As a clinical trials research program coordinator in the vitreoretinal service at Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Dagmar Wehling often sees patients come to the clinic with their guide dogs to help them navigate.

Watching these dogs in action over the years — she joined the Wilmer Eye Institute in 2017 — Wehling has been in awe of how they do their job. It inspired her to someday want to train a guide dog of her own. During the COVID-19 pandemic, that hope became a reality.

Wehling takes part in the Foundation Fighting Blindness’ VisionWalk in Baltimore. She participates with a team based at Johns Hopkins, and it has become an annual tradition for her. When she took part in 2019, she met representatives from Guiding Eyes for the Blind, who were there with puppies training to become guide dogs. She got a business card for a contact there.

Established in 1954, Guiding Eyes for the Blind, which is based in Yorktown Heights, New York, provides guide dogs to people with vision loss. The nonprofit has trained nearly 10,000 dogs along the Eastern Seaboard and as far west as Colorado.

After her family’s dog, a black Laborador mix named Oscar, died in 2019, Wehling remembered the business card that was still on her refrigerator door. Not ready to commit to another family pet just yet, she felt that training a puppy could fill the void left by Oscar’s passing. “We thought it was the perfect time to look into becoming puppy raisers,” she says. A few months later, in March 2020, Gino, a 10-week-old black Labrador retriever from Guiding Eyes, arrived at the Wehlings’ home.

Puppy raisers provide a safe and loving home for dogs as young as 8 weeks old while teaching them basic obedience, house manners and how to socialize in different environments. The nonprofit group provides support, including regular required training classes for those who wish to train guide dogs. At about the time a dog turns 18 months old, it returns to Guiding Eyes, and if it is suited for a guide dog career, it receives six to 12 more months of training. The dog then may be paired with a handler based on pace, pull, personality and other factors.

The Wehlings — Dagmar, her husband and their two teenage children — spent nearly two years training Gino so he could potentially provide greater independence for people who are blind or visually impaired. This included acclimating Gino to the sounds of Baltimore City to make sure he doesn’t react to sirens and traffic noise, as well as taking him to a restaurant so he could learn to sit quietly under a chair.

The Wehlings had Gino until January, when he returned to Guiding Eyes to receive his professional training. “I think my favorite part was to see Gino grow into the dog he is now, from making mistakes in the beginning and then just learning and being happy to learn,” she says. “I think that’s the best experience.”