04/04/2023
The Path-Finder School - Glenn Stains
It was a chance meeting with a blind man named T.W. Pritchett that changed Glenn Stain's direction. Joanna Walker described what happened:
“It was in 1936 that he met a man who introduced him to T.W. Pritchett, a blind man from Evansville, Indiana, who had been turned down by a guide dog school as being too old to use a guide dog. At the time, Walter Lindner was training Pontchartrain dogs and they decided to try to train a dog for this man. Quite unexpectedly the man showed up at the kennel before they had finished training the dog. He was, no doubt, anxious to meet his dog, and since he was without enough funds to travel back and forth, they agreed to let him stay. They got busy with some very intensive training of man and dog. A few weeks later the old man left with the very first Pathfinder Doberman, trained as a guide dog. This team of man and Dobe was most successful and from then on Glenn’s whole life and interest turned to training Dobermans as guide dogs. This dog guided Mr. Pritchett for the next nine years.”
In 1938, the Uptown Detroit Lions Club decided to pay the expenses for a blind man who wanted a guide dog. They contacted the only guide dog facility in America at that time and were turned down because the school had a policy that clubs or organizations could not sponsor specific individuals. They decided that the answer was to open a school of their own and they hired Glenn to teach students how to train guide dogs. The Lions Club school was eventually named “Leader Dogs for the Blind” and is now the largest organization of its kind.
As Joanna noted above, because of these rewarding experiences in working with the blind, Glenn Staines devoted the rest of his life to training guide dogs through his Path-Finder school. Path-Finder was very successful up until his death in 1951. Joanna writes:
“By 1951, over 1,000 Pathfinder Dobermans had been placed with blind owners. The normal cost for these dogs was $200 to cover the cost of the care of the dog for four months of training. This was the only way Glenn could help as many blind people as he did. He sunk just about everything he made in his drug store into the school. He also donated many dogs to those who simply could not pay and in 1945, he offered dogs free to blinded veterans.”
Photo courtesy of American Doberman Pinscher Education Foundation
