Community Corner
Puppies To Visit Newark Airport For Guide Dog Training (VIDEO)
Cuteness Alert: Dozens of puppies are about to take a life-changing field trip to one of the East Coast's busiest airports.
NEWARK, NJ — Navigating a bustling, modern airport is tough enough for any human. But for a puppy, the task is Herculean in scope.
Over the next two Saturdays, 180 adorable puppies will take to the concourse and airfield at Newark Liberty as part of a training program aimed at acclimating the future guide dogs to the noise and confusion of a modern airport.
The training program – conducted as a partnership between the Port Authority of NY/NJ, the TSA, United Airlines and Morristown-based nonprofit The Seeing Eye – has been helping to provide invaluable real-world experience for the future seeing eye companions for more than a decade, officials said.
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"Training and achieving real-life experience is essential for Seeing Eye’s puppies,” said Seeing Eye Director of Canine Development Peggy Gibbon. “These dogs learn to traverse through security checkpoints, become acclimated to the noises of a bustling airport and experience the busy airport environment so none of these experiences bother them when they encounter them as fully trained seeing eye dogs.”
Accompanied by the New Jersey and Pennsylvania families who volunteer to raise them, about 90 of the future guide animals will visit Newark Airport on April 1 and 90 more will visit on April 8.
Find out what's happening in Newarkfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Airport staff will take the future guide dogs on a tour of Terminal C, then escort them onto a plane and into its baggage claim areas. Port Authority police will familiarize them with emergency equipment and vehicles, and treat the families helping to train the dogs to a demonstration of their K-9 unit’s bomb-sniffing skills, officials said.
“We know that the checkpoint familiarization portion of this event will result in a smoother checkpoint experience when these puppies graduate into certified guide dogs and return to take a flight,” said Tom Carter, TSA’s federal security director for New Jersey. “This opportunity helps ensure that the canines will know what to expect when the dogs, and the people they are trained to guide, return with plans to take a flight. The orientation session also serves as a good review and reinforcement of our procedures for screening service animals for our officers who work at the checkpoint.”
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