(THE PICKET)—A golden Labrador retriever named Elway can sometimes be seen frequenting Shepherdstown and the Shepherd University campus wearing a royal blue vest. Occasionally, his trainer will stop to give him a treat for good behavior or take him into the Sweet Shop Bakery on German Street for a moment of socialization and relaxation. While he might seem like a carefree puppy just interacting with his surroundings, his purpose is greater. His trainer is Kathleen McAllister, the coordinator of the Shenandoah region of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, and she is raising him with the hope that he will become a guide dog for someone with a visual impairment.
McAllister started raising puppies for Guiding Eyes in 1996, and she is now raising her 22nd puppy for the organization.
“When I was a college student, I actually saw my first guide dog team; I was in awe, and it was pretty inspiring. Also, my dad was visually impaired,” McAllister said. After seeing a call for trainers in the Martinsburg Journal, she said “it all kind of fell into place.”
The Shenandoah region of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, which involves the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia as well as Northern Virginia, is a nonprofit organization geared toward providing trained guide dogs for visually impaired individuals free of charge.
“At times, people will say ‘you’ve raised 22 pups, and they come and go.’ That may be somewhat true because I have seen things come full circle with a pup, but it still pulls at your heart [to let them go]. They each have their little spots in my heart, and I remember them,” McAllister said.
Although McAllister is the coordinator of the Shenandoah region of Guiding Eyes, she isn’t the only one who is often seen on Shepherd University’s campus walking a dog wearing a blue service vest.
Lakin Bronkar, a sophomore biology major at Shepherd University, started raising and training puppies for Guiding Eyes when she was a sophomore in high school.
Lakin Bronkar, a sophomore biology student at Shepherd University, trains dogs for Guiding Eyes for the Blind and is pictured here with her current trainee, a 7-month-old German Shepherd named Gem.
“I have always had a love for animals and been interested in the work animals can do for others. When I saw that I could raise a puppy to be a service dog, I could not pass up the opportunity to work with dogs while at the same time improving someone’s life in the long run,” Bronkar said.
Bronkar has trained three puppies since she got started working with Guiding Eyes, which began as a supervised agriculture experience requirement for an agriculture class she was taking in high school. She said she has been hooked on raising and training dogs from that moment.
Like McAllister, Bronkar also said that getting attached to the puppies she is training and having to let them go is difficult, but she knows that it’s all part of the deal. Sometimes, though, the dogs decide that they aren’t destined to be guides. For one reason or another, the next level of training reveals that they have the potential to go on as police dogs or autism aids, or they show tendencies that make them unsuitable to be guides. Eventually, those dogs make their way onto bigger and brighter careers or return to their original trainers to live out their lives as pets.
“Trainers obviously put their heart and soul into raising, but the decision is totally up to the dog; it depends on their personality and confidence. Some of them have the opportunity to go on to detection work, autism healing or another school. One of the dogs in our region named Cora tried different careers—guide dog and healing autism service dog—and she will be graduating at the end of the month as an arson detection dog with the Connecticut State Police Department,” McAllister said. “Just like people, sometimes it takes a dog a few tries to find the career for them.”
McAllister has two Labrador retrievers that are 8 and 10—Walden and Aztec—who were both dogs she originally trained to enter the guide dog program. She later adopted them when they chose not to be guide dogs.
Similarly, Bronkar’s first trainee—a 3-year-old black lab named Lila—ended up being an adopted pet for her also.
For more information, visit www.guidingeyes.org or visit the region’s Facebook page by searching Guiding Eyes Shenandoah Puppy Raising Region.