By CHRIS NEWMARKER
Associated Press Writer
GLASSBORO, N.J. — The youngest students at one university in southern New Jersey get to enjoy all the aspects of college life _ classes, dorm rooms, even courtside seats at the hoops games _ and no bothersome term papers, either.
But these residents at Rowan University are still destined for lives of service, despite each having four legs and a tail.
For a third year, Rowan University students are raising puppies destined to become seeing-eye dogs. About 21 students are in charge of raising six dogs on the public university’s campus, 18 miles south of Philadelphia.
College life allows the dogs to spend virtually every moment around people so they become comfortable with people and eventually can serve the blind. The students care for the pooches and take them almost everywhere they go, even to basketball games, where the canines get courtside seats.
The students teach the dogs to obey commands, including “sit,” “stay” and one that induces them to go to the bathroom. Along the way, the dogs get included in the school’s social life.
“Simon has more friends than I do. They come around looking for him instead of me,” said Jake Massaro, 24, of the brown Labrador-golden retriever mix for which he and his roommates care.
Coordinated with a guide-dog training school in Morristown called The Seeing Eye, the program is one example of how trainers are taking advantage of populated locales, including colleges and prisons, to get the canines acclimated to human contact.
Students raise puppies at Rowan, Rutgers University and the University of Delaware _ all of which have proved to be excellent places to prepare potential guide dogs, said Teresa Davenport, a spokeswoman for The Seeing Eye, one of about a dozen guide-dog training schools across the country.
“The more puppies are exposed to people, the better guide dogs they can be,” Davenport said.
Bringing the dogs to Rowan was the idea of George Brelsford, the school’s dean of students, and his wife. The two had been raising seeing-eye dogs themselves, and thought students would enjoy the experience.
A college is a perfect place for dogs to become comfortable with a busy world, Brelsford said recently.
“The campus is really a small city. We have trucks and bulldozers that go by. We have social events,” Brelsford said.
Students get the dogs when they are 7-weeks old, and most keep them for more than a year. After that, the dogs go to The Seeing Eye for harness training and, if all goes well, eventual placement with a blind person.
Quasar, a black Labrador-golden retriever mix, was a picture of obedience walking across Rowan campus recently. But as soon as he walked over the “Wipe Your Paws” doormat in Sita Tomas’s on-campus apartment and the leash came off, he started jumping all over the guests.
Tomas, 22, a graduate student from Mount Olive who is studying counseling, lives alone and said she also gets something out of the matchup.
“It’s definitely nice to have someone and not just be lonely sometimes,” Tomas said.
The program is a point of pride for Brelsford, who keeps an entire display in his office with pictures of dogs past and present, along with a treat dispenser that some of the pooches have learned to use.
The hardest part of the program for students, as well as for Brelsford and his wife as they continue raising dogs, has been parting with the canines when they leave for their guide-dog training.
“There’s always tears in our eyes,” Brelsford said.
Lauren Lee, 21, a senior psychology major from East Brunswick, said she and her roommates talk about Kong, their German shepherd, as though he were a high schooler getting ready to graduate.
“My roommates and I talk about it. It’s like he’s going off to college. He’s going to be great up there,” Lee said.