Welcome to part 2 of our article that’ll help you train your puppy to become a guide dog

Work on boosting their memory

You should also help to boost your puppy's memory as the schools will be looking for a good memory when you take them for their tests.

For one thing, this means ensuring they have a great diet full of brain foods. You want to ensure they have plenty of vitamin E and C as well as fruits and vegetables to keep their brain in tip-top condition. You can also involve your pooch in some memory games which will help to keep their mind working. Ensuring they learn different routes is also important to enhance their memory.

Let them take the lead and they will hopefully show you the way to different places once they have learnt this route. Once they become a guide dog, they will get a GPS tracker which is one of the top wearables for pets. It will show which route they have taken and is essential if the dog does get lost when out with their owner who has a visual impairment.

Ensure they are obedient and well-behaved

You can make sure your dog is on its way to becoming a guide dog by working on their obedience and behaviour.

Even from them being a puppy, you want to make sure they follow instructions and aren't showing disobedient and aggressive tendencies. You can teach them the basics of obedience and you might want to take them to a class when they are a young puppy. They will give you tips on how to ensure your pooch has good behaviour from now on. And a well-behaved dog is normally a happier and positive pooch which will all work in your favour when you take your dog for the test. Remember to socialize your dog around other pooches and cars too while they are young. You want to make sure they don't end up fighting with other animals as this will stop them from going on any further to become a guide dog.

Conclusion

Once you feel the pooch is ready, you can then take them for a test to get into guide dog school. If they do go to one of these schools, they will tend to stay there for 19 weeks before moving on to guide dog secondary school for a further 12 weeks.

At the end of their training, they will then be matched with a person whose needs will match the dog's personality. If training puppies sounds like something you would love to do, you could always become a guide dog trainer.

One benefit of this career is that you work with the puppy throughout the whole of their training. It's rewarding seeing the puppy reach adulthood and go to live with a selected candidate. To learn how to become qualified, you can look at our career advice and learn about the different courses you can do to work with animals.

We hope this guide will help you take the necessary steps to better prepare your puppy to become a guide dog eventually.

At ACD, we also have several dog and puppy courses that you may wish to explore if you’re interested in improving your understanding of working with and training dogs.