Okay, puppies.
Are we ready for the ceremony?
Sit.
Good poopies.
Stay.
I said stay.
Hey, Joy.
You look busy.
Oh, hey, Oliver.
Perfect timing.
Did you bring the 62 collars, leashes, and paper crowns?
Yes.
Wait, is it for all these puppies?
You got it.
I was watching 101 Dalmatians yesterday with my dogs, and I was inspired.
Every puppy deserves a home.
Plus, I have tons of room in the Dolo treehouse.
I only have three animals living with me right now, and they're treated like royalty.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
My two dogs, King Louie and Dame Deidre, and our saucy cat, Princess Caroline.
There is a royal theme going on here.
And now we also have these 62 puppies with collars, leashes, and paper crowns.
I just need your help knighting them so they can join the Dolo crew.
Ahem.
Henceforth, you shall be known as Puddles Dewey Dolo.
First of your name, tribe of the tormentor of squirrels.
Do you promise to eat everything off the floor, bark at the mailman and cuddle with me during scary movies.
Uh, Joy, I hate to interrupt, but...
Uh-oh.
Oh, no!
No!
Oh, no!
It's a waterfall!
The poopies!
They're peeing!
Outside!
All of you!
Welcome to Forever Ago from APM Studios.
I'm Joy Dolo, and my co-host today is Oliver from Snohomish, Washington.
Hey, Oliver.
Hi, Joy.
So today we're talking about the history of guide dogs.
Guide dogs are specially trained dogs that help people who are blind or visually impaired get around in the world.
Each guide dog wears a special harness with a handle for their owner to hold.
Guide dogs learn how to do things like lead their owner safely across busy streets and around obstacles.
Oliver, you actually wrote to us and suggested today's topic.
So what made you think of it?
I have been raising guide dogs for Guide Dogs for the Blind for as long as I can remember.
My mom has been raising them for coming on 19 years.
Wow, 19 years.
Yeah, so right now we have two puppies that we're raising.
Their names are Santana and Coast, and they're the 13th and 14th puppies we've raised.
Wow, that's a lot of puppies.
Yeah.
So your mom got you into and taught you all the ropes of raising a guide dog?
Yeah, and I help out with almost everything.
I handle them during some outings when Mama's hands are full.
I do the very important work of relieving them every day.
Making sure they get outside?
Yep.
Yeah, that's very important for your carpets especially.
Yeah.
So your family is raising Santana and Coast right now.
Yeah.
And what kind of dogs are they?
They are both yellow female Labradors.
So what's the best thing about raising puppies to be guide dogs?
I think the best thing is seeing them grow up so much from when they get taken off of the truck from the campus and just getting to see their cute little furry faces all the way to them getting back on the truck, going back to guide dogs for the blind campus to learn how how to be with their new handlers.
So there's like a campus, like a little college, a doggy college campus?
Yes.
We actually use that same term every time we let a dog go to college.
Yeah.
They're going off to college.
So how would you explain puppy raising to someone who's never heard of it?
I think I would say that puppy raising is you need to raise a dog to be the best dog they can be.
Mm-hmm for their entire young life.
You need to teach them all the correct commands.
They need to be the best behaved and it's your work to make sure that they are the best they can be before they go back to campus to finish their learning and get matched with a partner.
Very cool.
Thanks for explaining that, Oliver.
You know, humans and dogs have been living together for more than 30,000 years.
Our buddies at Brains On actually did a whole episode about how dogs evolved from wolves and became pets.
We have a link to that episode in our show notes.
Guide dogs have been helping blind people for a really long time, too.
Maybe going back as far as 2,000 years.
Archaeologists working in Italy found a mural in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum that appears to show a blind person being led by a dog.
There's also a Chinese scroll with a painting of a person with a guide dog.
That's almost 800 years old.
There's even a British alphabet rhyme from the 1700s that mentions guide dogs.
A was an archer who shot at a frog.
B was a blind man led by a dog.
We also know about at least two men who trained their own dogs to help them get around.
But the first official guide dog schools that we know of, like the one my family trains puppies for, started about 100 years ago in Germany.
This is why German Shepherds, which come from Germany, are commonly used as guide dogs today.
