Janice Abbott is a full-time trainer with Guiding Eyes for the Blind (GEB) and Quana is the third dog she has trained for Jean Howes.

GEB has its own breeding centre in New York and its puppies make up about 95 percent of the animals it trains. Golden labradors and German shepherds are the dogs of choice. When the puppies are eight weeks old they are fostered out to volunteer families for about 18 months, during which time they "learn their manners".

"They learn obedience, and are exposed to a lot of different things including being taken to church, restaurants, train platforms and escalators, all of which they will encounter as working guide dogs," Ms Abbott explains.

The dogs are then given in-for-training tests designed to weed out those deemed unsuitable as future guide dogs, and those who fail are first offered to the foster families as pets, and if refused then given to someone on a pets waiting list.

In an average year GED has about 300 to 350 dogs in its programme, including puppies, and it trains about 160 blind individuals.

When the real work of training a guide dog begins, it takes about four months of repetitive work to learn what it has to do.

"They have to do each thing until it becomes habit, and there is a lot of positive reinforcement (verbal praise) involved when they succeed, because dogs, like people, make mistakes," Ms Abbott says.

For the animals, there is a lot of adjustment on their way to becoming fully-fledged guide dogs . First they are put into a foster home, then they get used to the people at the training centre, then they go to a new home, where they have to learn to bond with the owner and adapt to new surroundings. Again, positive reinforcement is used.

"A lot of times you get a person and a dog working against each other," Ms Abbott says. "Every dog is different, and the person has to get used to the dog's body language. That's where the trainer comes in - to help the person and the dog to "read" each other, and of course the person must learn to trust the dog.

"The dog doesn't work miracles," the trainer explains. "The person must know where they are going. Everything the dog learns is through habit, and dogs can learn bad habits just like people can. That's why trainers spend so much time with their clients."

Ms Abbott has been a trainer for about 15 years. As a student she did a report on guide dogs and decided that was what she wanted to do in life, so after college she pursued it as a career.

"I did a three-year apprenticeship, but you never stop learning," she says. "After 15 years I still don't know it all, which is nice."