It All Started With a Blind Machinist

Guide Dogs of America is owned and operated by a labor union that absorbs all the costs of providing dogs to blind people--and not just to blind people who are union members.

In the ‘40s, Joseph Jones, a 54-year-old member of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, “was going blind and had heard that dogs could be helpful,” recounts John Pettitt, the former machinist who now serves as the group’s president.

“Jones applied to the few guide dog schools then in existence and was disqualified because of his age. They said he was too old to make good use of a dog.”

So Jones asked his union for help. It found him a German shepherd named Lucy and hired a trainer for the two of them. The results were so impressive that Jones and the union decided to help others in the same situation.

The union gave Jones a tiny office with a phone at Lockheed in Burbank, where the by-then totally blind man found other candidates for guide dogs. Eventually the union decided to formalize its work into what is now Guide Dogs of America.

It has burgeoned from what Pettitt calls “a very primitive one-or-two-dog-a-year operation” to its current status providing hundreds of dogs annually to sightless individuals. Pettitt estimates that the total cost of providing each dog is $25,000.

The group interviews applicants at their homes, puts them on a waiting list and, when their turns come, pays all the costs of bringing them to the group’s headquarters in Sylmar from anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. “We have a good chef to feed them,” Pettitt says, “and maids to clean their rooms, just like at a hotel.”

And the group remains on call for the rest of the dog’s life. “We’ll fly a trainer anywhere to help a person with a dilemma. We may have a blind person in a rural area whose dog gets spooked by skunks. Or a person in New York whose dog needs training on how to use the subway.”

Jones lived with guide dogs until he died, well into his 80s. In his memory, Guide Dogs of America to this day has never placed an upper age limit on those who qualify for its help.