This was in the early 1900s, around this time the world's first airplane took flight.
The Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg and more people were starting to cruise around in their shiny new automobiles.
And this was also right after World War I.
World War I was a major war that happened in Europe, where millions of soldiers were killed and even more were injured.
Some soldiers lost their vision in battle and they needed help learning to live without their sight.
In Germany, people started taking the idea of helper dogs very seriously.
By the mid-1920s, guide dog schools were opening up all around Germany.
And they were about to go global, in large part thanks to one woman.
Just across the border from Germany, in Switzerland, was a woman named Dorothy Eustace.
She was a wealthy American who had a passion for breeding and training dogs.
Puppies, sit.
Lie down.
Now, roll over.
Play dead.
And up on your back legs.
That's it.
Let's see you boogie.
Shake those tails.
Oh, good puppies.
Yes, you are.
Oh, yes, you are the best puppies.
In 1927, she heard about the German guide dog schools and decided to see one for herself.
At first, she was skeptical.
She didn't believe that dogs could really navigate a busy city without getting distracted or confused, which would be dangerous for the person who was depending on them.
But pretty soon, she was convinced.
She wrote about what she saw in a newspaper called the Saturday Evening Post.
Here's how she described guide dogs.
From the very small beginnings of becoming absolutely housebroken, he has taken step by step upward to his life work of leading a blind man, of being that man's eyes.
Lots of the people in the U.S. read Dorothy's article, including a teenager named Morris Frank.
Morris had lost his sight just a few years earlier.
For years he had relied on others to help him get to class, run errands or go anywhere he wanted to go.
Like if he wanted to go on a date, Morris had to make it a double date.
He'd have to have a friend come along to help steer him.
When Morris' dad read him Dorothy's article about guide dogs, Morris immediately wrote her a letter asking if she could send him the address of the school.
Dorothy surprised Morris by inviting him to Switzerland.
She said she would train Morris alongside one of her dogs.
But going halfway around the world wasn't something Morris could do on a whim.
Remember, this was the late 1920s, almost a hundred years ago.
People got their news and entertainment from the radio, and less than half of Americans had a telephone in their home.
And Morris Frank definitely couldn't get to Switzerland by plane.
He had to take a long boat ride and, because of his disability, the ship classified him as a package, not a passenger.
That meant Morris was locked in his room every day until a member of the crew came to let him out and walk him around the deck.
Morris wrote that he felt like a prisoner and became even more determined to gain his independence.
Finally, Morris made it to Switzerland.
When he got there, he was matched with a guide dog named Kiss.
Which was a little awkward.
Let's go, Kiss.
Good kiss.
Did he just say what I think he said?
He sure did.
He's talking about kissing.
Come, Kiss.
No, no, no.
I mean, come sit by me.
Don't kiss me.
I think you need a new name.
Morris decided to rename his dog Buddy.
He and Buddy worked together every day for more than a month.
Morris learned how to put Buddy's special harness on and what commands to use to get Buddy to take him where he needed to go.
After a few weeks of training, Morris decided to take Buddy into town so he could get a haircut.
Back home, a haircut had been an all-day process for Morris.
His dad would drop him off at the barbershop on his way to work in the morning, and then Morris would have to wait there all day for his dad to pick him up on his way home.
But now that he had Buddy the guide dog, Morris was able to walk to the barber shop all on his own.
Hello.
I have an appointment for a trim.
Welcome, sir.
Oh, and a dog.
Have a seat.
Let's get started.
All set, kid.
Looking good.
Thanks, mister.
Let's go, Buddy.
Morris and Buddy walked back to the school afterwards and, as the story goes, he found Dorothy and said I'm free, Dorothy.
I'm finally free.
Morris and Buddy took that same long boat trip from Switzerland back home to the US, and when they got there a crowd of reporters was waiting for them.
They heard the story about a young man and his canine guide.
They wanted to see if the pair could actually get around safely like they claimed they could.
Morris, Buddy, over here.
What a cute dog.
What's your name, kid?
Hey, Morris.
Think your pup can get you across West Street?
West Street was a busy street in downtown Manhattan.
It was dangerous for anyone to walk across and the reporters didn't think Buddy and Morris could do it.
