You know Hackett, Jack, Zorro, Tarby, Hudson, Viceroy, Willard, Douglas, Owen, Irons, Jake, and Iliad.
No, these aren't Santa's new reindeer, but the puppies that are part of the Cook College Seeing Eye Puppy Raising Club.
This club provides students the opportunity to prepare puppies for The Seeing Eye Inc., an organization founded in 1929 in Morristown.
The CCSEPRC helps raise these puppies from the age of seven weeks until they are a year and six months.
"Once they're nine weeks, they're in their terrible twos," said Joshua Lockett, publicist for CCSEPRC.
The Cook College sophomore and animal science major has been with the club since his first year.
"When I found out that I could have a dog next year, it blew my mind," said Lockett, about his first year on campus.
He said he knows blind people and "wanted to give back." With a Seeing Eye dog, the incapacitated person can go virtually anywhere.
"The dogs are their eyes as well as their best friend," Lockett said.
The puppy raisers teach their canine companions basic house manners like stay, sit and "park time," allowing the puppy a bathroom break.
The CCSEPRC uses golden retrievers, black and yellow Labrador retrievers, German shepherds and, like the newest addition to the club, Jake, an occasional boxer.
If Seeing Eye dogs look solemn and unhappy, it's because "they're trained to be professional ignorers," Lockett said.
"We're doing what everyone does [dog training], just on a grander scale," Lockett said. "[So] they'll be perfect little citizens.
The puppies have their own Bark Yard on Cook campus, where they can be free to run and play with other puppies.
The puppies that graduate from this program go on to the Seeing Eye in Morristown to receive guide dog training.
There, they will be tested to see if, indeed, they are Seeing Eye "material." If the puppies pass and move on, the raisers may never see the dog again for fear of distracting the dog from its duties.
These puppies can fail for things like barking or relieving themselves at the wrong time. The Seeing Eye has high standards by which to admit them.
If they fail, their student raisers then get the opportunity to keep the dogs or to decline.
If they cannot keep the dog, these canines are placed on a waiting list where people who highly covet these well-behaved dogs wait up to five years.
The puppies become like little University students by attending lectures and walking around campus.
The more places they are accustomed to the better. CCSEPRC is looking to expand the places on which these puppies can tread, extending beyond Cook campus.
It serves as a realistic training ground, exposing them to buses and other popular campus venues.
After forming such deep bonds with the puppies, Lockett said he takes comfort in the notion that these dogs are bound to "do bigger and better things. … Helping blind people makes it worth it. It fills up that hole."
Cook College sophomore Jenny Mills is looking to expand these pet experiences. She is looking into allowing cats on campus.
These felines can be taken from overcrowded animal shelters, trained and taught basic house manners and later given back to the shelters, bettering the chances of the cats' adoption.
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