When Was The Labrador Retrievers Originated Article

Pat Cowan knows the words by heart. They were said to her during her second day at Southeastern Guide Dogs, Inc.

"Okay, Pat. Your dog is a black Labrador. He weighs 87 pounds, and his name is Bart. Call your dog."

"Bart, come]" she sang out, and the big Lab loped over to greet her for the first time with a lick.

"That was such a precious moment," she remembers, even as she admits how tough the next three weeks turned out to be for both her and Bart at the Palmetto, Florida, guide dog school. "I had never been blind before; I had never had a dog before. Bart was brand new; he had never led a blind person before. We were learning everything from the ground up together. It took an amazing amount of concentration."

. customer service manager for Apple Computers in Atlanta, Pat had built a high-power career on concentration and determination when she began to lose her sight to a progressive retinal disease. The situation devastated Pat, a hard-charging soul fired by independence. To reclaim that independence, a friend urged her to get a guide dog. The suggestion led her to Southeastern--and to Bart.

Other graduates of this and similar programs, which provide dogs free of charge, offer the same testimony. All of them--blind or disabled, young or old, male or female--seem to have found the ideal helpmate in a canine assistance dog. Such model pairings are anything but happenstance. They are the result of the planning, effort, and loving generosity that form the core of professional training programs in the South.

Southeastern Guide Dogs, Inc., opened in Florida in 1982. Director Mike Sergeant, who began his career training dogs in the military, moved to Palmetto with his wife, Jan, specifically to start the first guide dog school in the South.

Beginnings were humble, but not so nowadays. The center today includes a low-slung office that contains dormitories for students--there to be matched with their new guide dogs; 23 acres of training grounds; and a large, comfortable kennel housing 70 or so dogs in training.

One stroll through the kennel convinces any visitor that these are not your everyday brand of dog. No nonstop barking fills the air. No animals pace nervously in cramped cages. Instead, the Labradors, German shepherds, smooth-coat collies, and Australian shepherds bound up bright-eyed and eager to welcome every passerby. "Because these dogs have been loved since day one, they love everybody," explains Jan. "To them every soul they meet is a potential friend."

From birth, the selectively bred puppies are handled affectionately by volunteers who come to the center expressly to play with them. At about 13 weeks each dog goes to a volunteer foster family for 14 to 15 months. These puppy raisers treat the dogs as their own, teaching them basic commands, such as "sit," and introducing them to a range of experiences. The dogs wear special vests, and their people take them everywhere--to school, to work, to the mall--instructing and encouraging them.

When the families have completed their part, the dogs return to Southeastern, where professional trainers work with them for five months, instilling some 40 commands, along with the remarkable ability to disobey in order to protect their owners. When the dogs are ready, the trainers match them to particular students by temperament, stamina, and other factors. Finally, students and dogs spend 26 intense days on-site striving to become a team.

Over the last two years, Southeastern has graduated 122 teams per year. Mike Sergeant smiles at those numbers. "Everybody says, 'Mike, you've done a great job.' But it's the people who make the school. For me, I love the dogs, but it's the individuals, the students who send us letters saying how much the dogs mean to their lives. That's the thing that keeps us motivated. To give them a dog that wants to be loved, that wants to serve, it's a real privilege."

Newer to the Florida scene, the southeast regional office of Canine Companions for Independence (CCI) opened near Orlando in 1988. CCI was founded on the West Coast in 1975 to train dogs to assist people with disabilities other than blindness. Since then, the program has expanded to develop hearing dogs for the hearing impaired and social dogs for children and individuals with developmental disabilities. The southeast regional office, which plans to open a full training center this year, assists canine/participant teams and oversees puppy raisers and volunteers throughout eight Southern states. One of the Orlando group's primary activities is to bring local puppies together for regular classes. There trainer Alison Schultz helps the puppy raisers put the young dogs through their paces.

At each class, everyone first relates recent adventures. One dog may have taken a field trip with sixth graders, while another might have flown on an airplane. Then, for an hour or more, the golden retrievers, Labradors, border collies, and even an occasional poodle work on commands, such as "stay," amid a whirl of calculated distractions--bouncing balls, loud squeaky toys, and maybe even the blasting siren of a fire engine. All of this is vital preparation for their futures as steady, unflappable service dogs.

Sara Castelli, president of the regional office's board, is a beneficiary of some of this type training: Because her muscles are weakened from polio, she has had Bennie, a golden retriever, for three years. Bennie pulls her wheelchair. If Sara drops her keys, Bennie picks them up for her. Bennie can even help pay a restaurant bill by carrying money up to the cash register and getting the change. Just as important, though, Bennie has become Sara's devoted, dependable friend.

