Lancaster Bible College Health & Physical Education major Ellie Bollinger (’28) has been raising dogs through the Juniata County (Pa.) 4H and The Seeing EyeTM since she was 10 years old. What started as an excuse to convince her parents to get a dog soon became a passion.
LBC Health & Physical Education major and field hockey player Ellie Bollinger (’28), pictured here with Daz, has trained six seeing eye dogs with her family since the age of 10.
“Dogs. That’s how it started,” said Ellie. “I was like, ‘Whoa, you get a dog, and you get to take your dog to all of these cool places.’ But now being older, hearing how it has changed somebody’s life is really inspiring.”
Over the years, Ellie and her family have actually raised six dogs for The Seeing Eye. Families who raise and train a puppy welcome them to their homes when they are seven weeks old and have a little over a year to train them. The puppies are considered “in-training” until they officially become service dogs or seeing eye dogs. At home, through meetings and outings, the dogs learn how to obey commands.
Once a month, the families attend mandatory meetings led by The Seeing Eye’s area coordinator. At each gathering, they are taught how to train their dogs and learn from each other as they navigate raising a puppy. Each meeting begins with a “training circle.”
“[The meetings and outings are] helpful to see where your dog is in a setting with a lot of distractions,” explained Ellie. “We teach them basic commands like ‘park time,’ ‘sit,’ ‘rest,’ ‘down’ and ‘forward.’ We teach them how to walk with a steady pull. We want them to be pulling [the blind individual] along, but not dragging them.”
The dogs reach a milestone in The Seeing Eye program when they have shown their obedience and earned their green vests. Every few months, Ellie was required to fill out a “puppy report” to inform The Seeing Eye on the progress of the Bollinger puppy.
“Before they are six months old, the puppies have a scarf,” explained Ellie. “At six months, they get to earn their green vests that say ‘The Seeing Eye.’”
Since 1929, The Seeing Eye organization has provided specially bred and trained dogs to guide people who are blind. According to the nonprofit, seeing eye dog handlers experience greatly enhanced mobility and independence, allowing them to retain their active lifestyles.
Just 65% of dogs that are bred for service become seeing eye dogs. Once training is complete, dogs are assessed based on their personality and skills to determine the best place for them to serve.
“Each dog has such a different personality,” Ellie shared, “and you can kind of tell how they are going to do once they get to a certain point.”
Some dogs make it through their training with a professional trainer at The Seeing Eye and become guide dogs. Other dogs don’t excel in The Seeing Eye program and have a “career change.” These dogs go on to serve as police dogs or other service animals. Still others become pets.
Ellie came to realize that most people are familiar with seeing eye dogs but don’t know about what goes on before they become service animals—or even some basic rules. Ellie explained that a common mistake with seeing Eye dogs is that people try to pet them.
“If you see a service dog, do not pet them,” she said. “If you pet them, you distract them. At the end of the day, it is a dog, and if you touch them, they can’t perform 100% the task that they need to. You could be jeopardizing the life of the blind person. Petting the dogs might seem like something so small, but that person’s life is so big and important.”
Ellie Bollinger (’28) played as a midfielder and forward in her first season with the Chargers field hockey team.
Before starting college at LBC, where she also plays field hockey, Ellie received a scholarship in August 2024 when The Seeing Eye hosted a special awards ceremony for longtime trainers as well as college-bound puppy trainers. In all, 34 trainers, including Ellie, were provided a total of $64,000 in scholarship funds. To qualify, students must have raised at least two seeing eye puppies, demonstrated a high level of academic achievement and are active in their communities.
For Ellie, it is the lives of the people that keep her going when training a dog gets difficult.
“It isn’t always easy,” said Ellie. “Sometimes the dogs [misbehave] and you want to put them outside because they aren’t listening to you, or they are tearing apart your house. But then then when you listen to that one person say how all your hard work has kept them from getting hit by a car, it makes it so worth it.”
Training the dogs and hearing the stories of how they have impacted people’s lives quickly made The Seeing Eye something that Ellie came to love.
“Without even trying, it becomes something you are passionate about,” said Ellie. “This one story will always stick in my mind. This blind man lived in Manhattan, N.Y., and it was just him and his little girl and his guide dog. He had to put his little girl on the subway every day and, for some reason, one day the train was late. It was the same time as usual, and he went to step onto the track and he kept commanding the dog to go forward, but the dog wouldn’t go because the train wasn’t there.”
Ellie explained how the dog saved the man’s life; if the man would have stepped onto the track, the train might have come and hit him.
“Stories like this are what make it worth it,” she said.
Not only had raising seeing eye dogs grown Ellie’s love for helping the blind, but it has also improved her social skills and interactions with others. As an extremely shy child, Ellie found it intimidating when people would ask her about the puppies she was raising. Over the years, however, she has grown in her conversation and social skills and found opportunities to share her faith.
“Taking these dogs to different places, you get to meet a lot of different people,” said Ellie. “You never know the conversations that are waiting. Sometimes you can kind of surprise yourself meeting and talking to these people and actually caring about who you are talking with. They ask you questions and then eventually somehow the conversation leads to a tiny question of ‘Why do you do this?’ and you can integrate some aspect of God and faith without being forceful.”
Talking to strangers started as a nerve-wracking necessity, but with practice, grew to become a skill that she enjoyed. Ellie’s heart is to help others by training dogs, educating others on The Seeing Eye and share the love of Christ.