Graham Norwood knew he’d finally met the one when he first heard his name — Malcolm.
“There’s a whole elaborate sequence that goes into naming dogs,” he said. “I just thought Malcolm was such a great dog name.”
But it wasn’t exactly love at first sight.
Malcolm is one of hundreds of dogs trained every year to serve as guide dogs for vision-impaired or blind people by Guide Dogs for the Blind, the San Rafael guide dog school that’s also the country’s largest. The school has successfully “graduated” 16,000 Labrador and golden retrievers as guide dogs since its founding in 1942.
Norwood, a Berkeley resident, is one of the school’s many clients, all of whom undergo rigorous training alongside their new canine companions to ensure that the pair — which will be joined at the hip for the foreseeable future — are in fact, a match.
“I wanted a dog that was able to, when he’s working, be really focused,” Norwood said. “Also, I wanted a companion and a dog that was frisky and wanted to play and all of those things that make up a dog’s life outside of Malcolm’s job.”
He first met Malcolm, a sweet yellow Lab, a few years ago, but Norwood has struggled with his eyesight his entire life. Diagnosed with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a rare degenerative visual condition, Norwood got by with partial vision for most of his life until it started deteriorating even further in his mid-30s.
A new gene therapy seemed like a promising solution, but it wound up having the opposite effect.
“I went from this long, slow decline visually to overnight having to make some pretty profound adjustments with my life,” the therapist and musician said.
One of those adjustments was getting a guide dog.
Guide Dogs for the Blind had already been on his radar for years, and Norwood decided to take the same plunge as thousands of others before him. Previously, he’d relied on a white cane to get around, using a tool that allows visually impaired people to gain a sense of their surroundings. This provided him with enough spatial and movement knowledge that the school requires from clients before they undergo the dog-matching process.
When Norwood was ready, he arrived at the sprawling Marin County campus for an open house, then underwent the month-long training process, which Guide Dogs for the Blind CEO and President Christine Bessinger said was recently shortened to two weeks.
The process involves full days of working with the dogs and their trainers, followed by classes in the evenings, and then nights spent in campus lodging.
It’s a full-time commitment, but a necessary one to make sure the relationship is successful.
“Dogs are just like people: We’re all different,” Benninger said. “So we look specifically for the traits that are going to be needed for you.”
Unlike their people, the dogs prepare for their careers from the moment they’re born.
They spend the first several weeks of their lives on the campus, undergoing socialization with staff and other puppies, but they begin their “training” around five days after they’re born.
“There’s essentially 18 to 20 months of training that goes into every single dog before they graduate,” she said. After their first 10 weeks alive on campus, they get sent off to one of around 1,500 puppy “raisers” around the country who take the dogs through tasks and activities to prepare them for the real world, such as navigating busy areas like airports and shopping malls.
The puppy raisers send monthly reports to the school about the dog’s progress, and when they’re around 15 or 16 months old, they return to campus to go through their more formal training with staff trainers.
The dogs are taught to become comfortable wearing a harness, walk in a straight line, and respond to voice commands. They also learn “intelligent disobedience” — a form of training unique to seeing eye dogs.
Intelligent disobedience is essential to keeping clients safe, and it teaches the dogs to think for themselves. If a client is trying to walk across the street and a car comes out of nowhere, a dog has to stop and ignore the client’s commands to go.
“They have to make independent decisions,” Benninger said. “They have to say no to their boss, if they’re given a command that’s going to put their person in harm’s way.”
Not all make it to the end, but Benninger and staff don’t say that the dog has failed or flunked out. Instead, they make “transitions” and become companions of other kinds, or even get adopted by their raisers or friends of their raisers.
Guide Dogs for the Blind staff call it a “career change.”
“Guide work is the most challenging service work,” Benninger said. “A guide dog has to do everything correctly 100% of the time. You can’t just walk somebody into a light pole once.”
Frill, or “Bobby” as her puppy raiser calls her, is currently about 10 months old and will likely begin her formal training in five or six months.
But the hard work for most pays off, and clients are able to navigate their world with more ease than they might have been able to before.
“I was living in the heart of the Mission when I got Malcolm and lots of dogs struggle with being distracted by all the noises and smells in The City,” Norwood said. “He’s just an amazing dog, he’s able to shapeshift and be whatever is needed.”
