A.V. PUPS WILL BECOME GUIDE DOGS.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - The puppies come at age 8 weeks: uncoordinated bundles of yellow and black and golden fur. They leave 14 or so months later, ready to learn how to guide a blind person through life.

For more than 20 years, Antelope Valley Guide Dog Club members have raised some 150 Labrador, golden retriever and German shepherd puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind, the San Rafael-based organization that trains dogs as helpers.

``I decided for the New Year I wanted to do something for somebody less fortunate,'' said club member Tina Bazzett, who is raising a 3 1/2-month-old black Labrador retriever named Irwin.

Irwin, who lives with Bazzett and her three cats, accompanies Bazzett to work every day at North American Mortgage, sleeping in a bed under her desk.

``You just introduce the dog into your daily schedule,'' Bazzett said.

The Antelope Valley club members are among 900 guide dog puppy raisers - as they are called - volunteering for Guide Dogs for the Blind, a nonprofit organization that was started in 1942 to provide guide dogs for blind war veterans.

The pups are bred by the school, then at 8 weeks given to the raisers. After 13 to 16 months, the dogs go back to San Rafael, where they get training in guiding.

The raisers' job is to turn a pup into a calm, obedient dog unfazed by crowds, strangers, noises or other distractions that a guide dog is going to encounter in his work.

The pups get obedience training - how to heel, sit, stay, come - and are taught good house manners.

``Our job is to provide them with a confident, flexible puppy,'' said Cathy Chenoweth, a co-leader of the club, who is raising her 10th Guide Dog puppy. ``We introduce them into society slowly to build confidence along the way.''

``The puppy raisers do a great job. We couldn't do it without them,'' Guide Dogs for the Blind spokeswoman Joanne Ritter said.

Wearing green vests that say ``Guide Dog Puppy in Training,'' the pups get to go places other dogs can't: into the Antelope Valley Mall, into hospitals, into restaurants, and on buses and Metrolink trains.

Once a week, 13-year-old Melissa McClean takes one of her family's Guide Dog pups - they have three right now - to class with her at Challenger Middle School. The pup rides the school bus with her, changes classes with her and sits under her desk in class.

The other kids like when the pups visit, Melissa said, and the dogs behave themselves.

``They learn how to behave before they go to school,'' she explained.

While guide dog puppies get to go where other dogs don't, they also miss out on typical doggy behavior. Barking is forbidden. So is licking a master's hand. So is playing ball.

Many dogs can't make it through the training needed to become guides. Some have health problems like bad hips. Others are too timid or just ``too much dog,'' Chenoweth said.

Brenda McClean, Melissa's mother, said one of their pups was an excellent dog but came down with colitis - an inflammation of the interior of the colon. McClean attributed it to the stress of training.

The dogs that don't make it as guides are given away as pets - ``career change dogs'' they are called, Ritter said. Guide Dogs for the Blind has a waiting list for them.

The pups belong to Guide Dogs for the Blind, not to the raisers. Even though all the raisers recognize this, there are usually tears when the dogs return to San Rafael.

``It's always difficult,'' Chenoweth said. ``We tell our raisers that we know giving them up is the hardest thing you have to do.''

At San Rafael, or at Guide Dogs' other center near Portland, Ore., the dogs learn how to be guides, Ritter said. They learn how to lead a person in a straight line, to stop for a change in elevation like a step or open manhole, to avoid obstacles like mailboxes and light poles or to walk around overhanging obstructions like a low-hanging branch that a dog could walk under but a person would hit.

They also learn ``intelligent disobedience'' - to refuse a command that would put their master in danger, like to walk forward into traffic.

The dogs cannot understand traffic signals, however. ``Dogs are colorblind,'' Ritter said. Their masters must listen for the sound of traffic.

Once trained, the dogs are introduced to their prospective masters. For a blind person getting his or her first dog, there is 28 days of training. The new owner learns the commands the dog understands, and practice walking, riding a bus, or going into stores with the dog - eventually in downtown San Francisco or Portland.

The raisers get to see their dogs one last time at a ceremony before they leave for their new life.

``We get to be the person who gives the dog to the blind person,'' Bazzett said.

Guide Dogs for the Blind's puppy raising department can be contacted at [phone]. Its Web site is www.guidedogs.com. The Antelope Valley Guide Dogs Club is selling candles as a fund-raising project. Brenda McClean can be reached at [phone].

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3 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) Elliot, a 6-month-old golden retriever, walks alongside trainer John Cassianni during a visit to the Antelope Valley Mall.

(2) Elliot, a 6-month-old golden retriever, chills out during a visit to the busy Antelope Valley Mall in Palmdale.

(3) Puppy raiser Amber Varso wrangles her son Jeremy, 16 months, as a well-behaved guide-dog-in-training relaxes.

Eric Grigorian/Special to the Daily News