Our foundation had ten Labrador puppies born at the beginning of September. The very active team just turned 7 weeks old and came up with “chilling” Halloween surprise. We show how they play with spiders, bats and others.

Dongó, Darázs and their brothers and sisters are a lot of fun. Their home is in Törökbálint, where they spend most of their days in a huge garden. Their play together consists mainly of chasing, wrestling, ear and tail pulling, along with the avid use of dog toys. Personality traits are already showing, with the more dominant and the more reserved. It is also typical that the dog who stays
awake the longest tries to wake his sleeping siblings. This time, the Halloween characters are the ones who are on the prowl.

We offer them objects of all shapes and materials to play with to get to know them, including keys. This is important because they will have the task of giving up a dropped key or finding its visually impaired owner.

When the puppies have played themselves out and are tired, they fall asleep one after the other in all sorts of impossible positions. Each litter of our own birth is marked with an initial, so Dongó and its siblings became the “D” litter.

We wrote about the birth of the puppies here.

What next?

After the age of eight weeks, puppies are placed in foster homes where they are raised until they are one year old. With our volunteers, they have a happy childhood and learn about the world, during which time our Foundation’s professionals do a lot to help the puppy raisers to ensure that the dogs develop well. They then go to our training colleagues who train them to become guide dogs. The next period is very exciting, as they get to know their visually impaired owners and start to practise walking together. From around 2 years of age, they will live together, help them with their daily lives and become real companions.

How much does a guide dog cost?

More guide dogs are needed in Hungary. Many people are waiting for a faithful companion at our foundation. On average, we have 40-50 people on our waiting list.

The total lifetime cost of a guide dog is more than 5 million HUF.

This takes about 10 years, with the total cost of: breeding dogs, breeding, raising puppies, screenings, medical costs, boarding, equipment, training (this costs 1.5 million HUF), training the owner; handover, testing, follow-up and care for ten years, replacement of equipment, extra medical costs for an ageing dog, costs around retirement, upkeeping, vehicle use, etc.

This brings the total cost of the ten years to over 5 million forints.