you go to a graduation and see what the dog does, you want to succeed. You don’t become attached like it’s your pet.

When pre-training is completed and the puppy goes on to official guide dog training, the raiser can be kept informed of its progress, she said.

“Graduation is a very emotional thing. The person who gets your dog is so appreciative. The person and the dog become a partnership. It’s such a beautiful thing.”

Sometimes a friendship begins between the person who received the dog and the person who raised it, Ms Hartz said. “It becomes like a family thing. Everyone is close.”

Though giving a puppy up might be hard, Ms Hartz said, “You can always get another puppy.

“I would love to do it again, but I would probably take a break, a few months off, then start again,” she added.

Ms Hartz learned about Guiding Eyes for the Blind through a friend. Since then she has worked for it as a volunteer and as a part-time and full-time employee. She still volunteers at the agency’s breeding center in Patterson, N.Y., where she once worked.

 “I worked in the whelping kennel. I tended to the puppies, did whelps and cared for them, walking and feeding the broods and babies,” she said. “I worked there full-time for about three years. It was a nice job, but it was a commute.”

Ms Hartz works part-time for Tail Waggers. Taking Lydia to work with her is part of Lydia’s training, which at this time involves learning socialization skills and how to adapt to different environments and situations.

Lydia came to live with Ms Hartz when she was six and a half months old. Born in the whelping kennel at Guiding Eyes, she was a home change. “She was placed at eight weeks in a home but the person raising her couldn’t do it anymore,” Ms Hartz said.

Puppies usually stay with the same family, but in some circumstances they are switched to one or two other families for a change in environment, Ms Hartz explained.

Changing Environments

“Kathy takes her for overnighters for a different environment,” she said. “It helps her adjust to changes.”

 Lydia will stay with Ms Hartz until she is 20 months old, then will go on to official guide dog training at the Guiding Eyes for the Blind facility in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Ms Hartz and Lydia participate in obedience training run by Guiding Eyes twice a month in New Milford. Guiding Eyes has training facilities from Maine to Virginia where volunteer trainers oversee the classes. The areas are divided into districts, with a puppy evaluator for each district.

Puppy handlers are given a manual of guidelines to follow in raising and training their puppies, Ms Hartz said. A first-time raiser would be interviewed, and a puppy evaluator would discuss rules and regulations to follow in basic training procedures.

“It’s mostly common sense training, such as learning good manners,” Ms Hartz said. “They go over all these things you have to work on.

“It’s mostly socialization skills that are taught and exposure to different circumstances,” she said. “We go to the train station, post office, stores.”

Lydia is also exposed to different textures to walk on, such as grates and sidewalks, automatic doors, revolving doors, traffic, enclosed and unenclosed stairs, and “anything a person would need them for,” she said.

Ms Hartz estimates she spends about three hours a day training Lydia. “I take her for walks, she spends days at Tail Waggers where she greets customers and gets used to other dogs that come in. She goes with me wherever I go on chores and errands.

“I work at a barn early in the morning and afternoons. Lydia waits in the car while I’m there. That’s part of her training. She needs to sit quiet for a period of time.”

Ms Hartz said that while she has had very few problems gaining access to local stores and other facilities with Lydia, there are a few that won’t let the dog enter. “I haven’t had a problem lately. Big Y allows me to take her. I always ask permission before I go in.”

Big Y is a good training area for Lydia, Ms Hartz said. “We stand outside where there are shopping carts and baby carriages and sliding doors. She’s exposed to lots of things outside a supermarket.”

Ms Hartz said she took a puppy she previously raised to a matinee at Edmond Town Hall. “She wasn’t phased at all by it. I went in to see what her reaction would be to the dark room and the big screen. We didn’t stay.

“It’s fun thinking of different things to expose them to and to do,” she said.

During her training periods, Lydia wears a jacket that on one side reads Guiding Eyes for the Blind and on the other side, Puppy in Pre-training.

Classes begin when the puppy is eight weeks old. “They start with simple things, then build to more complex training,” Ms Hartz said. “The trainer helps with more difficult skills.”

There are quarterly evaluations with the puppy evaluator. “You have to go through what the dog should be doing by this time, and what needs to be worked on, and how the puppy is adjusting. You are given tips on how to fix things that are not up to their standards.”

Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers, and German shepherds are raised to be guide dogs, but most guide dogs are labs, Ms Hartz said. “The breeding stock is 85 percent labs so the instance of them becoming guides is larger.” However, she noted, there are people who request goldens or shepherds.

During official guide dog training, the dogs spend three months working with a trainer, who exposes them to other situations. They go into town, to Westchester, then to New York City. They go on the subway and walk in Manhattan.

Following that training, the dog is placed with a person, who with the dog goes through additional training at the Yorktown Heights facility for a month.

The dog is a liberating factor for a blind person, Ms Hartz said. As well as providing guidance, it also becomes a companion.

Guiding Eyes monitors the dog’s progress once it is placed and is always available for problems that might arise, she said.

If a puppy fails to meet the standards for becoming a guide dog, the person who raised it can keep it for a donation or it goes up for adoption. “They have a waiting list two years long,” Ms Hartz said.

“It costs Guiding Eyes $25,000 and up to raise one dog,” she said.

There is no cost to the blind person who receives the dog.

Ms Hartz kept the three dogs she raised, but two have died after developing cancer in middle age.

“Guiding Eyes breeds not for conformation but for temperament and health,” Ms Hartz said. “They stop breeding dogs that have illnesses.”

There is camaraderie among those who raise Guiding Eye puppies and volunteer for the agency, Ms Hartz said.

“You meet so many wonderful people doing this,” she said. “It’s a good thing if you’re successful, but you do lose the dog. You’re a comfort to each other.”

Anyone interested in raising a puppy for Guiding Eyes for the Blind should call 845/878-3330.