Butler's Cinema Scene

“PICK OF THE LITTER” My rating: B 

81 minutes | No MPAA rating

Even if you’re not a dog lover, “Pick of the Litter” has an AWWWWW factor that’s off the charts.

But canine-generated sentimentality aside, this documentary leaves the viewer deeply impressed by the effort that goes into training a Guide Dog for the Blind, and by the sacrifices of dozens of humans who are behind each animal that completes the program.

Don Hardy Jr. and Dana Nachman’s film begins with the birth of five puppies and follows their growth and training over two years as they prepare to join the ranks of what used to be called “seeing-eye dogs.”

It starts out cute — few things are as heart-melting as a wriggling newborn Labrador retriever — and gradually works its way into some surprisingly territory.

We’re told up front that only three out of every eight dogs bred by the California-based Guide Dogs for the Blind will graduate from the program.  Which means that of our five littermate subjects — the staff names them Potomac, Poppet, Primrose, Patriot and Phil — only two should be expected to make the final cut. And even that’s not guaranteed.

Most will at some point be “career changed,” meaning that they’ll be scrubbed from the program for reasons ranging from intelligence to excitability to the ability to focus on the task at hand.  One of the more intriguing issues raised centers on how much of the failure is due to the individual animal’s nature and how much to the shortcomings of  its human handlers.

While still puppies the dogs are farmed out to foster families (or individuals) who concentrate on the basics of behavior and socialization. Periodically the animals are graded on their progress; if things aren’t going according to schedule a dog may be reassigned to a new trainer.

The trainers understand that they are only temporary masters, that even if they stick with the dog throughout its formative months they will be separated at some point.  And here’s where human emotions get confusing…it’s hard to give up an animal that has lived with you for the better part of a year.

One of the trainers is a veteran suffering from PTSD; having a dog as a constant companion keeps his demons at bay. We can imagine his distress when the animal — named Patriot, aptly enough — is deemed to be making insufficient progress and reassigned to another trainer.

Once separated from their trainer families, the dogs return to GDB’s California headquarters to begin an intensive regimen designed to weed out all but the most emotionally and physically suitable animals. They learn to navigate streets and sidewalks, to look out for their new masters…even to disobey orders if that means putting their owner in jeopardy.

Along the way we meet several vision-impaired individuals on the waiting list, including a Kansas Citian — blind since childhood — who hopes that having a guide dog will open up his tightly circumscribed world. And the film opens with testimonials from vision-challenged individuals describing how their lives were literally saved by their guide dogs.

It’s all quite inspiring without getting too gooey…Hardy and Nachman make a point of not oversentimentalizing their animal subjects. Viewers can do that for themselves.

|Robert W. Butler