Sara can tell you firsthand the rigors and rewards of learning to work with a creature as special as an assistance dog. Over lunch, with Bennie settled unobtrusively under the table, she talks about her experiences. "The trainers want you to understand how a dog thinks and operates so you will be able to deal with this dog on an emotional level. When we say we've created a team, we've done something a little better. We've created a unit. This dog and I are really one."

Bennie shifts and lays her head softly on Sara's foot. "You know that expression, 'I don't know how I'd live without whatever'? Well, I used to think that trite," Sara confesses. "I just couldn't imagine how you couldn't live without anything short of oxygen and water. But that's how I feel. I really don't know how I would do without her."

A patient consultant at San Antonio's University Hospital, Liz Jackson has been in a wheelchair for 20 years, so she knows she could get along without her service dog, Senator Shamrock. But, she adds, she wouldn't want to. "I don't like to ask for help," she begins. "I'm stubborn that way. And Senator helps me when there's nobody else around." She lists items he retrieves for her: cans of food, papers, pens. Once he even brought Liz her Bible.

Liz applied for a dog from Texas Hearing & Service Dogs, Inc., (THSD) about three years ago. "I saw it as an opportunity to be more independent of other people," she explains. "And, number two, he's a lot of fun. He is a sweetheart."

Thinking back on the two years she's shared with the black Lab, she says, "I can imagine life without Senator. I got along before him, but it would be an inconvenience. And I would miss him terribly."

In a unique twist, Senator and all other THSD dogs come from animal shelters and rescue leagues. That concept--using only lost or abandoned animals--originated with founder Sheri Soltes Henderson. "We wouldn't do this if we weren't using shelter dogs," she explains. "We want to help people, but we're proud of helping the dogs too."

Sheri points to the elegant-looking mutt beside her. Orbit was once a Houston stray, one that resembled a stuffed animal left out in the rain. Trained and spiffed up, Orbit has won hearts all over the state, giving demonstrations of how a hearing dog alerts its owner to doorbells, phones, and even emergency sirens. "And this was a dog that wasn't going to have a future," stresses Sheri.

A former trial lawyer in Houston, she started THSD back in 1988. Two years later, she left law behind to devote herself to it full time. The first dogs trained were hearing dogs; then in 1991 the group began to train service dogs. Since then, they have opened offices in Dayton, Dallas, and Austin; and last fall, THSD celebrated a landmark, graduating its 100th dog to the service of another Texan.

Besides using shelter dogs, THSD also employs a slightly different regimen. Dogs from a shelter stay for a time with a trainer, after which they return to the group's Houston facility for another six months of formal schooling. When a dog is matched with an applicant, it goes directly to the recipient, where they both receive in-home training.

"We like our system" says Sheri, "because we want to custom-train each dog, and it helps us make sure that the dogs can work for them at their home or their job site." Pausing to reflect on THSD's accomplishments, she adds, "This shows what you can do with dogs that aren't always pure bred. It's kind of like people. It's what's in between the ears and in the heart that counts."

Like Sheri Henderson, Ken and Debra Baker recognized a need and moved to fill it. Interested in donating one of their own golden retriever puppies to a guide dog school, they discovered that the closest school was 1,200 miles away. They learned, too, that such schools sported long waiting lists of applicants for guide dogs, so in 1989 Ken and Debra founded the Southwest Guide Dog Foundation in San Antonio.

It hasn't been easy getting established. "But six years later, we're still here," says Debra with a wry smile. And established they are. Today, Southwest has volunteers in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Bryan-College Station, and San Antonio areas working for the organization and helping raise puppies.

Like Southeast and CCI, Southwest uses pure-bred dogs--Labs, German shepherds, and golden retrievers--generally donated by Texas kennels. The training process, too, is similar, with young dogs being socialized and initially trained by volunteers.

Although Southwest has not yet opened a formal training center, some of its puppies have gone to some of the larger, older schools around the country. Six of the dogs, in fact, have already graduated and been teamed with recipients.

Currently in search of a trainer to head up a formal training program, the group already has a waiting list of 60 people who want one of their guide dogs. "What we're mostly concerned about is getting our dogs out there," explains Debra, "being able to put out a loving, well-trained dog for a blind person. If we're doing that, then the rest will follow.

"A lot of people," she continues, "are just now starting to realize what dogs are actually capable of doing and the fact that they are not only capable of doing it well, but they're happy doing it. That's a very important part of the equation too."

And the sum of that equation, no matter how you add it up, is love.

A LINE TO THE CANINES

* Southeastern Guide Dogs, Inc., 1-800-944-3647

* Canine Companions for Independence, 1-800-572-2275

* Texas Hearing & Service Dogs, Inc., (512) 891-9090

* Southwest Guide Dog Foundation, (210) 366-4081