For years, we’ve been raising Seeing Eye puppies. It is an extremely rewarding, heart-warming experience! This is Oz, our current trainee. And, yes, he DOES know how totally adorable he is.
Our very first pup, Racine, was an energetic black lab. And by energetic I mean she was in near constant motion.
Our job was to socialize her by taking her to many different types of places: the library, softball practice, work with me, etc. The challenge was that when we took her for a walk, she pulled SO hard on the leash that we feared for dislocated shoulders! Consequently, when my daughter and I would go out for the day we’d have to trade off to give each other a rest.
So picture this: we’re walking along at the mall and Racine is wearing her Seeing Eye Puppy Program bandana. Imagine that I am holding the leash. People seemed to jump to the conclusion, looking at her quickly, that I was blind. But after a little while my shoulder would hurt and I’d hand the leash to Stacy. Well, the looks we got!!!! We could almost hear them thinking: “Wait! If the mom is blind, how can she give the dog to her daughter? And if the daughter has the dog now, does that mean they’re BOTH blind? And if they’re both blind, then how is the mom walking without the dog??!!??”
It was all about expectations. They EXPECTED one thing and got another. This was humorous for us as puppy raisers…not so much as consumers.
When you’re out shopping, dealing with vendors or negotiating with clients you have expectations. You know what you want…you know what you expect. And that doesn’t include surprises.
That’s an important part of our company’s culture: to fulfill and exceed expectations. When you deal with us, there just plain ARE no surprises. We always ship on time, gifts are always high quality and we’re always on budget. Seeing Eye pup or not: what you see is what you get.
