Charlie, the Labrador Retriever raised by Ball State assistant professor of journalism Robin Blom, will not become a Leader Dog for the Blind, like originally planned.
After noticing Charlie was not a big fan of stairs and observing how frequently he was distracted by other dogs, the Leader Dog organization decided that Charlie would be "career changed."
Blom was called Aug. 26 with the news.
“That’s definitely not the goal, but it wasn’t completely unexpected,” Blom said. “The success rate is already below 50 percent, and I knew there were some issues that he would have a harder time to make an adjustment to … he just has a hard time focusing on work when other dogs are around, but he likes playing with other dogs.”
Blom had the option to adopt Charlie after he didn’t pass leader dog training, but he knew from the start he would be unable to permanently adopt Charlie due to his travel and work schedule.
“I’ve been to probably five or six conferences during spring [2016] semester alone," Blom said in a previous interview. "My family is in the Netherlands. … I usually go home for two to three months during the summer and a few weeks during winter break, so that would mean that I would have to find someone to dog sit for all those occasions, and that’s gonna be just a nightmare to get that done. I think it’s better for him to find another loving family where there’s more people that can pay attention to him.”
Charlie will either go to another organization or be adopted by a family. Blom’s contact information will be given to whoever takes Charlie, and that person will have the option to contact Blom with updates.
If Charlie had passed training, Blom would have had the opportunity to return to the organization to say goodbye before Charlie was matched with his “forever person.” Now, Blom thinks seeing Charlie again would do more harm to Charlie than good.
“It would be very confusing, probably, for him if I showed up and then left again,” Blom said.
Blom is still thinking about whether or not he will train another future leader dog.
“[Training Charlie] was a lot of fun. It’s lots of work, too, but I think overall it was very positive,” Blom said. “Even though he’s not a guide dog, we’ve been to so many places and so many airports and every time people are asking about it or how that works to have a dog trained, literally hundreds of people now know that they shouldn’t pet a guide dog because that’s what they wanted to do with Charlie. … Even though he didn’t make it, we were still ambassadors for the organization."
Another future Leader Dog named Winston will have his first day on Ball State’s campus Aug. 29.
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