1 Hmm, that's interesting. I took a "field trip" to the Seeing Eye guide dog school in New Jersey as part of my Mobility classes, and we got to see part of the training process. Here in the States most schools have their clients stay in dorms for a month while they and their dog bond. It's training for the master as well as for the dog... they have to learn commands, proper behavior so as to keep the dog's training up, and numerous other things to be aware of. The dogs are trained for a year or so before the master ever gets a hold of the harness.

I'm not surprised about the commands in Japan. One thing they do is emphasize that commands must be very firm. "Forward." "Left." "Right." etc. If the dog is used to the firm commands of a handler, it will have to be partly retrained to understand the less firm commands of a Japanese woman, or the woman would have to be trained to issue firm commands to her dog. It might just be easier to teach English, like you said.

Oh, and to nitpick (because you love that), "Seeing Eye" is a brand name that applies to the school in Morristown, New Jersey. Only dogs from there are Seeing Eye dogs. (Don't hit! They told us to nitpick, and they did pay for a free trip to New York for the students!) All other dogs are "guide dogs."

2

One of the less well known parts of the process is that candidate dogs for the school spend the first year of their lives living with a family that has kids.

That's because dogs have to be socialized. A dog that lives the first year of its life in a kennel will be partially feral forever, and can be dangerous and probably won't be a good companion.

So there are families out there which get a new puppy once a year, and at the end of that year have to say good bye. I wonder how often they decide they can't do it, and keep the dog?

Even if the school has a contract with families like that (which I assume it does), I can't imagine that the school would forcibly seize such an animal from a family that didn't want to give it up. (The publicity would be terrible, for one thing.)

3

German Shepherds used to be the favorite breeds for this job because they're large, intelligent, and very trainable. But the hip displasia thing started happening to guide dogs just like it did to so many others, drastically shortening their working life. (Damned AKC inbreeding.)

I had a blind friend in Massachusetts in the 1980's who had a guide dog that was disabled by hip displasia. He had to get another one, but kept the first as a family pet. But it broke the heart of the older one to see another dog doing her job. So his parents took the older dog to their farm, but that didn't really work either, especially as her disease progressed, and she had to be put down. Damned shame.

These days I think they tend to prefer labs. (I've heard that they also use golden retrievers, but I can't imagine that working very well. Goldens are gorgeous and lovable but I don't tend to think of them as being particularly disciplined.)

4 Not sure how often the families decide they'd like to keep the dog, but at least with Seeing Eye they don't have a choice... at the end of the year they MUST give up the dog, and the school makes sure the families understand that before they get the puppy. One of the puppy trainers we talked to even said that she uses it as a lesson with her kids: sometimes you have to give up what you love. They didn't say whether the school has ever forcibly taken a dog away from a family.

They DO occasionally take a dog away from a blind person who has been abusing or neglecting it, though. Seeing Eye doesn't have any claim of ownership over the dogs they train once they've been given away, so it's more difficult and they must go through the legal process. They told us a few horror stories. Other schools, though, have claim on the dogs and can take it away when needed.

You're right that most schools prefer labs nowadays, though quite a few shepherds are trained, and many schools train a few boxers for clients with dog fur allergies. Interesting bit from my trip: some of the the shepherds SE was training were amazingly small for their breed, sized for smaller persons. SE has its own breeding program and has reduced hip displasia in their dogs.

5 Golden Retrievers used to be the benchmark breed for obedience trials. The problem with them is that once trained they tend to obey just about anybody. Not noted for making good guard or watch dogs. They did well on movie sets. They are probably too social to be full time service or guide dogs. I would guess that a herding/herd guard dog would do better than a field dog. Ditto on damning the AKC for making it possible for puppy mills to be profitable. More and more breeds are getting genetic defects due to inbreeding. Used to you could rely on cross bred mutts to be healthy, not anymore.

6 When we got our first dog, a corgi, my wife used Japanese to train her.  I quickly realized I was going to sound pretty funny using some of the feminized words and requested that she go to something more neutral.  But as it happened, the dog was so damned smart we just ended up teaching her every command in English, Japanese, and by hand sign.
Our new dog, while also a corgi, got the the "brain table" last and so she only understands Japanese--gender neutral, of course.

7 It's too bad they can't use border collies for the job... but I have a sneaking suspicion that a border collie would read your day planner and force you to follow it to the letter.

8

Also, Border Collies are too hyper. They have to run or they'll go nuts. But they're certainly smart enough.

I had a chance one time to watch a demonstration of herding by a border collie. One of the things they do in competitions is to start with a single flock of an even number of sheep, and to divide it into two equal sized flocks. It's amazing to watch, and it has to be the dog who's doing it; it isn't something that the human can really control that closely. (And God knows it ain't the sheep.)

It's also fun to watch border collies doing the "eye" thing. It really does affect the sheep.

But I can't see them being good guide dogs.

9 ...I have a sneaking suspicion that a border collie would read your day planner and force you to follow it to the letter.

That might be the funniest thing I've read all week, BigD.