Photos: Puppies visit SLO County airport, board a plane as part of guide dog training

Travelers at the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport this Memorial Day weekend may have seen a group of “well-mannered” puppies-in-training completing their TSA security checks and boarding a plane.

That’s thanks to the local chapter of Guide Dogs for the Blind — a group that raises puppies and prepares them for extensive training to be guide dogs for people who are visually impaired. This is their 80th year doing so.

The group partners with Alaska Airlines to get their puppies familiar with the busy airport environment as a training exercise. Guide dogs must go through “rigorous training” before taking their first real flight, according to the organization.

The group included San Luis Obispo’s chapter, as well as students from Cal Poly’s Guide Dogs for the Blind club. Currently, there are about seven puppies-in-training in the county.

Guide Dogs for the Blind gets dogs when they’re 8 weeks old and keep them until they’re between 15 and 19 months old, depending on the maturity of the dog. Puppy raisers teach basic obedience like house manners and socializing.

This entails taking the dogs wherever they go — be it the movies, a restaurant or, for student puppy raisers, into class and around campus.

“It’s kind of like we have them from kindergarten to high school,” said Susan King, a club leader and puppy raiser.

Then, the dogs move on to work with licensed professional trainers and officially become guides — free of charge.

“Everywhere we take them, it makes people smile,” King said. “People just start smiling when they see a dog in an unexpected place.”

King shortly after points out a woman smiling, as the puppies are walked from security to their gate.

The last time the puppies did the airport training exercise was four or five years ago. The exercise is usually done every couple of years but was put on hold for even longer due to the pandemic.

Alaska Airlines manager Josh Wishmeyer has been working at the SLO airport for about a year now, so it was his first time leading the group through.

“I haven’t had many amazing manager moments yet, but this goes up there as number one now,” Wishmeyer said.

For Wishmeyer, it was a “great experience” to be able to help the pups become successful guide dogs. He says the puppies-in-training will bring people happiness, while also helping them with everyday life.

“I’m excited for whoever they go to help in the future,” Wishmeyer said. “The training they put in and seeing them actually do very well for the first time in the airport is amazing.”

Alaska Airlines provided a basket of treats for the puppies and their handlers, including an Alaska Airlines wineglass, a portable dog bowl and treats from San Luis Obispo’s Tails pet store.

When it was time to board, the handlers walked through the line with their dogs by their side and practiced sitting with them on an empty Alaska Airlines plane.

Meanwhile, the plane crew waited for the training exercise to be completed before boarding passengers for their real flight.

Ideally, the dogs sit under the plane seat or in front of its owner’s legs. One dog instead opted for its own seat, as if to say, “I put on my seat belt now?” a handler said.

Jenna Reimer, a fourth-year psychology major at Cal Poly, is raising her sixth dog through the student club of Guide Dogs for the Blind. As a club leader, she helps monitor the dogs’ progress and offers assistance to handlers who may be having challenges with their training.

The dogs stay with the puppy raisers 24/7, though Reimer says the club does co-raisers and dog sitters if a handler is unavailable at certain times. Training outside of the airport includes a body handling exercise to get the dog comfortable with being held and wearing vests or other equipment.

From Cal Poly’s campus to the airport, dogs can experience many different levels of distraction, Reimer said.

“Some dogs are really, really excited by the world,” Reimer said. “We just want to let them see it and experience it, but also learn how to kind of reel it in and continue to work.”

Reimer, who plans to go into dog training after graduation, recalled one success she had with a dog through another program called K9 Buddy for youth. Her puppy went on to be a “companion” to an 8-year-old girl who’s visually impaired.

“The family tells me about how it is like the highlight of her day coming home — she’s like, ‘Where’s Henderson?’” Reimer said. “So that’s really cool. It’s really touching to see the partnerships and how amazing the dogs are.”

After the training exercise, Reimer said the dogs’ airport outing was a success.

“This was a really big, distracting environment, and I didn’t see any of the dogs do any behaviors that I’m concerned about,” Reimer said. “I think we have a really good group of dogs right now and I’m really confident that they’re going to be successful.”

This story was originally published May 29, 2022 at 10:00 AM.