It takes two years of hard work and support for puppies to become guide dogs for people who are blind or partially sighted. Committed volunteers who help raise, train, and board these puppies with purpose. As part of the CNIB Guide Dogs Class of 2023 graduation ceremony, Penny Hartin recorded a special thank-you greeting for the extraordinary volunteers who open their homes and hearts to raising a future guide dog.
You can watch the video on YouTube (in English only) or read a copy of the transcript below.
“My name is Penny Hartin, and I'm here with my new guide dog named Honour, and she's a black Golden Retriever. It’s my privilege today, on behalf of this year's graduates of the guide dog program, to pay tribute to our wonderful puppy raising and boarding volunteers.
Your role is so important in helping to prepare the puppies for their future career as a as a guide dog, and there's no question that we wouldn't be able to run this type of program without your support. I've been told, in fact, your role as volunteer puppy raisers and borders is the only 24 hour a day volunteer program within CNIB. From the time you receive the puppies at about eight weeks old, until they go off to formal guide dog training school when they're about 15 months old. You will have contributed about 10,000 hours of your generous time!
There are over 230 puppy raising volunteers and borders, and there is no way that CNIB would be able to run such a comprehensive program without that support across the country.
Your role in preparing the puppies goes so far beyond just providing love and caring for their day-to-day needs; the training you provide, the socialization – all of the experiences contribute tremendously to their preparation for their future career as a guide dog. Things like; ensuring that they develop good house manners, attending work or school with you, going to the shopping mall, the restaurants, riding transit, navigating busy city streets, all of those experiences help the gift your guide dog develop their confidence and an understanding of the world that they're going to be facing as a working guide dog.
Honour is my third guide dog now, and from the time I met all of my three guide dogs, I knew from the very beginning that they'd had wonderful puppy raising support.
As a guide dog handler, I really want to say how much we all appreciate the generosity that our puppy raisers and borders have demonstrated in providing the care and support to our guide dogs. It can't be easy spending over a year with the guide dogs and then letting them go off to school. It must be kind of like when your teenagers go off to school or go off to go off to a new job. But with a guide dogs, you don't know what their future will be. You don't know if they'll become guide dogs. You don't know how successful they'll be or if they'll become a buddy dog. And you don't know if you'll ever have the chance to see them again, so that must be very difficult. We really appreciate the generosity that you demonstrate in being willing to do that. So, on behalf of all of the graduates, I really want to see how much we appreciate your support – and you thank you so much.”