The Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind are seeking volunteers to train future guide dogs, and are looking specifically for students at Carleton.
Volunteers train dogs, eight to 16 weeks of age, for 12 to 18 months. From there, the dogs go into formal training with Canadian Guide Dogs staff.
“Right now, we have more puppies than volunteers so we are in a bit of a desperation stage at the moment,” Steven Doucette, the organization’s events and guider coordinator, said.
According to Doucette, there are usually 60 to 80 volunteers a year, but fewer in the middle of winter and summer.
Volunteers spend the majority of their time with the puppies. For students, this includes taking them to class and around campus, Doucette said.
Doucette said there have only been a few student volunteers recently.
“It really depends on the lifestyle of a student,” he said. “It’s a bit of a challenge, not only with universities but even in the general public as a whole, to find the right fit, the right person to be able to do this because it really is a very time-consuming thing but it’s rewarding at the end of the day as well.”
“In that first year, that’s the formidable stage for the puppy,” he said. “That’s when they learn good behaviour and socializing and that’s what the volunteer is really designed to do.”
He recommends students train 16 week-old puppies because eight-week old puppies are too young to go outside often.
Bruce Hamm, student services administrator at the Paul Menton Centre, also said he recognizes the guide dogs’ importance.
“It gives students an element of independence,” Hamm said. “It helps eliminate barriers and certainly allows them to access things that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”
Hamm said he is unsure if most students have time to raise a guide dog. But he said he is hopeful given Carleton’s “true spirit of volunteerism,” citing the volunteer note-taker program as an example.
On how many students he thinks will volunteer, Hamm replied: “That’s the million-dollar question.”
Thomas MacKinnon, a stay-at-home dad, said he volunteered for two years and raised two dogs.
“It’s a commitment,” MacKinnon said. “I think the biggest thing is that you’re going to have the dog with you all the time.”
MacKinnon said he appreciates their “working demeanour.”
“They’re so attached to their owner,” he said.
He said he hopes the puppy he is raising is going to be a good dog for somebody who needs it. He said this helps him deal with the dog’s eventual departure.
“She’s really going to help somebody . . . she’s really going to change somebody’s life,” MacKinnon said.
When disabled clients ask for a guide dog, “what they’re really doing is asking for their independence back,” Doucette said.
