When Jeff and Cindy Scharfen’s daughter Misa was 10 years old, she wanted a puppy. What could be more normal? But sometimes, even with puppies, “Man plans, God laughs,” as the Yiddish proverb states. Cindy’s parents had recently received a non-qualifying, “career changed” guide dog as a gift from a friend, and when Misa, her brother James, Jeff, and Cindy saw the dog, it seemed like a wonderful idea to get a puppy that they could raise as a guide dog for the blind.
So they did. It was Christmas in the year 2000, and the puppy’s name was Charleston.
They lived in Santa Rosa, California, north of San Francisco. Cindy was busy as a doctor of radiation oncology, and Jeff was just leaving a career in the law and a term as the executive director for the Catholic Community Foundation.
They had no idea how difficult and time-consuming it was to be a volunteer Puppy Raiser for the nonprofit Guide Dogs for the Blind. It wasn’t the organization, which was a splendid outfit. It was the puppy!
When one sees a guide dog walking with a blind person, it is indeed remarkable to observe how attentive, calm, and serving the guide dog is. They are totally focused on caring for their owners and simply don’t do things like running after stray cats or balls bouncing down the street. They are reserved and competent, even though their natures are normally friendly to all.
Jeff’s family discovered that all of this superlative behavior was the result of a great deal of work, starting with the Puppy Raiser, which can be an individual or a family. Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB) is a guide dog school with branches in San Rafael, California, and Boring, Oregon. Founded in 1942 to help blinded veterans of World War II, the organization is assisted by over 2,000 families who serve as volunteer Puppy Raisers.
GDB has developed a sophisticated program for its dogs, starting with its geneticist- and veterinarian-managed breeding program. Although they began with many types of dogs, including German Shepherds, they now exclusively use Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, and Lab/Golden mixes. When a litter of puppies is born, the GDB staff names them, with all of the puppies in one litter sharing the same first letter in their names.
When a puppy is around 8 weeks old, it is matched with a Puppy Raiser until it is around 16 months old. The dog then comes back to GDB for three months of advanced training before it is matched with a person who is legally blind. The new owner and the graduated guide dog go through a two-week training session together, and if the dog and new owner are a match, the Puppy Raising family presents the dog to the owner at a graduation ceremony. There is no cost to the blind person at all.
Jeff and his family discovered that raising a puppy to be a guide dog was far more complicated and labor-intensive than the normal “puppy experience” of housebreaking and teething. They went through 13 months of what can only be described as an immersive experience.
The puppies go everywhere with the family and are trained to be calm in any type of situation, such as sitting next to a table in a restaurant, riding on a bus, crossing busy streets, and waiting patiently in an office or lecture-hall setting. They’re prepared to go anywhere a blind person might go and trained to be attentive the entire time.
Jeff has taken puppies to classes that he taught at Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, while Cindy took puppies to her medical offices.
Jeff told me that one of the goals is to train the “prey drive” out of them so that they don’t get distracted by squirrels or cats or other things that normally drive dogs wild. As guide dogs, their self-control needs to become absolute.
All of the normal dog training is done by the Puppy Raiser, including commands like “sit” and “stay,” etc. At the same time, it’s the Puppy Raiser’s job to really love the dogs and help develop their natural desire to please. Labs and Goldens were selected by GDB because they’re a “biddable” breed and tend to love anyone who treats them well. They’re not a “one-man-dog breed” like German Shepherds.
To help the puppies get used to responding to more than one person, Puppy Raisers meet as teams two or three times a month and swap their dogs between owners at the meetings. Every two months, they often exchange dogs for a week, which acclimates the dogs to the idea of serving more than one person.
After Jeff and his family finished the training of their first guide dog, they had to reflect on whether they wanted to continue. Misa’s desire for a puppy had taken an unusual turn. The family decided to continue because they all loved puppies (who wouldn’t?) and because, in Jeff’s words, “to raise a puppy and then give it away was a spiritual discipline and an education of heart” that would benefit their entire family.
They have raised puppies for 21 years. Misa raised five dogs and took her dogs to classes when she entered high school. James raised three dogs. The family is now on its 13th puppy, an adorable black Lab named Newton.
Nowadays, Jeff does about 90 percent of the puppy raising. Misa has a career as a Navy Lieutenant in the JAG Corps, working as a lawyer. James is now a physician in his internal medicine residency. Jeff retired from teaching and spends his time writing and working with nonprofit medical programs, assisted by his wife Cindy, who is still practicing radiation oncology.
Jeff sees the activity of raising puppies for the blind as a vital part of his life. In his youth, he spent a year as a retreatant in a Trappist Monastery. He’s been a lawyer and a high school teacher of classic literature. He assists Catholic nuns in a leprosy community in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and helps bring medical supplies to a mission hospital in Zimbabwe.
“I think for our children, it was one of the best things we did, in terms of providing them with an opportunity for service. For ourselves, it’s been a joy. Guide dogs have added so much to our lives. Being able to raise the puppies and being involved in a puppy-raising group all these years has given us a community. Even though it’s hard sometimes to raise a dog and give a dog up, to see the bond of heart that develops between the blind person and their dog is totally worth it.”I asked Jeff if they ever saw the dogs after they’ve gone to their new owners, and he said they sometimes do. He said that when the dogs see Jeff and his family again, “they go crazy.” The dogs do “the Lab Dance,” with their tails swinging their entire body.
It turns out that Misa and her family didn’t get a puppy. They got 13. In Jeff’s words:
“Raising guide dogs for the blind has added a dimension of meaning that has enriched our lives. We’re grateful for that.”
