MISSOURI — Bobbi Jo is a very busy little girl. As a Future Leader Dog, she’s enjoying all of the excitement and adventures of being a Labrador retriever puppy, such as sitting and watching, playing with her canine “siblings,” playing hide and seek, and piling up all of her toys on her bed to chew on later. She’s also a working girl, taking the first paw steps toward learning the vital skills of a guide dog and earning the right to be called a Leader Dog helping a blind person to have freedom, companionship, and lifelong skills for safe and independent travel.
Leader Dogs for the Blind is a 100% philanthropically funded organization founded in 1939 by three members of the Uptown Lions Club of Detroit, Charles A. Nutting, Donald P. Schuur, and S.A. Dodge. The trio wanted to help their fellow Lion, Dr. Glenn Wheeler, who had lost his sight and wanted a guide dog. The result was the purchase of a small farm near Rochester Hills, Michigan, which has become a 14-acre campus for training guide dogs and their humans. The organization’s services (which also include training those who are deaf and blind, and using American Sign Language with a guide dog) have been provided free of charge since 1958 in an effort to make them available to all regardless of ability to pay.
One of the initiatives of Lions Club International is to prevent avoidable blindness and improve the quality of life for those who are blind or visually impaired. In that spirit, the Solon Centennial Lions Club made a donation in late December to Leader Dogs for the Blind for Bobbi Jo’s care and training. In a letter to the Solon Lions, Melissa L. Weisse, President & CEO of Leader Dogs for the Blind, gave the Lions a glimpse into Bobbi Jo’s world and the journey she is on.
“Puppies are constantly learning their first year of life and volunteer puppy raisers devote a tremendous amount of time, love, and energy helping lay the foundation for the puppies to succeed. As one puppy raiser described this tremendous responsibility, ‘I am humbled and awed by being a part of the process that creates a person-dog team that can give such freedom to someone who is visually impaired.’ We can’t thank you enough for helping to make this possible.”
After a year, Weisse said, Bobbi Jo will return to the Leader Dog campus for an intensive four-month training period to build her guide dog skills, “and become the Leader Dog she was born to be.” Ultimately, she will be matched with a client. Together, they will train for 25 days to learn how to travel safely together.
Family life – Bobbi Jo lives with her puppy raisers, a married team who have raised 17 puppies for Leader Dog. Three Labradors, all career-changed Leader Dogs, also share the home. These older dogs are great “co-raisers” for Bobbi Jo.
Training – Bobbi Jo is registered to begin an AKC STAR (Socialization, Training, Activity, and Responsibility) puppy school class soon and then will continue with classes at a local training club to earn her AKC Canine Good Citizen title. Since Bobbi Jo is being raised in Missouri and her raiser’s puppy counselor lives in Colorado, their training sessions are done via Facetime or at other puppy group events when they are visiting Michigan.
For more information
Leader Dogs for the Blind – www.leaderdog.org
Solon Centennial Lions Club – on Facebook at Solon Centennial Lions Club