Iso

Meet Iso. He’s the fifth member of the Stolpe Family. Iso has been part of our family on and off again for the past four years. On Tuesday, Iso will celebrate (if dog’s are capable of celebrating) his fourth birthday – which I think makes him 28 years old in dog years. We originally got Iso when he was eight weeks old. The Seeing Eye lent him to us to raise him through his early puppy times until he would be reading to be trained to be a full bore seeing eye guide dog. So we had him until he was about 1 1/2 years old. Then they came and got him.

He was up at the Seeing Eye in Morristown, NJ for eight months, and we were fairly certain that he would pass the program with flying colors. This was made even more certain when we went up to Morristown, NJ to see his “town walk” final exam. He did great guiding a “blind” trainer through the streets of Morristown. I was amazed to see how much Iso had learned during his training. When we left that day, we were happy to see that Iso had done so well, and we couldn’t wait to hear where Iso would be headed to work.

It was a few weeks later when we received a phone call from the Seeing Eye indicating that Iso had not made it through the program due to his distraction when other dogs were around. We had a big choice to make. We could adopt him for free, or we could let him find placement through the Seeing Eye’s adoption program. After much debate, we decided to take him back.

Iso has been a great addition to the family. He is very friendly. And he likes to know we’re around. If you’re thinking about a dog or would like to help out as a puppy raiser in this program, I’d greatly encourage you to give it a try.

Until the next post, who let the dogs out…