The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

In Training: Phil Lippe works with Milan, a guide dog in training. Lippe is raising the puppy in his Willow Glen home until she is old enough to undergo the rigorous guide dog training.

The evolution of a guide dog

Area family raises puppies in training

By Maggie Benson

The graduation ceremony Laura Lippe attended last month had all the usual trappings of such celebrations: tears, speeches, certificates of merit. But the graduates were anything but usual: They were dogs. Guide dogs, to be more specific. And Lippe's yellow lab Diedre was among the 20 who sat proudly on stage with their new owners, ready to take their two years of guide dog training out into the real world.

For Lippe, a puppy raiser for Guide Dogs for the Blind, seeing Diedre on stage with her new owner was bittersweet. After training the puppy for a year and a half, on this day she would have to let Diedre go. "You always have a bond with the dog," she explained. "It's very emotional."

If Diedre could express such things, she'd likely say her graduation day was one filled with pride. Making it through this guide dog program is the human equivalent of making it through the Navy Seals. Only 50 percent of the dogs that start the rigorous program actually graduate. The 50 percent who fail go through what Guide Dogs calls a "career change." They are either kept in the organization as breeders or are let go, demoted to normal house pet-dom.

Lippe, a volunteer, got Diedre when she was an 8-week-old pup and raised the dog in her Willow Glen home until she was more than a year old. In addition to teaching Diedre the usual dog manners--no jumping, no licking, no going to the bathroom in the house--Lippe also had a more rigorous charge. She had to teach the puppy how to be comfortable in the world. It's a process Guide Dogs for the Blind calls "socialization," a key component of the program.

"The puppy raisers are invaluable," Morry Angell, spokesperson for Guide Dogs, explained. "Our dogs would not be guide dogs if they were raised in a kennel."

Successful puppy raisers take their dogs to the mall, to restaurants, on road trips, and on walks along busy streets, getting them accustomed to everyday sites and sounds. "They [have to be] used to the world that a normal person travels through," Angell explained. "Successful guide dogs have to be highly socialized. People, objects, birds, cats can't distract them."

With the help of a bible-sized training manual and weekly meetings with a Guide Dogs puppy raisers group leader, Lippe was able to successfully prepare Diedre for the last leg of her two-year apprenticeship, a 5-month intensive schooling period with a professional trainer.

During this phase, Diedre learned how to spot overhead objects, to stop at changes of elevation and to be "selectively disobedient."

"A dog has been trained to make a decision if [a situation] is unsafe," Angell commented. "[But] it's still up to the person that's using the dog to decide where to go. A lot of people think that these dogs are superhuman and they can read traffic signals; that's not true. The person needs to be able to know their area really well in order to give the dog commands."

Guide Dogs is a nonprofit organization, supported solely by private donations. It trains and places 350 guide dogs each year at no charge to the blind person. The group relies on 1,500 puppy raisers at its 10 locations throughout the country.

Puppy raisers commit to the dog for a year and a half, but don't always make it. Such was the case with Milan's raiser, who dropped out before the dog was a year old. Lippe's brother, Phil, took over Milan, who, he said, was "pretty out of control." Now, it looks like Milan will become a guide dog, according to Carol Bettencourt, a Guide Dogs puppy raiser team leader. "They (the Lippes) have really just done an outstanding job with this puppy," she explained. "Milan went from a little bit high strung, and now she's settled down and she looks like she's going to make it."

The true test will come in a few months when Phil hands her back to the Guide Dogs campus in San Rafael for her five months of intensive training. If she doesn't make it and isn't chosen for breeding, Phil will have first dibs on the dog, whom he said he's worked with for hours.

Today, Milan, a "yellow" Lab, who is as white as Santa Claus' beard, sits at Phil's feet, patiently waiting for her master's next move. Her eyes are fixed on him as he gestures while explaining how loyal she is. "If I put food out, she'll sit there for half an hour and won't touch it until I say OK," he said.

Once the dogs have gone through the final months of training, the beneficiaries travel from all over the country to be matched. "That's the most agonizing decision a trainer has to make, matching a person and a dog," Angell noted. "They have to take into account their personality, lifestyle, size, pace. It's one of the toughest processes, the matching process."

At this stage, the blind people work with the animals eight hours a day for 28 days to learn to rely on the dogs as their main source of mobility. After that, the dogs, new owners, trainers and puppy raisers gather together for a graduation.

The next graduate in the Lippe family will be Milan, if she makes it. After the hours of work Phil invested in his dog, he is noticeably torn. "I want to keep her," he said, leaning over and patting his dog on her head. "She's a good dog. But she'd make a great guide dog. She's definitely going to graduate."

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