WHO’S A GOOD BOY? AMERICAN AID FOR CANADA’S CRITICAL GUIDE DOG SHORTAGE

Six young U.S.-bred dogs arrived this week to begin training with CNIB Guide Dogs in Carleton Place.

The border may be closed, but, when Canada needed help, a wet-nosed, tail-wagging American named Henson answered the call.

Henson, a Labrador retriever, is one of six young U.S.-bred dogs that arrived this past week to begin training with CNIB Guide Dogs in Carleton Place. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a critical shortage of guide dogs in Canada, company president Diane Bergeron says. Much of the breeding stock for Canadian guide dogs come from the U.S., while many Canadians who are blind or visually impaired normally go to the U.S. to get their dogs.

The COVID-19 border shutdown has made that impossible.

“We’re having a guide dog crisis,” said Bergeron, whose company has seen a 300-per-cent increase in requests for applications since the pandemic began.

It can take up to two years for a dog to be fully trained as a guide, beginning with puppy raising from around eight weeks until the dog is ready to begin training, usually at 12 to 15 months. The training usually lasts another four to six months.

“As we looked at our dog supply chain, we recognized we have an increased need here,” Bergeron said. “Breeding a dog today is not going to help us tomorrow or in six months. We need older dogs to work with.”

Bergeron started making calls to her American contacts for help. Leader Dogs for the Blind in Rochester Hills, Mich., a Detroit suburb, stepped up.

“Since the border is closed, we’re just really thrilled to help the Canadians,” said Lorene Suidan, chief operation officer for Leader Dogs, which has been training guide dogs since 1939.

“We have such high regards for the CNIB Guide Dogs team that we were happy to partner with them. We took a good look here and at the dogs that were coming our way and we realized that we could send some dogs to Canada and still maintain our ability to serve our clients.”

Last Tuesday, Leader Dogs dispatched the six dogs by van to a rest stop in Port Huron, Mich., where they were handed over to CNIB Guide Dogs for the 600-kilometre drive to Carleton Place. Three of the dogs were bred privately and three came from Leader Dog’s “Prison Puppies” program in which they’re bred and cared for by inmates in one of 12 participating U.S. penitentiaries.

Henson will board with Carleton Place’s Sandra Luty and her family until he and the others are ready to start training, which should begin soon at the new CNIB Guide Dogs facility that officially opened in June.

“We’ve got six more potential guide dogs that we can get in our program in Canada,” Bergeron said. “We have six. We need 50. But this is a fantastic start and the collaboration with Leader Dogs has been phenomenal.”

In return, CNIB Guide Dogs has been providing service to some of Leader Dogs’ Canadian clients, such as doing wellness checks or providing refresher training that the Michigan company can’t do because of the border closure.

“This is the thing about the guide dog world: I called, they helped. They called, we helped,” Bergeron said.

“It’s an amazing combination of everyone pulling together. It’s not, ‘This is your dog, this is my dog. This is your trainer, this is my trainer.’ Instead it’s, ‘This person needs their independence and their freedom. What can we do to give it to them?’”

The shortage has meant that some guide dogs have been working past normal retirement age of eight to 10 years. Another person needs a new guide dog after theirs was struck by a car and can no longer work.

There is no such thing as a waiting list for guide dogs, Bergeron said. She said the process was more like a job interview, where a particular dog with its own skills and strengths is matched with the appropriate applicant. That can take a few months or a year or more, she said.

“The dog and handler is a very, very close bond,” she said. “Let’s be real. These dogs don’t get a pay cheque. They do this because they love to work. They love you. They want to keep you safe.”