Week 4 - Maya gets tested for breeding suitability at the vets

This week I took Maya to the Guide Dog Training Centre at Atherton, to have her eyes checked by a vet, who comes along to the training centre, where she had drops put into her eyes, to dilate the pupils, to enable the vet to look into her eyes through an opthalmascope. Luckily her eyes were alright, so I left her at the training centre, for her to be taken to have her hips and elbows x-rayed the next day. I collected her later that day.  I now have to wait for the results to come through, which sometimes can take up to two weeks.

If the x-rays are good, she will move down to the Tollgate breeding centre in Warwickshire, where she will undergo some assessments, before she will be accepted onto the breeding programme, and even then, if one of her siblings have shown signs of dysplasia, then there is a possibility that Maya could still be withdrawn, along with any other siblings that were earmarked for breeding, this is just how selective that Guide Dogs are, to ensure they get a very good bloodline on their breeding programme.

It is all so very different from the early days, nearly eighty years ago, when Guide Dogs used to buy their puppies in, from outside breeders.  They sometimes also had dogs donated to them, some were good, and some not so good.  Some of the dogs that were donated, could travel down by train in the guards van, and again some were nice and others could be quite nasty, and would snarl and growl at the staff, that had gone to collect them, those were the ones that usually didn't have any identification on them, so could not be sent back, new homes then had to be found for them elsewhere. With this system the success rate was not very good, and so Guide Dogs eventually started their own breeding programme, with so much more success.