(light music)
Welcome to Hadley Presents.
I'm your host, Ricky Enger, inviting you to sit back,
relax, and enjoy a conversation with the experts.
In this episode, we discuss the process of raising a puppy
to become a guide dog.
And our guest is Hadley learning expert
and first time puppy raiser, Jessica Smith,
welcome to the show Jessica.
Thank you for having me, Ricky.
I am so glad that you could join me.
Today, we get to talk about one of the coolest things ever.
Before we do that, though,
we should probably learn a little about
who you are and what you do.
I'm a learning expert on the Braille Team at Hadley.
I've been here a little over a year.
I've worked on our Braille Team
to develop our new Braille workshops,
and I get to work with our learners
and answer their questions about braille.
So today we're going to, like I said,
talk about one of the coolest things ever.
You know, puppies are so awesome, wonderful creatures.
And the only thing better than having a puppy
is getting to talk about a puppy.
We're going to specifically talk about, you know,
what it is like to be a puppy raiser
with respect to having a puppy who is eventually destined
to become a guide dog.
So you are actually a first time puppy raiser,
and I'm curious, how did you become involved in this?
How did you even know that this was something
that people could do?
And then what made you to decide that it was something
that you wanted to try?
So I've worked in the field of blindness
and low vision for about four or five years now.
And originally when I started volunteering
to work with people with visual impairments,
I volunteered as a guide for kayakers.
And one of the kayakers that I met had a guide dog,
and then I met several guide dogs
and who doesn't like being around dogs,
so I really enjoy just taking them for a walk
or I would ask to take them for a run.
Unfortunately, you don't really run
with your guide dog often, so I didn't get to do that.
But just I enjoyed being around a dog
with a really mellow temperament.
I hadn't been around Labs before
and I really had a busy life going
to graduate school and working full time.
So I didn't have time for a dog myself.
After I graduated and I started working at Hadley,
I actually work from a distance.
So I work out of a home office
and I wanted to volunteer and have a guide dog.
Someone said, oh, that would be perfect for you right now
because you're working from home.
So he's like my office partner, he's my coworker.
So I looked on Southeastern Guide Dog's website.
They had a How can I help button?
And I signed up to be a puppy raiser
and you can sign up to be a puppy raiser
or you can sign up to just babysit puppies.
They have clubs all throughout the southeast,
so all the way to Texas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama.
I looked up a club in my area, they had one in the city
that I live in, and I was able to sign up
and start going to the puppy meetings
to see what it would take to be a puppy raiser.
I qualified to do it and they like a diverse selection
of people from college students to families.
I had someone come to my home
and kind of check out things, make sure it was safe
for a puppy to be here.
And then I got on a list
and within a few weeks I had a puppy.
That is so cool.
And shout out to Southeastern
because I too have worked with Southeastern.
I actually, my retired guide is from Southeastern,
so love that school.
I know that
with the pandemic things are a little different
than they normally might be, but in general,
how long do you as a puppy raiser get to work with the dog
before it goes off to additional training at the school?
Typically it's a year.
So you usually have the dog for a year
and then he will have a date
or she will have a date to go back to the school
for more training with an actual dog trainer.
You mentioned that, you know, when the dog goes
to the school, they will be working with a dog trainer.
So doing some of the things that get them prepared
for doing actual guide work.
I know that this is a question
that comes up often when I talk with people
and they're curious about
how the whole guide dog thing works.
You know, there are things that a puppy learns as a puppy
and things that a puppy will learn later
in order to be a guide.
So I'm curious what things you
as a raiser do you know, as far as teaching the dog
or providing them with certain things in their environment
beyond just the things that you would normally do
for a puppy, you know, feed them and love them
and brush them and take care of them and all that.
So a lot at first, when I first got the guide dog puppy,
his name is Mitchell, it was a lot of house manners,
so house training, potty training him to go outside
and they have a list of commands that you work with them
and teach them in the first few weeks
that you have the puppy, they put you
through puppy kindergarten with the dog,
and you're usually in a group with several other puppies
and their puppy raisers and you learn basic skills.
And currently Southeastern Guide Dogs uses a paw pad
for training and it kind of helps with placement
of the dog next to you and you teach them
sit and down and stay
and also stand while they're in puppy training.
I believe it can get more commands throughout that.
And then once you get those down,
depending on how quickly the dog's picking it up,
and of course it's my first time,
so some of the things I was nervous about teaching Mitchell
at first, but they really help.
They have coordinators in the area
and then you can always reach out
and to other coordinators if you're having difficulty
learning a certain skill.
But most of it's house manners is really what we focus on.
So not getting on furniture, not.