Currently, Guide Dogs for the Blind raises around 800 puppies a year to serve as guide dogs, and the entire process, from breeding, raising, health care, training and ongoing support can cost as much as $60,000 per dog.
But the school, and other similar programs across the country, don’t receive any government funding. There have been grassroots campaigns in the past to require medical insurance providers to include guide dog access, or have state or national agencies foot the bill. None have succeeded.
Sharon Giovinazzo, CEO of San Francisco’s LightHouse for the Blind, said it just isn’t on legislators’ radars.
“Visual impairment is low-incidence,” or a less common disability, Giovianzzo said. “You really have to have a family member or loved one who is visually impaired to understand the real necessity of guide dogs.”
Giovianzzo, and others who use guide dogs, said that the service these pups provide for their owners is irreplaceable.
Kristen Ingatz, another Guide Dogs for the Blind client, lost part of her vision due to autoimmune retinopathy, a rare disease in which the immune system attacks proteins in the retina. For years, she navigated San Jose with a cane, attending the school to gain better orientation and mobility for cane use.
She didn’t intend on being paired with a guide dog.
Ingatz admitted that it took some time for the pair to get acquainted. Bestie was “all business” from the beginning, hyper-focused on Ingatz’s every move.
“When we took pictures, you could not get her to stop looking at me to look at the camera. She’s laser-focused,” Ingatz said. “Right now, she’s sleeping. But if I were to move my leg even slightly, she would jump up like, alright, what do you need? Where are we going?”
Bestie’s professional demeanor has afforded Ingatz a newfound freedom. With a cane, Ingatz limited her activities. Navigating a noisy mall with a cane, or even back-to-school nights with her young daughter, was wearying and, at times, anxiety-inducing.
She will never forget her first trip to Target with Bestie in tow. She was sure all the hard work they put in up until that point would go to the dogs.
For many, walking through the aisles of a department store is a routine, mundane activity. But for someone who is visually impaired, it can be frightening. Ingatz said Bestie sensed her nerves.
But Bestie maneuvered through aisles and marketing displays with ease, something Ingatz wasn’t able to do for years — sealing her faith in her new companion.
“Bestie just wove through it like it was nothing. I didn’t even have to consider the fact that (the obstacles) were there,” Ingatz said. “I just started crying, right there in the middle of Target.”
Norwood has had the same experience with Malcolm, who has helped him navigate everything from the New York City subway to BART. The Lab even sits by his side as he plays gigs at music venues in the Mission.
“The biggest difference for me isn’t even the transportation thing,” he said. Previously, when Norwood walked with a cane, he felt as if it put up a barrier between him and others. “They get uncomfortable, maybe they don’t know anything about etiquette, and so it’s easier to just not engage.”
That all changed when he got Malcolm.
“I can’t go to a bar and have an empty seat next to me for more than 90 seconds before somebody comes up and wants to know about Malcolm and wants to say hello,” he said. “It’s just this really transformative social distinction.”
Norwood and Ingatz said they believe in the value of canine over cane, but admitted there are some challenges — mostly from others questioning the dogs’ credentials and even the veracity of their conditions.
Norwood said people have accused him of faking his visual impairment when trying to enter businesses and shops with Malcolm. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of the rise in popularity of emotional support animals, which pose challenges to the credibility of service dogs like Malcolm and Bestie, Benninger said.
Rideshare app drivers, like Lyft or Uber, have also refused to pick up visually impaired people with their service dogs. It’s happened to Norwood, Ingatz and Giovinazzo, and although it is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, it continues to happen to others throughout the country — so much so that Lyft and Uber were slapped with discrimination lawsuits six years ago.
Still, by and large, the general public shows respect to working dogs, Ingatz said.
“I’d like people to know that when Bestie’s got her vest on, she’s in work mode. It isn’t a time to pet and play, and people — especially kids — understand that,” she said.
The next generation of guide dogs like Bestie and Malcolm are still in the beginning phase of their lives.
The current litter of golden retrievers at San Rafael right now are around seven weeks old, and will go home with their puppy raisers the first week of December and begin the monthslong training process to become verified guide dogs.
If all goes well, the puppies will follow the paw prints of Malcolm and Bestie to a grateful companion.