How are guide dogs trained?

Answer 1

Seeing eye dogs are trained from birth. They are kept at a breeding kennel, and staff socialize them with their litter until they are 8 weeks old. At this time they are tested for guide dog traits, and those puppies that pass are sent to puppy raisers. The puppy raisers teach their puppy excellent house manners, basic obedience, and expose the puppies to new situations, including taking puppies over 12 months into stores. At around 18 months, these puppies are returned to the organization they came from (ex. Seeing Eyes for the Blind, or Guiding Eyes for the Blind.), and they are then tested again. This is to test their abiblity to be a guide dog, if they pass, they undergo around 2-4 months of training with staff from that organization, and later with their blind partner. These 2-4 months teach the dog to go around obstacles without being told, and to not cross a street if a car is coming.
From about 8 weeks to 18 months they are sent to private homes of 4-H members to be raised. Puppy raisers socialize their young charges, teach them manners and basic obedience while attending weekly training classes taught by Seeing Eye trainers.

At about 18 months of age these pups are returned to the Seeing Eye for formal training with their professional trainers in how to guide the blind. They learn the commands the blind handler will use, how to recognize obstacles such as pot holes and low hanging branches, and how to work with their handler to navigate around the obstacles.

Once the dog is fully trained, he or she is matched with a human partner who comes to the Seeing Eye training center in Morristown, New Jersey for 27 days of intensive training with their new guide under the guidance of trainers. Once the person has completed the 27 day training once, when they return for subsequent dogs the training period is reduced to 20 days.
The first part of guide Dog Training is usually done by puppy raisers who socialize and habituate pups in their care and teach them basic manners and obedience under the supervision of a trainer from a guide dog school. This process typically takes 12 to 18 months. At the end of that time, guide dog candidates are returned to their schools for advanced training in obstacle avoidance, directed guiding, and intelligent disobedience.

Directed guiding ("left," "right," "forward," "wait") is taught by pairing the commands with the actions. It's the easiest part of the advanced training, but also the most used.

Intelligent disobedience is the process of recognizing when there is an exception to a command and disobeying out of duty rather than disobeying because the dog would rather do something else. For example, if a guide dog is given a command to "forward" into a street, but he sees a car coming, he will intelligently disobey the command to "forward" because it is dangerous to the handler to step in front of a moving car.

Obstacle avoidance is the most important safety skill of guide dogs and the one that most fascinates people curious about guide dogs. Once an obstacle is recognized, the dog is instructed to navigate around that obstacle. He must do so regardless of whether the best path lies to the right or left of the obstacle, and while taking into account not only his own path, but the path of his human partner. Guide dogs are also trained to recognize low hanging obstacles, such as tree branches, that could injure their partner and to navigate around them as well.

Here's one example of how obstacle avoidance might be taught:

Avoiding low hanging tree branches

The trainer approaches a low hanging tree branch with a cane held in front of her face. When the cane hits the tree branch it makes an audible cue to the dog that something has happened. The trainer might also say "ouch" or otherwise indicate an injury has occurred (good acting on the trainer's part is essential for this to work). The team will repeat this exercise with the same tree a few times until the dog is consistently navigating around the branch. Then the trainer finds another branch in another area for additional practice. Because dogs don't generalize well, it is important to practice the same concept (avoid low hanging branches) in several different locations and situations until the dog realizes all low branches and not just specific ones are to be avoided.
They go to families who will train them as a puppy, then after a few months/year they go back to the Guide Dog place and go to people on need!!
First off, are you loosely using the term "guide dog" for all service dogs or do you mean a guide dog? all service dogs go through two phases in training. The first is basic commands often done with a trainer volunteering in a program. The next phase is advanced training where dogs learn more complicated cues specific to their line of work. This is where dogs learn cues to become guide dogs, wheelchair assistance dogs etc.. The whole process takes about two years, and most dogs have a healthy working life of seven years.
They are trained from a very young age to become a guide dog, it's very rare if not impossible for an adult dog to become a guide dog as the training is pretty intensive.

They're trained at schools from puppyhood before eventually 'graduating' to become guide dogs.
Seeing eye dogs are trained from birth. They are kept at a breeding kennel, and staff socialize them with their litter until they are 8 weeks old. At this time they are tested for guide dog traits, and those puppies that pass are sent to puppy raisers. The puppy raisers teach their puppy excellent house manners, basic obedience, and expose the puppies to new situations, including taking puppies over 12 months into stores. At around 18 months, these puppies are returned to the organization they came from (ex. Seeing Eyes for the Blind, or Guiding Eyes for the Blind.), and they are then tested again. This is to test their abiblity to be a guide dog, if they pass, they undergo around 2-4 months of training with staff from that organization, and later with their blind partner. These 2-4 months teach the dog to go around obstacles without being told, and to not cross a street if a car is coming.
Seeing eye dogs are trained from birth. They are kept at a breeding kennel, and staff socialize them with their litter until they are 8 weeks old. At this time they are tested for guide dog traits, and those puppies that pass are sent to puppy raisers. The puppy raisers teach their puppy excellent house manners, basic obedience, and expose the puppies to new situations, including taking puppies over 12 months into stores. At around 18 months, these puppies are returned to the organization they came from (ex. Seeing Eyes for the Blind, or Guiding Eyes for the Blind.), and they are then tested again. This is to test their abiblity to be a guide dog, if they pass, they undergo around 2-4 months of training with staff from that organization, and later with their blind partner. These 2-4 months teach the dog to go around obstacles without being told, and to not cross a street if a car is coming.
With a lot of work

Seeing eye dogs are trained from birth. They are kept at a breeding kennel, and staff socialize them with their litter until they are 8 weeks old. At this time they are tested for guide dog traits, and those puppies that pass are sent to puppy raisers. The puppy raisers teach their puppy excellent house manners, basic obedience, and expose the puppies to new situations, including taking puppies over 12 months into stores. At around 18 months, these puppies are returned to the organization they came from (ex. Seeing Eyes for the Blind, or Guiding Eyes for the Blind.), and they are then tested again. This is to test their abiblity to be a guide dog, if they pass, they undergo around 2-4 months of training with staff from that organization, and later with their blind partner. These 2-4 months teach the dog to go around obstacles without being told, and to not cross a street if a car is coming.
Required training for guide dogs includes some of these important skills: Being able to lead a person in a straight line, from one location to another. Being able to stop at changes in elevation such as stairs and curbing. Being able to stop at overhead obstacles and must be able to avoid obstacles in one walking path.