Puppies

    The preparation of guide dogs is a very specific job that puts a lot of pressure on the dog individual during all the training. Choosing a suitable breed, a suitable individual in that breed and taking excellent care of him is the first assumption made for handing over healthy and mentally stable dogs to trainers.

1. Choosing a Breed

    When choosing a good breed for training we take into consideration the experience from abroad. In member schools of International Guide Dog Federation the most commonly chosen breeds are Labrador Retriever, Golden Retriever, cross Labrador x Golden Retriever and German Shepherd. Other breeds are trained only occasionally.

2. Choosing a puppy

    The preparation of future guide dogs begins with choosing their parents and then choosing and education of the small puppies.

    Puppies are bred on our own nursing female dogs or we purchase them from other breeders, who we like to keep returning to. We are very concerned with the health aspect of the breeders from which the puppies are purchased. For this reason we only buy puppies which have verification of breed and of their history. The selection of good puppies is definitely not done randomly. A selection test, which each puppy must go through, we adopted from abroad. Through the experience of foreign breeders of dogs, which are used for the training of guide dogs and dog assistance, it is important that the puppies are tested at the age of 7-8 weeks. It is assumed that when we choose such a dog, its qualities will allow him to be a guide dog.

3. Puppywalking

    We give the eight-week-old puppies to the care taking family. The “puppywalkers” are our volunteer coworkers, who take care of the puppies from the time they are 8 weeks old until the age of one year. It is important for our hand picked puppies to have a close contact education. Close contact with people is important as well as the experience on the roads of the cities, public transportation, etc. The puppy must be raised in a house, with all day contact with people if possible, so that people will become his closest partners and friends. It is even more advantageous if the puppywalkers take puppies to cinemas, theatres, and restaurants so that the puppies learn to calmly move and behave amongst so many other people. We need to know how the puppy’s attitude is evolving and what the health status is and if the pup is grasping the basic characteristics of training. Therefore every 6 weeks there is a meeting with the puppy and it’s trainer at our school. If everything is going smoothly and if the puppy reaches its one-year mark, the time comes for goodbyes. Even the though the care taking family is prepared for this, a tear always slides down the cheeks. The puppywalkers must realize that the work they did by raising the puppy, was the work that they did for another person. For a person for whom this dog will be a guide and friend forever. Presently, we have 40 families to whom we give many thanks to.

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