Short History of Guide Dogs

The topic of the article was the work being done in Potsdam, Germany of training dog guides for blind war veterans. A native of Philadelphia, Eustis was then living in Switzerland where she was conducting research in experimental techniques for training German Shepards to be working dogs.
Eustis' article was widely read, but it made a special impression on Morris Frank of Nashville, Tennessee. Frank suffered blindness as a result of two accidents. Self-reliant by nature, he found his dependence on others maddening. The independence described in the Post article sounded to Frank like the deliverance he had long desired. So he wrote a letter to Eustis with a proposition: if she would train a dog for him, he would in turn help other blind people learn to use guide dogs as well. Eustis answered that if Frank could make it to Switzerland to meet her they had a deal.
Frank did make the long trek to Switzerland. After completing his training there, he returned to the US with his new guide dog, Buddy, as well as $10,000 to found a new training school in Nashville. The campus was later moved to Frank and Eustis were not the first to attempt starting a guide dog school in America, but they were the first to succeed. At the end of the first year alone, 17 people had completed training at the Seeing Eye, as it was called, and found freedom through guide dogs. The name came from Eustis' Evening Post article and from Proverbs 20,12: "The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the LORD has made them both" (RSV CE).