Seeing Eye Dog Day 2025 is on Wednesday, January 29, 2025: Was Buddy (the first seeing eye dog) a purebred German Shepherd?

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 is Seeing Eye Dog Day 2025. Seeing Eye Dogs Our Dogs Enhance Mobility & Change Lives. Learn How You Can Help!

Was Buddy (the first seeing eye dog) a purebred German Shepherd?

• "Was Buddy (the first seeing eye dog) a purebred German Shepherd?"

Firstly, Buddy was not "the first seeing eye dog" - the way you punctuated that it merely means the first dog guiding a blind person. Europe's MANY wars produced countless blind people, and many of them tried using dogs of whatever breed was handy to help them find their way around.

But Buddy WAS the first dog trained for Mrs Eustace, the founder of The Seeing Eye programme.

Get hold of a copy of Morris Frank's "First Lady of the Seeing Eye" and I think you will discover that Mrs Eustace financed training of ONLY GSDs (in the early days) - and they were European GSDs, not NAmerican GSDs.

If your aunt's pet doesn't look like Buddy then the odds are that your aunt's pooch is NOT capable of guiding blind people, herding sheep, bringing down felons, doing the tracking & rescuing done by S&R dogs, silently warning soldiers that they are getting close to the enemy during a night patrol in No-Man's-Land, safely detecting drugs or explosives, and the various other tasks GSDs have been developed for.

This was the very first GSD:

This was the GSD that was judged to be the best in the world in both 2012 & 2013:

Of COURSE there have been changes during the 115 years between those two!

And then there is the GSDCAmerica's best "GSD":

Add

to your browser, so that you can easily look up all sorts of information about dogs, especially GSDs.

To discuss GSDs, join some groups such as

The people in them KNOW about GSDs. Plus you can include actual photos in your posts, unlike the clunky mechanism that stingy Y!A provides.

[Lizzie]: Hip dysplasia existed right from the start. There were dinosaurs whose fossils show unmistakeable evidence of HD. But it wasn't until the Swedish Army started (1965 to 1975) trying to work out why so many of its dogs had to be retired ( ) that dog-people started using the term "hip dysplasia". Previously, when a dog went "lame" it was usually killed, if rest didn't cure it.

King Les - first pup in 1950; GSD breeder & trainer as of 1968

What qualifies you for a seeing eye dog?

What qualifies you for a seeing eye dog?

I don't think it is about the qualifications that you would need, it is more about if they think you would benefit from having one.

It depends on what country you live in.

In the U.K. the guide dogs for the blind would want the guide dog working 7 days a week, meaning if you don't go out 7 days a week they may hold that against you, some people may disagree with this, but this is from my experience of applying for a guide dog some years ago.

I was told that if a guide dog doesn't work 7 days a week it would forget how to work, which I think is a load of rubbish.

Some years ago in the U.K. guide dogs for the blind lost a lot of money on the stock exchanged, since then I think they have became stricter in their rules. They are still one of the riches charities in the U.K.

But it is really about how they perceive you and your life style. I assume they like people to have their our gardens then someone who may live in a flat.

I did train my own pet dog, a German Shepherd Dog as my own guide dog and it make a big different to my own mobility. So having a guide dog would be great if you can get one.

Of course, if you live in a city, guide dogs must be carried up and down escalators because of their nails and owners must be strict with their diets, as neutered dogs tend to put on weight..

How can I make contact with a seeing-eye dog association?

How can I make contact with a seeing-eye dog association?

The waiting lists for such dogs can be quite long. They usually prioritise giving the dogs to children with disabilities, and in the majority of cases the original puppy raiser gets first choice as to whether they would like to keep the dog. They usually require that you agree to allow the dog to live inside. While these dogs do have great temperaments, and have had obedience training, all of this can be largely undone if you do not keep up the work. These dogs require plenty of exercise and above all mental stimulation, and they definately need to be an active member of the family. They have spent a great deal of time with people their whole lives, and will not cope being left alone all day while people go off to work and the like.

The international guide dog federation has links to programs which are accredited with them,

Assistance Dogs International also has a list of their member programs:

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