CUMBERLAND — Miss Ginger came down the steps one at a time, pausing until her partner stepped down, too, and stood beside her.
At the bottom of the stairs, the 5-year-old Golden Retriever put all four paws on the ground — the signal that she and her partner, Len Quinn, had reached the final step.
Quinn, who lost his sight 13 years ago, has absolute trust that the dog is right.
He calls it ‘blind trust.’
“Going down steps is the most dangerous thing a blind person can do,” said Quinn, who spoke to about 100 middle school students at Bishop Walsh School on Monday afternoon.
A Lions Club member from Ripon, Wis., Quinn travels the country showing audiences how the Lions Leader Dogs for the Blind program changed his life.
“Because as you go up, you can feel things in front of you. ... When you’re coming down, when you put your foot down there’s nothing there. That’s a scary thing when you’re blind.”
It’s not so scary when Miss Ginger leads the way.
Along with Quinn’s previous leader dog, a yellow lab named Mikey, who retired four years ago, she’s helped Quinn regain much of the independence and confidence that he lost when he lost his sight.
That’s what Leader Dogs for the Blind is all about, Quinn said.
Founded in 1939 by Lions in Rochester, Mich., the program has provided more than 14,000 leader dogs over the last 73 years. Every year at the school about 265 dogs are bred, trained, and given away — for free.
But it costs around $38,000 to prepare one dog for duty, Quinn said. Primarily funded by Lions, with some other donors, Leader Dogs for the Blind invests around $10 million per year in its dogs, he said.
“Nobody’s ever paid for a leader dog,” said Steve Finger, of the LaVale Lions Club District 22-W. “Over the years, Lions Clubs all over the world have made it one of their main missions to eradicate the causes of blindness and to alleviate the suffering of people with vision loss.”
At the Michigan school, trainers work primarily with yellow labs, black labs, golden retrievers and German shepherds, starting when the puppies are about 8 weeks old, Quinn said.
The dogs, who must be socialized for a full year before being paired with a partner, are trained not to bark, so as not to be distracted from their partner’s needs. All leader dogs wear tags that say, ‘Don’t pet me. I’m working.’
“If we didn’t have a sign on that says, ‘Don’t pet me,’ the dog probably wouldn’t have any fur,” Quinn said. “People would rub it all off. This is a working dog. It is not a pet. ... If you pet it all the time, it will stop working.”
On Monday, Miss Ginger, who got permission to relax while Quinn spoke to students, lay flat on her belly, her hind legs splayed behind her. The moment Quinn said her name, she sprung to attention.
Quinn showed students how Miss Ginger leads him along, “talking” to him by making subtle movements in her hips and shoulders. When Quinn walked too close to the edge of the stage, Miss Ginger blocked his path. Later, several students put on blindfolds and practiced walking with the dog.
“When I say ‘find the way,’ I don’t know what the danger is,” Quinn said. “I can’t help her find the way...She must reason. She must figure it out for herself.”
In his daily life, Quinn trusts his life to Ginger, relying upon her to lead him across busy streets or through a busy airport. Like all leader dog recipients, Quinn had to undergo three weeks of training before he was allowed to keep the dog.
Not everyone can work with a leader dog.
“A lot of people want to try to steer their dog, or they want to second-guess what the dog is doing,” Quinn said. “You must listen to your dog all the time. In order to be a team, you must have that blind trust.”
Contact Kristin Harty Barkley at kbarkley@times-news.com.
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Len Quinn of Ripon, Wisc., with his leader dog, Miss Ginger, speaks to students at Bishop Walsh School on Monday. Ken Nolan/Times-News
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