The Seeing Eye

The Seeing Eye is the world’s first and oldest existing guide dog school. It was founded in 1929 by Morris Frank and Dorothy Harrison Eustis after Frank, who was blind, became Eustis’s American partner in adapting European war-dog training for civilian use.

The school breeds, raises, and trains guide dogs (mostly German shepherds, Labrador retrievers, and golden retrievers) and matches them with blind students who live on the 62-acre campus for about three weeks of paired training. The school moved to its current Washington Valley campus in 1965.

The campus itself is not open to walk-in visitors. Two ways the public can engage:

• Free educational programs on campus, by reservation: two Thursday mornings and one Saturday morning per month, 10:00 to 11:45am. Demonstrations of harness work and the training process. Reserve through the school’s site.
• The “Walk and Learn” downtown program runs out of 14 Maple Avenue, in downtown Morristown.

A bronze statue of Morris Frank and his first dog Buddy stands on the Morristown Green, South Street side.