Guide Dogs

A few days a week, Pat McKenna makes an hour-and-a-half commute from his home in Highland Park, New Jersey, to his office in Newark. It involves a bus, a train, and a lot of walking through busy streets and intersections. It’s a complicated journey, and McKenna gets some help from a navigator.

MCKENNA: I leave the house at 7 a.m. There are several crossings where we stop. I listen for traffic and he watches for traffic. And when it sounds like the coast is clear, he gets us across an intersection. And at the train platform he navigates me along the edge of this yellow bumpy surface right before the drop to the tracks. The train will arrive he will find an open door. That gets me to my stop in Newark. He finds the stairs for me, we navigate up and out to my office building. He knows, when the elevator opens, to race over to it. We go up to my floor, he finds my agency’s office door, and then my office within. He has to be on point and on focus the whole time. It really is a partnership endeavor. 

McKenna is blind. And his companion is an 80-pound labrador mix named Raven. He’s one of nearly 20,000 guide dogs that are currently active around the world. Guide dogs are the Navy Seals of canines. They go through an elite training protocol before they’re entrusted to be a blind person’s partner. Something as simple as chasing a squirrel one too many times can disqualify them from consideration. And for the organizations that produce these dogs, the process is long and costly.

MCKENNA: This animal has been specially bred, raised and trained with all these remarkable qualities and traits. The cost has been approximated to be around $75,000, which is a quality automobile territory, right? I mean, that’s remarkable.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The Economics of Everyday Things. I’m Zachary Crockett. Today: guide dogs.

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For many centuries, most visually impaired people who wanted to travel independently had to be accompanied by human companions, or rely on sticks and their other senses to navigate. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, there were a number of efforts to develop more effective tools. But it wasn’t until after the First World War, when thousands of soldiers returned home blind, that things began to change. In Europe, a new type of cane was invented that allowed blind people to navigate using vibrations on the ground. And, for the first time, dogs were trained to assist with everyday guidance.

In the 1920s, a wealthy Philadelphian named Dorothy Eustis and a young blind man named Morris Frank started The Seeing Eye — the first guide dog school in America.

Frank went on a campaign with his guide dog, Buddy, to educate the public about this new movement.

VIDEO OF MORRIS: “As they showed me how to put the harness on the dog I knew I had my independence.”

Today, there are 99 guide dog schools in 33 different countries that are accredited by the International Guide Dog Association. The Seeing Eye, based in Morristown, New Jersey, is the largest and oldest one. Over 96 years, they’ve bred, raised, and trained nearly 19,000 guide dogs.

GIBBON: I manage a lot of dogs.

That’s Peggy Gibbon. She’s the director of canine development at The Seeing Eye. And she oversees the entire process of bringing a new guide dog into the world, starting with genetics. Certain breeds have traits that make them a good fit for the guide dog lifestyle. While you might see the occasional German shepherd or poodle, Gibbon says roughly 95% of today’s guide dogs are labradors, sometimes crossbred with golden retrievers.

GIBBON: The labs have always been a very popular hunting dog, where they’re working very closely with their person. And they’ve developed into a very willing dog with a strong work ethic. They’ve also been a relatively healthy breed, as well as being an appropriate size, having a good coat that makes them durable and weatherproof. All of those things come into being an appropriate dog for this job.

Most of the puppies bred at The Seeing Eye are born on-site, from parents who were guide dogs. They have to come from a solid pedigree, with a history of flawless orthopedic health — good hips, elbows, and shoulders. And after it’s born, each puppy goes through a genetic screening to assess for health risks.

GIBBON: In the time that I have worked with the breeding program, the changes in the information available to us are truly astounding. We went from basically looking at pedigrees, to having genotypes on all our dogs telling us what genes they have that may influence various illnesses and diseases. 

A potential guide dog doesn’t just have to be genetically superior; it also has to have the right attitude. Once a puppy is born, it’s regularly handled by staff members to acclimate it to humans. And, at a few weeks old, it’s put into a room on The Seeing Eye campus that replicates the chaos of the outside world in a controlled environment.

GIBBON: They’re introduced to little puppy stairs. And lots of different surfaces. There are mirrors and tunnels, and wobble boards. And we have volunteers who run the vacuum cleaner. Different soundtracks for thunder and kettles whistling, so that they can experience as much as they can.

 There are even some costumes involved.

GIBBON: Just so that the puppies can see different viewpoints. That person with the big coat and funny looking glasses and mask can be a little daunting on the street. But the more different shapes they’ve seen in people, the less it will stand out to them.

At around two months, it’s time for the puppies to go see the real world. And that’s a job for puppy raisers. The Seeing Eye has around 500 volunteers who sign up to temporarily adopt the puppies — ranging from kids in local 4-H programs to retirees.

GIBBON: We have puppy raising clubs organized by county. And, it’s a real community. They meet regularly and then they go on outings. At Christmas time, we get a lot of the clubs going into New York City, so it’s a little bit of a spectacle if you see 20 puppies going to see the tree at Rockefeller Center.