Morris was nervous, but he trusted Buddy.
Okay, Buddy.
Let's go.
Forward!
Forward!
Unbelievable.
Now that's a good dog.
When it was all over, Morris gave Buddy a big hug and sent a message to Dorothy back in Switzerland.
It had only one word.
Success!
Morris, Dorothy, and Buddy would go on to have many more successes.
They started the first ever guide dog school in the United States.
It's called the Seeing Eye, and it's still going today.
Every year, they train hundreds of dogs and match them with people who need them.
Morris worked there for many years.
He also traveled all around the world with his many guide dogs, all named Buddy, after the original.
And since then, hundreds of other guide dog schools have started up all over the world.
And we're going to hear more about one of them in just a bit.
But right now, let's take a break to play...
This is the game where we take three things from history and try to put them in order.
For today's game, we're going to play with three other technologies that help people with vision loss.
Accessible pedestrian signals.
Those are the crossing signals that beep, click or speak to tell you when it's safe to cross the road.
Braille, that's the language made up of raised dots that people with vision loss read through touch.
And audiobooks. which are recordings of people reading books out loud.
Okay Oliver, which do you think came first, which came second and which came most recently in history?
Ooh, this one's hard.
I'm going to say I think Braille was first because I know it was really old.
And I think the original Braille was done on like leather or some kind of hide.
Oh okay oh, that's interesting, i didn't know that.
And then i think audiobooks, because i kind of think that audiobooks sometimes they're on like tracks or tapes, which i think of is kind of old yeah yeah, have you ever um, have you ever seen a cassette before or played with a cassette?
Uh, I have seen them, but I've never actually touched one or used one.
Yeah, cassettes are from when I was a kid.
And then older than that were the, what's it, 8-track it was called?
And I've never seen one of those in real life.
But those are, I think those are like old, old cassettes.
Yeah.
And then finally, I think, crossing signals, because I kind of think of those signs that say wait, now you can go.
I kind of think of those.
They're kind of more recent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like I've seen them most recently as well.
So we have Braille. audiobooks, and crossing signals.
Is that your final answer?
Yes.
Alright, let's lock and load and put it in.
We'll hear the answers at the end of the episode right after the credits.
We'll be right back.
We are working on an episode all about one of the most excellent snacks ever, popcorn.
And we want to hear from you.
What do you think will be the snack of the future?
Crunchy space dust, celery nuggets, salted gummy bears?
Let us know.
Oliver, what do you think we'll snack on in the future?
Ooh, I don't know.
This one's hard.
Something that I would love to have in the future is a snack that's bite-sized burritos.
Bite-sized burritos.
So anywhere you go, you've got a little burrito you can eat.
Yeah, and it only takes one bite and you can just pop it in and have all the delicious, yummy flavor of a burrito in a bite-sized snack.
Sign me up.
Listeners.
Record yourself describing your spectacular future snack idea and send it to us at foreveragoorg slash contact.
And while you're there, you can send us episode ideas, drawings, and questions.
So keep listening.
Brains on Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults.
And since you're a fan of Forever Ago, we know you'll love the other shows in our universe.
Come on, let's explore.
Entering Brains on Universe.
So many podcasts.
Brains on.
Smash Boom Best.
Forever Ago.
Picking up signals.
Brains on.
Brains on.
A science podcast.
About a hundred bolts of lightning strike the Earth's surface every second.
But there are all different types of lightning.
You can have lightning bolts between clouds, from the ground up to a cloud, even lightning that looks like glowing balls.
Lightning balls.
Zarp, where did the signal go?
Must find brains on pod.
Search for Brains On wherever you listen to podcasts.
You're listening to Forever Ago.
I'm Joy.
And I'm Oliver.
Today we're talking about guide dogs.
Historians think guide dogs may have been used to help people who are blind or have vision loss for thousands of years.
But official guide dog schools are only about 100 years old.
Guide dog training was pioneered in Germany and spread throughout the world in the 1900s.
It stayed pretty much the same since then, but at some schools the training has gotten longer because cars and traffic have gotten much more complicated for guide dogs to navigate.
Today, there are thousands of guide dog teams.
