PALMETTO, Fla. — Jack Court, a nearly 87-year-old retired clown from Massachusetts, hosts trolley tours at the Southeastern Guide Dogs in Palmetto.

What You Need To Know

  •  A trolley in Palmetto offers campus tours of Southeastern Guide Dogs

  •  Visitors can see training for puppies to become guide and service dogs

  • The facility is at 4210 77th St. E. in Palmetto

  • Tickets for the Monday early morning excursions cost $19

Started in 1982, the organization places roughly 100 dogs every year for visually impaired people and veterans.

“People don’t realize what it’s like to train dogs and what they go through. As puppies, they are trained from when they are born,” Court explains as he makes his first stop, for preschoolers and kindergarteners.

“People’s reaction, it’s marvelous when they go in there,” Court said.

That’s where we meet Kevin Card, a caretaker for the newborn pups.

“This is Blue Rosie. She’s eight weeks old,” he said, holding a yawning Labrador.

In a few weeks, she’ll test out of the classroom and spend a year with a puppy-raiser, acclimating to public life.

First, she must meet benchmarks — like being OK with trainers holding her.

“Another basis would be their ability to connect and work with their handler,” Card says. “And that just builds all the way until their adult career.”

The next stop is play time. When puppies return from their year away, they are trained, exercised and conditioned — through play.

Trainers make sure the dog will flourish, whether they become guide dogs for the visually impaired or service dogs for veterans.

“The most important thing for me is what we do for veterans,” Court says. “The veterans, they get help when they get PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).”

Court was in the Navy for eight years.

“I served at the end of the Korean War, and then I was in during Vietnam but didn’t have to go there,” Court says. “And I served overseas in Africa, believe it or not.”

The final stop is to meet a dog named Don, who is on track to graduate this year and meet his veteran.

Don’s trainer, Marisa Blanco, has been here 20 years and she has a reason for it.

“It’s the ultimate payoff when you see that dog matched and the person graduates,” Blanco says. “If they can have even a little bit of their life back than they had before, that’s what makes it worth it.”

Years of calls and photos and letters of gratitude because of dogs like Don tell Blanco she’s where she belongs.

“And that’s what keeps us going is the mission,” she says.

Matching humans in need with a highly trained and loved canine assistant — and making lives better.

It’s that mission that keeps the tour guide coming back, too.

“I love it here,” Court says.