 The Seeing Eye gives these volunteers a stipend to care for the dogs for the next 12 to 14 months of their lives.

GIBBON: Their job is to teach that puppy about the world, to socialize them, to get them out, to give them a wide variety of experiences. We need a dog that’s very confident to go out there working in the environment. They have to make decisions about getting around obstacles, about stopping if there’s a car coming.

During this phase, The Seeing Eye receives reports on how its puppies are acclimating. If a dog lacks confidence, or if it’s too easily distracted, it might get cut from the program early on.

GIBBON: Most dogs like to chase squirrels, right? But can they learn not to chase the squirrel? If they just have such a strong interest in that squirrel that they can’t learn not to, they probably shouldn’t be a seeing-eye dog.

Those that can control their squirrel-chasing urges return to The Seeing Eye for what Gibbon calls their “higher learning” — the Ph.D. phase of their education. They’re assigned to a 4-month course with a professional dog trainer. Their job is to teach the dog the skills it needs to assist someone who is blind.

GIBBON: I’m generally assigning six new dogs to an instructor. The instructor comes in the morning, takes each dog out individually to work with them and get to know them. They start out in a fairly quiet neighborhood, where they’re really focusing on learning to stop at the curbs, make street crossings, and getting some initial experience with clearance, as well as traffic. Then they move on to a slightly more challenging route. So there’s more traffic, more obstacles, more pedestrians, other people walking dogs, the parking meters all along the sidewalks, and sidewalk cafes.

Training a dog to do something like stop at a curb at a busy intersection involves lots of repetition and praise.

GIBBON: At every down curb, in every up curb, we stop, we praise them. And then the dog starts to stop themselves. And then maybe they make a mistake. You stumble over the curb and they go, “Uh-oh.” And you go back and you repeat, and you allow the dog to be successful.

A common misconception is that guide dogs understand traffic lights. But Gibbon says that’s not the case. A guide dog will stop at the curb, but it’s the owner’s job to assess for signals and traffic.

GIBBON: The dogs don’t even know if there’s a light there or not. So the person needs to know their environment. They need to know what kind of intersection it is. Is it a stop sign here or is there a light? They will listen for the traffic pattern. And when they hear the safe time to cross, they will give the command to the dog. It’s the dog’s job to make sure it’s safe getting across. If there’s a car, they need to stop, or react in an appropriate way, and then they need to cross straight to the other side.

A person who is blind will use verbal commands, hand signals, and body positioning to provide directions. The dog wears a harness with a handle, and when it hears a command, it pulls forward and follows orders. But, on occasion, a guide dog also has to exhibit something called “intelligent disobedience” — the ability to refuse a command that is potentially dangerous.

GIBBON: One very obvious example is if we’re getting ready to cross the street. Maybe it sounded safe, but there’s a car making a right on red right in front of you that cut you off. The dog will refuse the command to go, showing intelligent disobedience, because if they went it would be dangerous.

A particular challenge has been the growing popularity of electric vehicles.

GIBBON: When we first started to see a lot of hybrid cars on the street, we acquired one for training and found that the biggest impact was on the person, not the dog. The dogs are more visual, they’re catching the movement of the car. But when you’re sailing along the sidewalk and everything’s clear and you’ve done this sidewalk a million times, and all of a sudden a car comes shooting out of a driveway. That’s one of the most dangerous situations. And if it’s a quiet electric car, you don’t even hear it. So we’re relying entirely on that dog seeing it and responding. 

Once a dog has mastered everything from curbs to Teslas, the instructor will wear a blindfold during daily walks. If the dog performs without any incidents, it moves on to a wider variety of public settings.

GIBBON: They start to do bus and train rides, they start to go into stores, they start to go to the malls — to lots of different places, so that they can generalize the use of those fundamental skills.

Around 30% of the dogs that start the program don’t make the cut; those are adopted out and become pets. The rest are certified as guide dogs and move on to the final stage of the process: getting matched with their owner. But even that is no simple task.

MCKENNA: If you were to put a 90-pound labrador with a high pace and high pull with sort of a smaller, more frail individual — I mean, you would just watch them go flying right down the street.

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When Pat McKenna was four years old, he got really sick. He remembers spending a lot of time in the hospital, with loud machines and pensive doctors. And when he left he was blind. He was due to start Kindergarten that Fall.

MCKENNA: I learned what’s referred to as orientation and mobility skills. That is the skill set that a blind person learns so they can travel independently, navigating their home, their workplace, down the street.

For many years, he used a white cane — a special device that allows blind and visually impaired people to navigate by feeling for vibrations in the ground. But when he was accepted to Rutgers Law School in 2001, he faced a daunting commute.

