And while you might think you know where they come from, 6% of them have a surprising start by Hi.

My name is Caitlyn.

I'm 16 years old, and last year I was partnered with my first guide dog.

Honey.

She is a retriever, Black Labrador Cross.

And she has changed my life.

Honey has made me more confident, independent and allowed me to socialize more.

But I wanted to find out where dogs like her come from.

So I'm meeting Matthew Bottomley, head of breeding operations at the Guide Dog National Breeding Center.

So this is our puppy back, Caitlin.

And this is where all the puppies come in between six and seven weeks of age.

They come in here on day, received their vaccinations, their microchips on they get a vet checkers.

Well, to make sure they're fit and healthy to travel on to the next stage of their journey.

Most of our puppies will be born out in family homes.

Eso They're looked after by a wonderful group of volunteers being attacked by a copy as we speak.

When I stood dog and mom got together.

How much of it is natural?

Wonder how much is artificial?

We always try Thio affect a natural mating if we possibly can.

We believe that's the right way to go on.

Last year are natural matings.

We did.

94% of our meetings were natural matings.

But if we can't for whatever reason, it doesn't.

Nature doesn't play its place hand in the right way and were unable to get a natural mating.

Then we will sometimes use artificial insemination.

Tha thing is our cryogenic freezer.

In here we store samples of our stud dogs.

Frozen semen in there.

They're stored in liquid nitrogen around about minus 190 C on DSO.

We can keep that genetic material pretty much indefinitely.

Two reasons for that one.

It acts as a zone insurance policy for us that guide dogs in case we have some dreaded disease that hits our dog population.

We have that genetic material preserved and secondly, we use it Thio collaborate with other schools around the world internationally to exchange bloodlines to make sure that our breeding program is genetically diverse and healthy and vigorous.

A zit can be thistles.

Natasha.

She's a reproduction specialist at the breeding center.

So in here we have many frozen samples from up to 30 years ago on the archive samples around the bottom row on their stored in a baker phase.

Semen is stored in little tiny straws.

Onda.

All those draws air containing goblets, goblets Airil, stored in shelves on DWI label each individual straw so that we can always locate the semen from the from the correct stud dog.

This year there will be about 1200 poppies, but the center they have about 275 breeding bitches on about 90 stood dogs.

So how would you decide out of these properties could be a breeding dog?

Common misconception is that dogs that we had to the breeding program are often failed guide dogs.

But it's actually quite the reverse.

Were cherry picking the very, very best, um, stock that we can frankly toe add to the breeding program?

What we do is look at the family tree, the pedigree.

We look at all the qualities that the dog themselves has and the dog has in their history, and also, if they've produced puppies in the past, and obviously we look at any success that they've had with that as well.

Most of the pops, the center of pure Labrador pupil, golden retriever or a cross between the two.

But they also have German shepherds, thes air larger, a bit quicker and have a greater drive.

Kayleigh carted retriever standard poodles and curly quarters retrievers when crossed with Labradors, thes air more suited to people who are allergic to dog hair.

Why do some of the dogs have nail varnish on when you have a large litter of puppies and particularly, they're all the same color?

It could be really hard to distinguish one from the other, so just to help us identify them, and, of course, when they're a bit younger as well, it's even more difficult.

We just put a little tiny blob of now varnish on there, either on their shoulder, one of the shoulders or on their on their hind legs as well.

Onda, Sometimes under the if it's really cool to see where the journey of a guide dog starts, like some of these little black puppies remind me of honey, and it's just really cool to see how they will eventually grow up into a working guide.