getting them ready for a life of service and love
collected & edited by Carolyn Wing Greenlee
Introduction
It started out as a visit with a few puppy raisers from my home town. My neighbor, Betty Helf, told me a member of her church was raising a puppy for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and she thought it would be good for me to talk to her puppy group.
We were mysteries to one another. Very few of them had heard much from those who graduated with the dogs that they raised. They were thrilled to hear how our guides changed our lives. I, on the other hand, was surprised to learn of the rigorous requirements they had to meet when they took on the responsibility of bringing up a potential guide dog. They are like the nannies of royal children. You don’t let those princes and princesses play in the street. Heirs to the throne have a different purpose and from the moment of their birth, they are trained and groomed for their unique service. Since then, I have never forgotten how much effort has gone into preparing my Hedy for her high and difficult calling as my guide.
In the lovely afternoon, I realized what different communities we are. Handlers are blind and visually impaired. Raisers are sighted. Handlers have a single guide for up to ten years before it is retired or regretfully given its last farewell. Raisers have a puppy for up to eighteen months before it is recalled to begin its training to become a guide dog. Handlers have to form a bond with their dog that cannot be broken in order for them to be an effective team. Raisers have to form a relationship they know they will have to let go in order for the dog to bond with its blind partner. In those ways we are opposites, but, sitting on Betty’s back deck with those enthusiastic ladies, their current puppies snoozing patiently nearby, I felt an immediate kinship with them.
Someone in the Lake county club knew someone in the Ukiah club, so it wasn’t long before I stepped into the presence of twenty-five Ukiah raisers with a bunch of puppies of all ages. What struck me first was the same instant kinship I felt with them, and then I noticed how well behaved everyone was—from puppies to people. I heard no harsh corrections. It was a place puppy or raiser could make mistakes, receive calm correction and guidance, and still feel loved, supported and safe.
I felt the identical atmosphere at the Elk Grove raisers’ meeting. I heard no criticism or condemnation. A humiliated teenaged raiser hung her head and admitted that her puppy had messed in a department store. Almost weeping, she confessed that she had forgotten to bring her poop bags and cleanup supplies.
Instantly that young lady was surrounded with loving support, stories shared (with exact locations of the accidents recalled)—laughter washing over the fresh wound with redemptive grace. It was more than a gathering of people learning how to train dogs; it was a community of compassion that enabled each one to continue the rigors of the highly specific, vigilant training required to produce a confident, well-mannered service dog. When I mentioned that I wished children could be brought up in such a supportive environment, one of the raisers quipped that her daughter had been involved in puppy raising and her children are very well-behaved, whereas her son did not get involved, and his children are rather wild.
I am challenged to examine my priorities when I hear raisers laugh about stains on the carpet, omnipresent dog hair, and chewed table legs. These people give up sleep, dignity, and convenience in order to provide something priceless for a stranger who may not even think to keep in contact with them after graduation.
I knew nothing of other kinds of service dogs until my son Thomas called me to say he’d met a puppy raiser for Canine Companions for Independence (CCI). Knowing that I was interviewing puppy raisers for a new book, he promptly sent me her contact information. That is how I met Kathy Ulm and Gloria Merk. They had stories too, and a wonderful retired service dog who happily demonstrated his skills by opening and shutting a drawer, pulling off a sock, and turning off a light. Then Kathy said, “Do you know CCI has a breeding program? Would you like to meet a couple of the ‘midwives’?”
I have now interviewed a number of puppy raisers and breeder caretakers for Canine Companions for Independence and Guide Dogs for the Blind, and, as I suspected, all of them have those same great hearts. You could not pay them enough to do what they do; it’s a labor of love. Why else would one of the “midwives” oversee the whelping of thirty litters at her house, helping more than three hundred puppies begin their lives?
Over the past twenty years, I have edited and brought more than twenty books to print, all of which have this in common: they are stories I, personally, wanted to hear. This book is just that sort. I loved the stories I heard from those volunteers. I loved the generosity that characterizes every one of them I’ve met. I wanted to know what motivated them to raise, not just one puppy, but years of them—sometimes ten or twenty. I knew the readers would be curious to know the answer to the most frequently asked question: How can you give them up? Their answers are different. One said she never has to watch a dog grow old and die. Surprisingly, some of them even said, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
When I started working on this book, I wanted to find out what raisers and breeder keepers do. I hoped that having real-life accounts of what it’s like to do these jobs would, at the very least, help readers appreciate the work they do, and at the very most, inspire some to volunteer their time in the capacity that they reasoned would be the best fit for themselves. I wanted recipients of the service dogs to be in awe the same way I was when I realized that my Hedy is fearless because of how the Findleys strove to make her secure. I wanted handlers to be motivated to keep in contact with their puppy’s raiser, and to do so without fear.
But now that the stories are finished, I realize that this book is not about the work the breeder keepers and raisers do, the jobs the dogs perform, or the organizations that provide service dogs for those in need, though, in the following pages, you will certainly learn about all of those things. What I discovered in the year and a half of interviews and endless emails is what the people who choose this kind of service are like. Here’s one example. Joan and Pam are breeder caretakers for CCI. When their dogs are not having puppies, do they sit around eating bon-bons and watching TV? No, they’re out doing pet therapy, taking their beautifully trained, well-mannered dogs into hospitals, jails, nursing homes—wherever they can bring comfort to suffering human beings. It isn’t part of the CCI program; they choose to do it because they want to give back—and it makes them happy.
Most people are impressed by what a working dog can do, but often they give too much credit to the dog. Many people are involved in preparing that dog for its destiny. Caretakers for breeders are first in the army of volunteers who start these dogs on the right path of health and security. Puppy raisers are the long term family investing their lives in that marvelous transformation. All of them pour their hearts into those puppies-—and then they give them up.
I am so impressed with these who work to create the foundations of the great-hearted dogs that may graduate one day with the responsibility of being someone else’s eyes or ears, hands, feet, stress relief, safety, comfort, freedom, or peace. I’m impressed, too, by what Terry Barrett, Director of Training Operations for GDB, said at Hedy’s and my graduation: The same amount of time and effort goes into every puppy whether it becomes a guide dog or not.
These volunteers are my heroes. Their stories remind me that satisfaction comes, not from striving to make yourself happy, but from giving yourself to make someone else’s life better.
—Carolyn Wing Greenlee, Editor
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