To become a puppy raiser, you must attend club meetings on a regular basis and submit an application after speaking with the County Seeing Eye Area Coordinator. After approval prospective raisers will be asked to puppy sit to help confirm that the experience is consistent with their lifestyle and expectations. You may choose to request a specific breed and sex or not. After this, a puppy will be assigned by the Area Coordinator when available based on breeding center availability, your participation, and your input.

Meetings are held on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month at 7 pm in the Woman’s Club in Little Silver. However, we try to have at least one additional organized club outing per month to further provide exposure for the pups. In addition the club is frequently asked to make presentations to schools, libraries, senior groups, etc. and count on all members who are available during to attend if possible.

Yes, in fact this is good exposure for the puppy. If you have another puppy in your house, it must be at least 6 months old before we will place a Seeing Eye puppy in your home.

Your Area Coordinator will give you some food when the puppy is brought to you. We suggest you purchase the same brand in large bags at local feed stores or online. The Seeing Eye provides a stipend to help defray the cost of food. You must feed your pup the specific food recommended by The Seeing Eye. The pups are NEVER to be fed any human food at any time. When they are only fed dry dog food, your pup will never beg for people food, which is critical to the pup’s success in his future mission as a guide.

If you have a family veterinarian, you may continue to use that practice. The Seeing Eye expects all raisers to check with your Area Coordinator before taking your pup to the vet for anything other than visits listed on the puppy’s health card. If you are unfamiliar with a veterinarian in your area, your Area Coordinator or puppy club leader can suggest one. You bring the puppy Health Form with you to all visits, and the Seeing Eye will cover all the pup’s veterinary costs.

Pups are generally placed with a family when they are 7 to 8 weeks old. Pups return for training generally between 14 and 18 months. This may vary with the number of pups out in raiser homes at a given time and the number of pups currently in the Seeing Eye kennels.

Seeing Eye provides the following, along with the precious little fur ball, of course:

• Manual of instruction with information and forms required for vet visits (access provide when application is approved)

• Bag of puppy food

• Collar

• Leash

• Seeing Eye bandana for pup to use on outings till he's "vested"

• Placed with Tick/Flea and Heartworm treatments for the duration of fostering the puppy

• Green Seeing Eye Lanyard with ID pouch (for the Raiser)

You will be asked to sign a Puppy Raiser Promise that the Area Coordinator will go over with you.

The Seeing Eye breeds German Shepherds, Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers and Golden/Lab Crosses. Very rarely poodles may be seen in the Puppy Raising program to support Seeing Eye clients who have allergies.

The puppy raiser has several very important roles:

• Teach puppies basic commands such as Sit and Down and Rest (full list in the Puppy Raising Manual). Puppy raisers do not teach any guide skills – pups will be introduced to harness when they return for training at TSE.

• Teach puppies good manners so that they can perform as good citizens in future public roles as well as house manners (such as no barking, no jumping, no furniture, etc.)

• Socialize puppies as much as possible. Every positive exposure in their early life contributes toward making them a more confident guide

• Love them! Love is the bond the trainers build on for training.

The Seeing Eye provides each puppy with a green bandana (younger puppies) or a green vest (puppies over 6 month) which identify the puppies in public. Please do not go up and pet or call out to a dog wearing one of these bandanas or vests. When the puppy becomes a guide dog it is very distracting and dangerous to the dog and handler to have people just walk up and pet the animal. Instead, speak directly to the handler – we’d be more than happy to talk to you and will often then allow you to pet our puppy!

Although working Seeing Eye dogs are allowed access to all public places, Seeing Eye puppies are not. Raisers need to check with managers or owners before visiting a public place to make sure it is okay. The Seeing Eye also does not encourage taking puppies to food stores and restaurants.

Each litter of puppies born at The Seeing Eye is alphabetically assigned a letter from the full A-Z alphabet. Each puppy in a litter has a name beginning with that letter.