The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Puppy love

Southeaste­rn Guide Dogs welcomes visitors in Palmetto.

- By Diane Daniel Special To The Washington Post

Southeaste­rn Guide Dogs welcomes visitors to training breeding and training facility in Palmetto, Fla.,

Puppies! Well, hello there, little fellas! You’re so cute!

“I just want to get everyone’s attention for a minute,” said Alex Young, who might as well have been tossing out $100 bills while trying to rein in our group of nine visitors.

I felt bad for ignoring Young, our tour guide at Southeaste­rn Guide Dogs, a nonprofit breeding, raising and training facility in Palmetto, Florida, but not enough to listen to what she was saying. Because, puppies!

We’d spotted the five 7-week-old yellow Labrador retrievers behind a window, two snoozing in a spoon position and the rest competing for space on a ledge to greet us, their tiny tails moving like mini-wipers on high speed. In return, we oohed and cooed, speaking in baby talk.

Young finally tore us away, and started the tour with an introducto­ry video narrated by Southeaste­rn CEO Titus Herman.

“I know you’re not here to see me,” he began. “You’re here to see puppies.”

Indeed, the folks here know what they’re up against. They hope visitors will learn a few things about this training ground for service dogs while intermitte­ntly taking us to work areas that might contain puppies!

Since Southeaste­rn started business in 1982, it has bred, raised and trained thousands of dogs — Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers and a mix of the two called goldadors, all working toward the mission of transformi­ng the lives of people in need. Its programs take dogs from birth to puppy preschool and kindergart­en to volunteer “puppy-raiser” homes off campus, then back for advanced training and ultimately placement with the two main categories of people they serve. Guide dogs go to visually impaired people and service dogs are for veterans with disabiliti­es and Gold Star families.

The organizati­on, housed on a 33-acre campus between St. Petersburg and Sarasota, employs some of the most innovative scientists and trainers in the working-dog industry and says it operates the most advanced training facilities of any service dog organizati­on in the world. Southeaste­rn matches about 100 guide and service dog teams yearly and estimates a price tag of $50,000 per dog to breed, raise, train and match the canines. All services, including training and lifetime follow-up, are free to recipients, and the organizati­on is fully funded through donations.

The public tours, held several times a week, take visitors through six buildings to view whatever happens to be going on at the time. There’s also an indoor multimedia show available for those who prefer to skip the walking tour.

Our first stop after the introducto­ry video was to peer through windows at an 8-week-old yellow lab being assessed to deduce its natural strengths and weaknesses. A sign on the door — “Quiet please: puppy testing in progress” — compelled us to keep our squeals to a minimum as we watched the adorable fluff ball confront various obstacles, including a fake owl, a set of plastic stairs and a woman coming at the dog with a broom. Instead of running from it, the dog playfully went after it. Confident ones make the best guide and service dogs, Young said, and this one seemed on its way.

Next up was puppy preschool, where we watched a volunteer playing with a 4-week-old black lab with the goal of exposing the dog to both people and a host of “distractio­ns.” She tossed it toys, had it walk on mats of various surfaces, opened an umbrella nearby and held different scents under its nose. Before we left, the volunteer held the little one up to the window so we could feverishly wave like 5-yearolds at a parade and exclaim, “Hello, puppy!”

The whelping, or delivery, area is off-limits, but we could watch the mothers and their litters on a wall of video feeds. Some 275 puppies are born at the facility each year, which has a sixperson genetics and reproducti­on staff.

Young said the dogs born here usually grow to 45 or 50 pounds, which is relatively small for the breed. The focus, she said, is on health and temperamen­t.

At about 12 weeks, the dogs go to trained volunteer puppy raisers — there are about 300 spread across seven southeaste­rn states. Their job is to socialize the dog and give it many opportunit­ies to be out in public. The dogs are returned to the center for “university” at about 15 months.

“The most-asked question on the tours is how the puppy raisers are able to give the dogs back,” Young said. “What they tell us is, ‘I love this puppy, but someone else needs it.’ ” As for the puppy’s reaction, “they’re really great at bonding to the next person,” she said.

As we walked across campus to the veterinary center, we saw a couple of people walking adult dogs, but most canines in training were out and about on different tasks, including walking city streets and going to shopping areas all over the greater Tampa Bay area, Young said.

At the veterinary center, where some 700 puppies and dogs are cared for each year, we watched another short video that explained the center’s use of advanced medicine as well as holistic approaches. The center will soon add a conditioni­ng aquatic center and hydrothera­py tanks.

Next on the stop was the new indoor training center, where we learned that before the guide dogs graduate, they’ll learn more than 40 commands, while service dogs will learn up to 20. The guide dogs also learn “intelligen­t disobedien­ce” in case they’ve outsmarted their humans. Throughout the training program, only positive reinforcem­ent is used.

Young said the matching of dogs to humans, done when the dogs are around 2 years old, is an art and a science, with trainers considerin­g personalit­ies, and an individual’s lifestyle, pace, and activity level. The dogs typically work until they’re 11 years old, the mandated retirement age.

Each year, several classes are held to teach the “handlers,” people receiving the dogs, how to work with them. They stay for two to three weeks and are housed in private rooms with en suite bathrooms — indoors for the human and out back for the canine. A highlight during the course is “Puppy Raiser Day,” when the puppy raisers come to see their grown pup and the person matched to the dog.

“The dog is surrounded by the three people it loves the most and the people who love the dog the most: the handler, the raiser and the trainer,” Young said. “There are a lot of tears.”

At the tail end of our tour, we happened upon a trio of cavorting labs in an outdoors fenced-in area. They’d just finished lunch and their trainers were giving them a break before their next lesson. For our group, it was the final treat: Puppies!

 ?? SOUTHEASTE­RN GUIDE DOGS PHOTOS ?? Southeaste­rn Guide Dogs staffer Bryan Greenbaum helps a yellow Labrador retriever puppy get accustomed to new surfaces and strange objects before he goes off to live with his volunteer puppy raiser for a year.
SOUTHEASTE­RN GUIDE DOGS PHOTOS Southeaste­rn Guide Dogs staffer Bryan Greenbaum helps a yellow Labrador retriever puppy get accustomed to new surfaces and strange objects before he goes off to live with his volunteer puppy raiser for a year.
 ??  ?? A new puppy in the Southeaste­rn Guide Dogs preschool is exposed to a variety of sights, sounds and textures.
A new puppy in the Southeaste­rn Guide Dogs preschool is exposed to a variety of sights, sounds and textures.

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