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| May 05, 2024 |
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General News: Cornwall Girl Raises Guiding Eye Pup
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| Allie Smith and Nimble |
July 08, 2007
By Dede Smith
Allie Smith, a seventh-grade student at Cornwall Central Middle School, has been participating in the Guiding Eyes’ Puppy Raiser program. A Puppy Raiser provides the foundation for a successful guide dog team. These essential volunteers raise a GEB puppy for about 18 months, providing the pup with the love, socialization and basic obedience it will need to succeed in guide dog training.
Allie has been attending weekly classes at the Guiding Eyes’ Canine Development Center in Patterson, New York. The classes are one to two hours long with a lot of hands on training with the puppies.
The puppies are Labrador Retrievers, although a few are Golden Retrievers and German Shepherds. The dogs have been selectively bred to enhance their traits of self- confidence, serene disposition, willingness to work, ability to take responsibility, good health, intelligence, and initiative.
As part of her training, Allie had to baby sit an eight-week-old female black lab puppy named Nimble. Nimble was part of the ‘N’ litter where all puppies born to a certain dog are named with names that begin with the same letter of the alphabet. She had to train the puppy with several new commands – sit, stand, down, get busy and kennel.
Nimble quickly fit right into the family life at Allie’s house and everyone was smitten with Nimble including Allie’s brother Matt. Allie’s dog, Sara, a nine-year-old black lab “puppy” herself tolerated Nimble and Nimble’s playfulness. This was a big relief for Allie since she was concerned at how Sara would react to another dog in the house.
Allie has also heard that a family in Cornwall was a brood foster to a dog that just had puppies at the Canine Development Center and her litter is the ‘T’ litter. Allie is scheduled to receive her Guiding Eye Pup in July which could coincide with the ‘T’ litter being assigned to Puppy Raisers, wouldn’t that be a coincidence!
*June has been declared the Guiding Eyes for the Blind (GEB) Month in New York by Governor Spitzer . Read about more about it here.
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