http://www.jfpl.org/polCalendarEvent.cfm?Event_Id=16493
How to be a Seeing Eye Puppy Raiser
Monday September 15, 2014
7:00 PM
Featuring Jill Jaycox of The Seeing Eye in Morristown this talk will address the requirements and discuss the guidelines on how to become a volunteer puppy raiser for The Seeing Eye. Interested persons should RSVP via email to: rosemarie.yancosek@verizon.net. This is a joint program with the Morristown Area Responsible Dog Owners Group (Mardog).
Each year approximately five hundred Seeing Eye puppies are placed with volunteer puppy raising families throughout New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and parts of Maryland and New York. Until a Seeing Eye dog is ready for training, it spends its time with a “foster family,” a family that gives the puppy love, gentle guidance, teaches the puppy basic commands and exposes them to a variety of social situations they will later encounter as guides. You and your family (children and adults) can nurture a puppy to accomplish its special destiny.
Bio
Jill Jaycox is an area coordinator in the puppy development department at The Seeing Eye in Morristown, NJ. Jill places puppies with volunteer puppy raising families in Morris, Essex and Bergen counties. An area coordinator provides support and guidance to each family through the puppy raising process until the puppy returns to The Seeing Eye for his/her 
formal training as a guide. Before coming to The Seeing Eye in 2000, Jill was a humane educator for 15 years at St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in Madison, NJ. As a humane educator, Jill created and presented humane education programs for school children, directed a summer camp for children and oversaw a pet therapy program.
In 2011 Jill raised a female standard poodle named Shania to be a Seeing Eye dog. Shania was unfortunately released from the program due to a strong squirrel distraction. Fortunately for Jill however, Shania now happily resides with her and her two miniature dachshunds, Willa and Alvyn, in Somerville, NJ. In her spare time Jill and her four-footeds enjoy as much time as possible in the outdoors doing anything outdoorsy. Shania chases all the squirrels she wants.
Mardog is a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to responsible dog ownership. Mardog stands for Morris Area Responsible Dog Owners’ Group and was incorporated in 2002 to benefit all Morris County residents. Mardog’s efforts led to the first county dog park at Lewis Morris Park, and the group has voluntarily helped several municipalities with their own park development efforts.
The Seeing Eye, Inc. is a philanthropic organization whose mission is to enhance the independence, dignity and self-confidence of people who are blind, through the use of specially trained Seeing Eye® dogs. It the oldest existing guide dog school in the world. Students from various age ranges, locales and backgrounds visit the Morristown campus to discover the exhilarating experience of traveling with a Seeing Eye® dog. Since 1929, The Seeing Eye has partnered with more than 16,000 of these specially bred and trained dogs who have brought a new level of mobility, safety, and self-sufficiency to over 8,000 men and women.
Refreshments will be served.
This program is supported by Mardog and the Friends of the Morristown & Morris Township Library.