MCKENNA: I did not have the experience in navigating a high density urban area, right? Wide roads, a lot of traffic moving fast, tall buildings, the sound is bouncing back and reverberating off of those tall buildings. I found it extraordinarily disorienting. There are many, many people who are blind or visually impaired who navigate Newark safely, effectively and independently every day by cane. I just want to emphasize, in March of 2001, I was not one of them. 

So, McKenna contacted The Seeing Eye and applied for a guide dog.

Matching a guide dog with its new owner is a complex process. At The Seeing Eye, it involves an extensive interview that covers an applicant’s lifestyle, where they live and work, their travel preferences, and even their walking speed. Again, here’s Peggy Gibbon.

GIBBON: I could have two very different people that I’m looking for dogs for, and the same dog is not the best dog for both of them. It’s very much a delicate art and very personal. Fundamental are energy level, confidence, manageability. Does the person live in New York City and use the subway? You choose a dog that’s going to enjoy that kind of environment. Versus a person that lives on a farm and maybe does a lot of work on streets that, on roads that are rural and don’t have sidewalks.

A character profile is created for each person and each dog. And then, candidates are invited to come to The Seeing Eye campus for a month to find the right dog.

GIBBON: The instructor who will be working with them does what we call a Juno walk. The instructor is pretending to be the dog, and guiding the person with the harness handle, giving them instruction in how they will be handling the dog once there is a dog on the other end. But also getting a feel for how the person moves, how fast do they want to go. How much pull do they want? How agile are they in following lateral movements? If the dog stops quickly, are they able to do that? And, how do they talk to the dog? Are they somebody who’s very bubbly? Are they somebody who is going to be maybe a little bit more stern? 

The criteria for receiving a guide dog vary a bit depending on the school. But, in general, an applicant must be legally blind and also physically capable of navigating independently.

GIBBON: A large portion of the population of people who are blind are elderly. Macular degeneration is, I believe, the most significant cause of blindness today. But it’s generally in people who may not still have the physical skills to be traveling with the dog. You need to be getting out and working that dog regularly, because the dogs have this really strong skill and they need to practice it. Those skills will fade.

After going through the application process in 2001, Pat McKenna was matched with a petite and feisty black lab named Asta. She guided him all through law school and the start of his legal career — until she eventually retired due to a heart condition. Today, McKenna’s on his fifth guide dog through The Seeing Eye.

MCKENNA: I’m presently working with Raven, who is very joyful and he has a lot of fun. He can be a bit much sometimes in the house when he’s getting all his toys out and so on. But he’s a blast.

For The Seeing Eye, the total cost to raise and train a service dog — the labor, food, boarding, and health screenings — is around $75,000 dollars. The organization gets around $20 million dollars a year in funding from donations and grants. That lets it almost entirely subsidize the cost for the dog owner. Recipients like McKenna pay just $150 for their first dog, and $50 for any successor dog.

Once it’s in their possession, they cover all the typical pet stuff.

MCKENNA: Well, you know, there’s the food, and the vet bills, and there’s the toys, right? I mean, who doesn’t, who doesn’t like getting a nice toy on occasion, right?

For most pet owners, the basics add up to around $2,000 per year. But McKenna says there is a hidden cost to guide dog ownership that often isn’t discussed.

MCKENNA: You end up having to regularly educate and have these interactions — whether it’s, “Please don’t pet my dog right now, he’s working,” to, “Oh, no this is a trained service animal and he can be in your restaurant right now.” And I would argue there is a cost to having to reach deep to find that calm, educational, and professional space.

McKenna, and thousands of other guide dog owners in America, are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA. Federal and state laws generally permit them to bring their dogs into most public spaces where pets aren’t typically allowed — hotels, restaurants, stores, hospitals, schools. But a lot of people either don’t understand, or just don’t care for the law.

MCKENNA: A guide dog public access challenge can look anything from the one extreme of, “Get your expletive animal out of my store” to a cleaning fee at a hotel — that’s another one. “If you are going to stay in our hotel, then you have to agree to a $250 additional cleaning fee.” Now, that’s actually not acceptable or permissible.

For many guide dog owners, these interactions present an internal dilemma.

MCKENNA: You want to do the right thing in educating this individual. But you never want to be that angry disabled person who’s yelling and screaming, who got caught on video and who now goes viral. Be patient, be kind, educate, be tolerant. And if you can’t, turn around, walk out, and come back a couple of days later. 

Public access challenges like this sometimes dissuade visually impaired people from getting a guide dog altogether. But McKenna says, for him, the costs are worth it. Outside of his weekly commutes in New Jersey, he lives an adventurous life. And the dogs have been there with him every step of the way.

MCKENNA: We have gone on hikes in Vermont and Maine and Washington state, New York, Pennsylvania. Last summer, I had Raven in the canoe with me. He wasn’t guiding me from the canoe, obviously, but it was cool to have him there. I learned early on that this dog is really up for anything at all. So long as I’m there.

For The Economics of Everyday Things, I’m Zachary Crockett.

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This episode was produced by me and Sarah Lilley, and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz-Rabson.