Imagine adopting a sweet puppy, all floppy ears and pink belly. You survive the tribulations of puppyhood, the chewed-up shoes and housetraining accidents, and manage to teach basic concepts such as "sit," "stay" and "the postman is not a mortal enemy."
Then after a year, at a time when most dog owners can relax and enjoy the fruits of their training labours, you have to give your puppy back.
It sounds heartbreaking, but Kari-Lynn Ferreira has done it - 10 times.
She's one of 200 foster parents who care for puppies in training to become service dogs for the Lions Foundation of Canada. Their mission: Turn eight-week-old puppies into good canine citizens. In addition to running regular obedience classes, foster parents take their puppies everywhere a service dog might need to go: crowded shopping malls, mass transit, restaurants, offices, public washrooms and so on.
Ms. Ferreira's current charge is Jay, a Labrador-golden retriever cross who behaves, for now, like a typical five-month-old. Tail whipping back and forth, tongue lolling out of his mouth, he alternates between gnawing loudly on a bone and trying to wriggle into my lap and lick my face when I visit his Oakville foster home.
"He's just like any other puppy," Ms. Ferreira says. Except, of course, that Jay has a grander destiny in store. In about seven months, he'll return to the Lions Foundation facility in Oakville for six to eight months of training to become a seeing-eye, hearing-ear, seizure-response or "special skills" dog guide for a disabled person.
Even after 10 dogs, saying goodbye doesn't get any easier.
"It's extremely hard," says Ms. Ferreira, a medical secretary. "I love them to bits. But when you see what they go on to do, and help other people to do, it's so rewarding."
One puppy she fostered became a hearing-ear dog for a deaf woman who had recently married and wanted to have children, but had been afraid to because she couldn't hear a baby's cries. Another client's mother thanked Ms. Ferreira, saying she could finally sleep soundly at night knowing that her deaf daughter, living on her own for the first time, would be alerted by her dog if the fire alarm sounded.
There's a six-month to one-year waiting list for disabled people who want service dogs from the Lions Foundation, which is always looking for new puppy foster parents. Most animal shelters and rescue groups also need foster families to take in pets waiting for adoption.
The Lions Foundation pays for food and veterinary care, but foster parents must put in a lot of work and time. When the puppies wear their green "future dog guide" coats, they become mini-celebrities.
Ms. Ferreira recalls trying to teach Jay to ride an escalator at a mall in Oakville. At first he wanted no part of it, and shied away from the metal steps. It took much coaxing before Jay braved the moving staircase - and when he finally did, the entire food court burst into applause.
But celebrity is also time-consuming. There's no such thing as a quick walk with a guide dog puppy. Everyone has questions, and it's part of a foster parent's job to be a guide dog ambassador and answer them cheerfully. "If you plan on being out of the house for an hour, give yourself two hours," Ms. Ferreira advises.
And sometimes it's just annoying. Your otherwise impeccably behaved puppy makes one teensy lunge toward a squirrel, Dolly Murray says, and you hear snide comments like, "That's gonna be a guide dog?"
"I just smile and go on," says Ms. Murray, who is fostering her fifth dog, a black Lab named Cadet. She's lost several television remotes and a cellphone to sharp puppy teeth, but she says all the sacrifice pays off when she sees her dogs beside their new companions at the Lions Foundation graduation.
"We see them sitting so calmly with the client, and it's worth all the year and the tears," Ms. Murray says. "We get all the near-shoulder dislocations, all the pulling and the embarrassing moments - then when they do behave we think, 'Yes!' "
For more information on fostering a dog, visit the Lions Foundation website at DogGuides.com, or contact your local animal shelter.
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