Raising a Superhero

By Sylvia Whitman | Photo By Kelly Kearns

Empty nester Stephenie Shaver tears up now and then as she talks about her beloved Kody. “It’s still fresh,” she apologizes. Two weeks ago, Kody left for school. Still, it was time for him to launch. “He was ready for more challenges than I could give him,” she says.

She brings over a framed photo of Kody at four months. It’s labeled FUTURE SUPERHERO, and we coo over the soft face, the deep brown eyes. “An old soul,” one of her family members observed.

Kody grew fast, impressing Stephenie with his energy, loyalty, and intuition. This past year she received bad news in a phone call, and Kody “put his head in my lap and sat right there while I hugged on him,” she says. “He was such a comfort to me.” Mostly, they had fun together. Stephenie wistfully recalls some favorite outings—the park, the grocery store, and the fire station, where the chief let Kody sniff the truck and then flashed the lights and sounded the siren. Kody didn’t even flinch. They also spent many happy hours out in a boat with Stephenie’s husband, Paul, a devout fisherman. As soon as Kody heard the reel whir, he waited by the rod for the catch.

“I’m sure everybody says their dog’s the smartest,” Stephenie says, “but Kody really is.”

Did we mention that Kody is an aspiring Southeastern Guide Dog?

In early 2017, Stephenie had no inkling that she would raise a superhero. She and her husband, snowbirds from Tennessee, spend much of the year in Venice. Paul has his retirement project: fishing. Stephenie was casting about for hers. A mother of three (and grandmother of seven), she had developed a late career as a social services administrator, first at a residential treatment program for juvenile sex offenders and then with a company that runs private schools for children with special needs. For a spell, she also took care of her mother, who died of Alzheimer’s disease. Many volunteer opportunities focus on children or seniors, but Stephenie longed for a new direction.

Then she spotted a Southeastern Guide Dogs billboard.

Stephenie likes dogs. Over their long marriage, she and Paul had three labs. She visited the organization’s website, saw the specs for a volunteer puppy raiser, and immediately disqualified herself because she doesn’t live in Florida full time. But investigating more deeply, she discovered that she was eligible. Volunteer raisers must bring puppies to hour long trainings twice a month, but since there is a Southeastern Guide Dogs group in Nashville, as well as two in Sarasota County, she could fulfill her responsibility.

Paul signed on, and a staffer visited the house. In October 2017, the Shavers drove to Palmetto and picked up four-month-old Kody. “He came running in the room and couldn’t be contained,” Stephenie says. She plays a video on her phone; it’s hard to tell who was more excited. “Just like a new grandbaby,” she says.

Guide dog puppies sleep in crates. That first night, Kody whined, but he quieted when Stephenie scooted the crate alongside her half of the bed and dangled her hand. “He was my dog from that day on,” she says. She concedes that feeding him might have something to do with the attachment, but he followed her everywhere, even to the bathroom door.

They developed a routine. First, get up and go outside, where Kody learned to pee on the busy command. Next, breakfast, followed by another trip to the grass so Kody could “busy busy.” He soon developed a special friendship with a backyard cardinal, who flew in regularly and chirped as Kody sat on the lanai.

As a puppy raiser, Stephenie’s job was to teach Kody basic obedience commands and social skills. She potty-trained Kody and accustomed him to walking by her left side. The early training sessions Southeastern Guide Dogs dubs “kindergarten,” but once puppies have mastered the basics, they earn their blue coat, which gives them full guide-dog access to human spaces. The Shavers and Kody tooled around town.

Stephenie admits that raising Kody required a “big commitment,” especially those first few weeks of getting up in the middle of the night to take him outside. “You’ve got a baby again,” she says. But the benefits outweighed any hardships. “He got me up and going every day,” she says. “I took walks I had not taken. It improved my health. I lost weight. I met people that I would have never met. People in this community—they all know Kody’s name.

“It was amazing to me how appreciative people are for what I was doing,” she adds.

The Southeastern Guide Dog community also provides support, with a coordinator on call to answer questions. “You’re never alone in any situation,” says Stephenie. Although puppy raisers supply kibble, Southeastern Guide Dogs covers vet care. Some special rules apply to these pups—no sleeping on the bed, no romping in dog parks, no roughhousing—but they enjoy playdates within other future superheroes. Volunteers sit for each other to allow families a night out, and pups even go to “camp.”

In his group trainings, Kody learned by crossing bridges to ignore traffic noises. He practiced a handful of commands, including stay and drop it. Like all youngsters, Kody sometimes tested limits; Stephenie remembers that during a coordinator’s visit, he refused to place even though he knew very well he was supposed to plunk down on his pillow. He looked at Stephenie, looked at the pillow, looked at Stephenie, looked at the pillow—and finally did as he was told. “He would work me,” Stephenie says with a laugh. But as soon as he put on the blue coat, he heeled without rebellion.

Stephenie worried that she wasn’t drilling Kody effectively, especially since he struggled with “dog distraction.” In retrospect, though, she thinks the problem lay more with her anxiety as a first-time raiser than with exuberant Kody; he just needed to mature. When he turned 10 months old, she cried because she feared he wasn’t making timely progress. But at 14 months, when Southeastern Guide Dogs gave the official two weeks recall notice, she knew he was ready.

Turn-in day was tough. As directed, Stephenie passed a treat to the staff trainer, but beforeKody followed it, she whispered in his ear: “Make us proud.”

Southeastern Guide Dogs organized a special day for the 27 puppy raisers saying goodbye: they heard from a sight-impaired staffer and practiced walking blind with a trained dog. “It made it all worthwhile,” says Stephenie. “I almost felt a little selfish being sad, because I realized what a good job Kody’s going to do.”

Less than half of Southeastern puppies meet the demanding criteria for becoming guide dogs for the visually impaired, but all will work—as service dogs for veterans, as public safety K-9s, as goodwill ambassadors, as breeders, and more. Stephenie is eager to learn Kody’s career track once he graduates from “canine university.”

“Kody, no matter what he does, he’s going to make a difference in somebody’s life,” Stephenie says. “There’s no doubt about it. It’s like with your kids. You instill the basics, and you hope they build on them.”

And yes, she and Paul will soon be raising another superhero.

For more information on Southeastern Guide Dogs, call 941.729.5665 or visit www.guidedogs.org

To My Superhero
By Stephenie Shaver

I taught You “sit”
and I learned success.

I taught You “stay”
and I learned patience.

I taught You “break”
and I learned self-control.

I taught You “down”
and I learned relaxation.

I taught You “come”
and I learned loyalty.

I taught You “let’s go”
and I experienced your world.

I taught You “heel”
and I learned faithfulness.

I taught You trust
and I learned confidence.

I taught You games to play
and I learned to enjoy life.

I gave You love
and I learned yours is unconditional.

I took You in for training
and I learned to be strong.

I raised a puppy
and You changed my life.