Leash on Life

It turns out that the obstacles that you may face getting to your next class or meeting on time make the University of Maryland campus a perfect canine training ground.

Partnering with the Guide Dog Foundation, students in the UMD Guide Dog Program volunteer as "puppy raisers," a 12- to 16-month process of socializing and exploring that results in a young dog ready for training to give visually impaired people a leg up in navigating the world.

“The University of Maryland is such a great place to train future guide dogs, because there’s buses, there’s cars, there’s people going by,” says Deana Stone of the Guide Dog Foundation. “So when they go out and they’re really working in the real world, nothing fazes them after being on such a busy campus.”