I got to meet one of them, Elishay and their guide dog, Pico.
Hi, Elishay.
Hi.
And is Pico there too?
Yes, he's next to me.
Oh, Pico's such a good boy.
But what kind of dog is Pico?
So he's a mixture between a Labrador and a Bernese Mountain Dog.
Elishay is about to graduate high school and will be starting college next year.
They love to act, dance, and play sports.
But for a long time, Elisha didn't think they'd be able to do any of these things.
That's because for most of their life, Elisha has been blind.
So I was born with average vision and then basically I, you know, lost a big chunk of it and was, you know, using glasses, but glasses just weren't working.
I still couldn't see like the other kids could.
So I went to all these specialists and no one knew what was wrong.
And actually 10 years ago I got a call from a specialist and we had done a test that we didn't think would come up with any results.
We just were like, we got to check it off the list.
And we did it and came back that I had Conrad dystrophy, which would lead me to go blind.
This news was really hard for LSA to hear.
They thought that losing their site meant that they were losing their independence, too.
I was devastated.
I didn't know any other blind people.
And it was honestly, at that time, the worst thing that I thought could ever happen to me.
Because I thought all my dreams, everything I wanted to do was over.
I didn't think I could dance.
I didn't think I could act.
I didn't think I could live a normal life, like cook or clean.
I didn't think I would be able to independently navigate, like walk around, go to classes.
I didn't think I could read.
At first, Elisha was in denial about what was happening.
They didn't want to learn to read Braille and would conveniently lose the cane they needed to use to navigate.
But when a teacher at school lent Ella Shea an audiobook about guide dogs, things started to change.
So I went home and I read this book, and I read it all one night.
And I came back the next day and I told her, I was like, I want a guide dog.
And she was like, well...
Blind people have guide dogs.
And at that time, I was like, I'm not blind.
I can see.
I'm fine.
Because like I said, I thought my world was ending, so I didn't accept it.
But basically learning about guide dogs pushed me to accept my blindness and use a cane and read Braille and different things like that.
I can understand how having something to look forward made it easier for LHA to accept what was happening.
Definitely.
But LHA knew that most schools only train adults to work with guide dogs.
It's rare for kids to learn how to use them.
But there's one school in Canada that works with people younger than 16.
So when LHA was 12, their parents decided they were ready to apply.
And they got in.
But then the pandemic happened and the school shut down, so they had to wait even more.
Finally, in 2022, when Elisha was 15, they got to start their guide dog training.
The first thing we simply learned was how to groom dogs because this dog is just not furniture.
This dog isn't just a cane.
He's a living, breathing being.
And you have to, you know, accept that and love that to really be able to trust and bond with your dog.
LSA was there for four weeks.
That first week of training was really just about building a relationship with Pico.
And then week two is when we kind of really got into like using the dog, like learning all the guide commands.
A fun fact about Pico is that he speaks French.
Their guide dog school was in Montreal, and French is the primary language spoken there.
So most important would probably be simply like, which means go forward.
Which is slow down.
And also, which is pay attention.
So anytime he gets distracted, I say, to me, and I'll tap my leg, be like, hey, me.
Magnifique!
With Pico, LSA got to try things they had never done before.
During the third week we went out into like this trail in the woods, which was probably my favorite training day because we got to do something that genuinely, you can't really do with a cane.
You know, the dog gives you this way of.
You can do it yourself, and they can also see the branches above your head and stuff like that which obviously a cane can't.
Finally, it was time for the last week of training.
Just like Morris, Frank and Buddy when they crossed that busy city street 100 years ago in New York, Elisha and Pico were about to take on the big city.
We started to work in Montreal, you know, do some metro work.
So using public transit, working on, you know, dog resistant to make sure.
So like we would have our dogs working and they would let other guide dogs off to play around them, which is so hard because they're like oh, my brothers and sisters, I want to go play.
But they have to focus and they have to keep working.
That's a lot to learn in a month.
It really was.
But Elishe also had a trainer come and visit them when they brought Pico back home to help get him used to his new environment.
The training wasn't easy, but in the end, it was totally worth it.
Like it genuinely feels like a whole new world was opened to me that I really could do anything at any time anywhere, by myself.
