by Lolly Lijewski

Created on: July 19, 2008   Last Updated: July 23, 2008

CHOOSING A PET:
ADOPTING A GUIDE DOG

When choosing a family pet, guide dogs are a unique option to consider. There are two ways guide dogs might become available for adoption; career change, or retirement.

Career Change
Most guide dog schools have excellent breeding programs that produce dogs with the right characteristics to become a working guide. Currently approximately 50 to 80 percent of the puppies produced by these breeding programs are successfully trained and matched with a person who is blind.

Sometimes a dog may exhibit behavioral issues, health issues, or lack the temperament for the work. Other dogs may be used in the breeding program. Once they are finished with their breeding career, they may be too old to be matched with a blind handler, eliminating them from the pool of potential dogs suited to be guides. These dogs may face a career change, (such as becoming trained to do search and rescue, or becoming part of a Canine Unit) or they may be put on a list for possible adoption.

Each guide dog school has its own policies about adoption, and keeps its own lists of possible adoptees. Chances for adoption are best if a school is located in a region of the country near to the family interested in adoption. To find a list of the schools located throughout the country, go to http://www.gdui.org/schools.html for a list of U.S. guide dog schools. Check with each school individually about its adoption policies.

Retirement
Retiring a faithful guide dog is one of the most difficult decisions a handler can make. Finding a loving and safe adoptive home is a process many guide dog handlers dedicate much time and patience too, in order to ensure the fit for both retiring dog and adoptive person/family is the best possible match.

Handlers must take into account their individual dog, and considerations like health, age of the dog, is the dog good with children and other pets, and would a city or country home be the best retirement placement for that individual dog.

Specifics may vary from handler to handler, and from dog to dog, but generally the information below can be used as a guide to determine whether a home would be suitable for adopting a retiring guide.

General Information
Most schools do offer handlers the option of returning the retiring dog to the school where it was trained and some handlers choose to keep their retired guides, but if neither of these options is preferable, adoption may be the best answer.

Guide dogs are socialized from birth to be with humans.

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