a review of Pick of the Litter, a documentary i was assigned to watch by my therapist
previously my therapist has also assigned me The Road by cormac mccarthy and Man's Search for Meaning by viktor frankl. this documentary was a lot lighter and easier to get through, so that was nice.
Pick of the Litter is a 2018 documentary that focuses on a litter of five labrador puppies who are about to undergo a two-year long training process to become guide dogs for blind and visually impaired people. this is an awesome premise as someone who is a white cane user and has to seriously consider getting a guide dog in the very near future.
this movie is not rated and i was wondering why before i started watching. like, presumably, there isn't anything overtly graphic; this is a movie about sweet puppies and the people who care for and train them. i believe the not rated rating is because the film opens with the puppies being born. i mean those suckers are FRESH. still wet and kind of featureless and everything.
then, we go on to the naming of the puppies, which is one of my least favorite parts of this documentary because they were NOT named well. their names are:
me personally, i would have named the puppies way better. hell would freeze over before i picked up a newly-born puppy, eyes still closed, whining and crying, so new and unaware of this big, scary, beautiful world and decided that patriot is an acceptable name to give to this being. hoooooly shit.
all of these dogs were born on Guide Dogs for the Blind's campus which i think is somewhere in california. at two months old, each puppy is placed with a volunteer puppy trainer. this section of the movie is quite illuminating because it really sets in for the audience that these are not simply just cute squishy clumsy puppies. they were brought into this world to be trained and to work. i don't really know how i feel about this, to be honest, and most of my thoughts are half-baked. does class consciousness apply to dogs and all other working animals? i just don't know.
patriot is paired with a family who has a high-school aged son, and patriot is not especially well-behaved while he is at school, so he is rehomed. i get it man. high school fucking sucks. i would probably be barking and snarling too if i got up and dropped into the middle of a public high school with no warning. patriot is transferred to puppy trainer adam, who is an iraq war veteran. would it be a feel-good amerikkkan produced documentary without our ptsd-riddled veteran figure? methinks not! bleeeh.
phil is also placed with an initial puppy trainer but reassigned because he was not making progress fast enough. this documentary is set over two-ish years, i think, and it's so lovely to see how big the puppies get, and so quickly! i grew up with a miniature dachshund who did not change size very much. she came into this world being three pounds or so and left it at a hefty and impressive seven pounds.
potomac had issues from the jump -- he was quite easily distractible and was ultimately career-changed. career-changed is a polite way of saying a GDB dog did not make the cut for guide dog training, though they may be able to serve as service animals for other folks. there's a scene where potomac's puppy trainer throws slips of paper in front of her while they walk together and he has to sniff every single ONE. just really has to get in there. while this is amusing, it is ultimately unsuitable for a guide dog.
poppet, although i do not like her name very much, is an absolute rockstar. she is not easily distracted and is doing well with her puppy trainer.
primrose is also a rockstar, but she is ultimately chosen by GDB staff to be a breeder. this is another facet of the film that leaves me with questions and ethical uncertainties that i can't answer for at this particular time. also this is getting long. i'm going to try and wrap it up.
so, patriot, primrose, and potomac are out. that leaves phil and poppet as our only dogs who made it past the puppy-trainer phase. they return to GDB's campus to train with professional trainers, and are constantly out and about. they take public transport, navigate through traffic, and make their way through a department store with these trainers. these dogs really stepped their oinks up for this training.
both phil and poppet fail some of their testing at GDB, but are retested and both pass!!! YAY! great joy and stellar news! phil is placed with ron, who has been blind since he was 18 months old, and poppet is placed with janet, who actually has the same degenerative eye disease that i do. i do have to admit that i teared up a little, though i'm normally the strong and silent type.
the training and growing-up of all five dogs was fascinating and-- forgive this turn of phrase --eye-opening. there is so much time, energy, and effort that goes into raising and training these pups. they have to be disobedient from time to time: if a person they are guiding says "forward" and there's a prius in front of them, well, the dog has to stay put despite being given a command. they have to be constantly observant, constantly vigilant, and always, always working. they don't get to clock out. they have literally been bred, raised, and trained for this singular purpose. i wonder if ron and janet consider phil and poppet as pets, friends, colleagues, or all three. or maybe none of the above. some have said that blind people are not a monolith.
as for potomac, he ultimately becomes a pet dog and lives a presumably happy life with a family in oregon. and our friend patriot is paired with adam after being career changed and after GDB contacts him. he is adam's unofficial ptsd dog.
i enjoyed this documentary quite a bit! it is a digestible and approachable one hour and twenty-one minutes. it's free on philo WITH ADS. i think i sat through five unskippable ad sequences. we are living in a hell of a few select people's creation.
7.5/10 and i deserve a guide dog more than a guy who was blinded while doing imperialism and maiming and killing brown people.
