While visiting the family in Essex today I learned something really cool from my sister.

She has a labrador puppy, but I was not aware that it is not hers. It is intended to be a guide dog for the blind. What happens is that they are placed with families until a certain age when it goes off for its guide dog training. While with the families it is supposed to learn certain good habits to make it suitable as a guide dog, or to not learn certain bad habits which would make it unsuitable.

For example the dogs should not get the habit of asking for, or getting, scraps from the table. When they are guide dogs they will be expected to sit quietly under restaurant tables without pestering everyone.

[Warning: toilet humour alert]

Another example is that these dogs are trained not to go to the toilet while they are out being walked. Instead they are trained to get all that out of the way at a convenient time before going out. In fact, and this is what fascinated me, they are trained to dump on command. On the scale of super-powers it is not right up there with invisibility, flying or x-ray vision, but I still think its a pretty nifty trick.

This is where it gets interesting. Or should I say more interesting, as I was already hooked by the concept of crapping to order. The dogs are taught a trigger word for total evacuation. Even better this word is the same for all guide dogs. I won’t say what the word is because its possible some of my readers from the Labour party could find themselves in a meeting with David Blunkett and I would not want to place the temptation in front of them.

I’m sure its not as simple as that though because the word is not an obscure word that you would not otherwise hear. It is a relatively common word and one which I am sure crops up in many political meetings – often enough that Blunkett’s poor dog could hear it several times an hour. But what a mental picture that is… the dog hearing the word and thinking “What? Again??? I’m empty already!”

From as soon as we are old enough to watch a Blue Peter appeal for milk bottle tops[*] we all know what a guide dog is, but I never imagined exactly what was involved!

[*] and who can forget that wonderful moment when the presenter, possibly Peter Duncan, announced they were collecting to raise money for “blind dogs for the guides”?