these puppies are about seven weeks old
and one day they could become guide dogs
and while you might think you know where
they come from six percent of them have
a surprising start to life
hi my name is caitlin i'm 16 years old
and last year i was partnered with my
first guide dog honey
she is a retriever black labrador cross
and she has changed my life
honey has made me more confident
independent and allowed me to socialise
more
but i wanted to find out where dogs like
her came from so i'm meeting matthew
bottomlet head of breeding operations at
the guide dog national breeding centre
so this is um our puppy buck caitlyn and
this is where all the puppies come in
between six and seven weeks of age they
come in here
and they receive their vaccinations
their microchips
and they get a vet check as well to make
sure they're fit and healthy to travel
on to the next stage of their journey
most of our puppies will be born out in
family homes
so they're looked after by a wonderful
group of volunteers
and being attacked by a puppy as we
speak when a stood dog and a mum
got together how much of it is natural
and how much is artificial
we always try to affect a natural mating
if we possibly can
we believe that's the right way to go
and last year our
natural meetings we did 94 of our
matings were natural matings
but if we can't for whatever reason it
doesn't nature doesn't play its
place hand in the in the right way and
we're unable to get a natural mating
then we will sometimes use artificial
insemination
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this is our cryogenic freezer in here we
store
samples of our stud dogs frozen semen in
there
they're stored in liquid nitrogen around
about minus 190 degrees centigrade
and so we can keep that genetic material
pretty much
indefinitely two reasons for that
one it acts as a as an insurance policy
for us at guide dogs in case we have
some dreaded disease that hits our dog
population
we have that genetic material preserved
and secondly we use it to
collaborate with other schools around
the world internationally
to exchange bloodlines to make sure that
our breeding program is
as genetically diverse and healthy and
vigorous as it can be
this is natasha she's a reproduction
specialist at the breeding centre
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so in here we have
many frozen samples from up to 30 years
ago
and the archive samples are on the
bottom row
and they're stored in a vapor phase the
semen is stored in
little tiny straws and all those straws
are contained in goblets
and the goblets are all stored in
shelves
and we label each individual straw
so that we can always locate the semen
from the from the correct stud dog
this year there will be about 1 200
puppies at the center
they have about 275 breeding
and about 90 stud dogs
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so how would you decide out of these
puppies who'd be a breeding dog
common misconception is that the dogs
that we add to the breeding program
are often failed guide dogs but it's
actually
quite the reverse we're cherry picking
the very very best
stock that we can frankly to add to the
breeding program
what we do is uh look at the family tree
the pedigree we
look at all the the qualities that the
dog themselves has and
the dog has in their history and also if
they've produced puppies in the past
then obviously we look at any success
that they've had with that as well
most of the pups at the center are pure
labrador purebred golden retriever
or a cross between the two but they also
have
german shepherds these are larger a bit
quicker and have a greater drive
curly coated retriever standard poodles
and curly quarters retrievers
when crossed with labradors these are
more suited to people who are allergic
to dog hair
why do some of the dogs have nail
varnish on them when you have a large
litter of puppies and particularly if
they're all the same color
it can be really hard to distinguish one
from the other so just to help us
identify them and of course when they're
a bit younger as well it's even more
difficult
we just put a little tiny blob of nail
varnish on there either on their
shoulder one of the shoulders or on
their on their hind legs as well
and sometimes under the ear it's really
cool to see where the journey of a guide
dog starts like
some of these little black puppies
remind me of honey and it's just
really cool to see how they will
eventually grow up into working guide
dogs
you