You know, I didn't have to depend on another person.
It was just me and Pico.
It was really cool to meet Elishay and Pico.
Totally.
Oh, speaking of dogs, looks like it's time to take each of my new puppies for a walk.
You are going to take each of those 62 dogs for a walk?
That's ridiculous.
It'll take you forever.
Oh, totally.
That's why I'm not walking them one at a time.
I'm going to take them all at the same time.
Hand me those 62 leashes.
Let's go, poopies.
Wait, no, not that direction.
Don't.
Why did I think this was a good idea?
Oh, no.
A squirrel.
Slow down, doggies.
Slow down.
Guide dogs help people who are blind or have vision loss live more independent lives.
People probably started working with guide dogs thousands of years ago, but official guide dog schools are only a little more than 100 years old.
They first started in Germany after World War I.
Then, thanks to the work of Morris Frank and Dorothy Eustace, they spread to the US and today there are thousands of guide dog teams working all over the world.
If you want to learn more about them or become a puppy racer like me, check out the show notes.
This episode was written by Nico Gonzalez-Whistler.
It was produced by Ruby Guthrie and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler.
Our editors are Sandon Totten and Shayla Farzan.
Fact-checking by Katie Ruther.
Engineering help from Rob Jacob Springer and Derek Ramirez.
With sound design by Rachel Breeze.
Original theme music by Mark Sanchez.
We had additional production help from the rest of the Brains on Universe team.
Beth Perlman is our executive producer, and the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavadi and Joanne Griffith.
Special thanks to Nick Ryan, Michelle Barlock, Rebecca Manelga, and Sebastian.
And if you want access to ad-free episodes and special bonus content, subscribe to our Smarty Pass.
Okay, Oliver.
Are you ready to hear the answers for First Things First?
Oh, yes.
Oh, buddy.
Here they are.
So as a reminder, you said Braille, audiobooks, and crossing signals as your order, yes?
Yeah.
All right.
So let's see.
Drum roll, please.
Drum roll.
Oh, you were so close, so close.
So, okay, first up, very first, you are absolutely right.
Braille, Braille is number one.
So that was from 1824.
And Braille is a tactile system of reading and writing used by people who are blind.
Tactile means that it's understood through touch.
And it was invented by a Frenchman named Louis Braille in 1824.
So Louis lost his sight at the age of five in an elementary school he had to learn by listening.
When he was 10, Louis got a scholarship to attend the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris.
When he was there, he learned about night writing, a messaging system of raised dots used by the French army to communicate at night, and was inspired to create something similar for people who were blind to use for reading.
So that's where it came from.
Woo!
Hmm.
Interesting.
So next up was accessible pedestrian signals.
That was second.
Yeah.
Isn't that nuts?
It seems like so long ago.
Yeah.
So the first accessible pedestrian signals were installed over 100 years ago in 1920.
Wow.
Whoa!
Yeah, yeah.
So when the light turned green and it was safe to cross, they would make a ringing sound like a bell.
I'm assuming, maybe or something.
Yeah, yeah.
So these early signals were usually only installed near schools for blind or visually impaired people, so they weren't super helpful for getting around a city or a town at large.
By the 1960s the technology had started to spread, but they still are not required by law at every intersection.
Wow.
That's interesting because I feel like it's at all intersections that I've ever been a part of.
Yeah.
But they don't have to do that.
There's always the buttons that you press to cross the street.
And you wait for the little voice to say it's time to walk.
Yeah.
And then last but certainly not least is audiobooks.
Audiobooks are from 1932.
Yeah, that's when they were first introduced.
And that was when the American Federation for the Blind opened a recording studio to record books onto vinyl records.
At first, each side of a record could only hold about 15 minutes of recording.
And audiobooks really took off with cassette tapes in the 1960s and then CDs in the 1980s.
Would you look at that?
Cassette tapes!
Yeah!
They came back to haunt us again.
So were you surprised by any of those answers?
Yeah, I didn't think that accessible pedestrian crossing signs were that old.
Yeah, me neither.
I swear, I thought that was in the last maybe 50 years or so.
Yeah.
Join us next week for a new episode all about toilets.
Thanks for listening!
