A 59-pound brown-eyed girl has been walking around campus lately, making all sorts of heads turn.

But this girl is having a few problems seeing over the mounds of snow continuously building up around her new stomping grounds.

“She’s got to learn to figure out how to get places when the snow piles are over her head,” said Katherine Schneider, senior psychologist of Counseling Services, on her new Seeing Eye dog, Garlyn.

For Schneider, who has been blind her entire life, Garlyn is her sixth Seeing Eye dog.

“They’re really close,” said junior Karin Rasmussen on Schneider’s relationship with her dogs. Rasmussen has been reading for Schneider as a part-time job since May. “She loves them a lot and they love her.”

Garlyn is a 2-year-old black lab crossed with a golden retriever. She officially began her duties as Schneider’s new dog on Jan. 22. Her previous dog, Carter, retired at the beginning of January and has moved in with Marge Bottoms, a retired nursing professor of Eau Claire.

Although the first few weeks away from Schneider were difficult for Carter, he now is adjusting well to retirement, Bottoms said.

“We’ve got a big back yard,” Bottoms said. “He can go out and play in the snow.”

Garlyn, however, is still accustoming herself to the snow. Sometimes, she has to lead Schneider right over the snow banks, Schneider said.

“I’ve fallen down once,” Schneider said, “but it wasn’t her fault.”

Compared to Carter, Garlyn is slightly more daring.

“I think she’s more curious and adventurous than Carter,” Schneider said. “By about the second day, Garlyn wanted to find a different way to walk home from work. You kind of have to trust them to do their job.”

On Jan. 3, the day after Carter retired, Schneider flew out to The Seeing Eye in Morristown, N.J., where trainers assigned Garlyn to her two days later.

With 40 possible dogs at The Seeing Eye, 23 blind people were there to be assigned a dog. The trainers observed and interviewed the recipients for the first few days to decide on the correct dog for each individual, Schneider said.

For the few days Schneider was without a dog, she used a cane.

“I kind of felt naked (but) it worked fine,” Schneider said. “It wasn’t fun.”

The Seeing Eye dogs are bred at the school. When they are about 8 weeks old, they are placed in a home for about one year. A teenage girl from New Jersey raised Garlyn for the first year, Schneider said.

During the two and a half weeks of training in New Jersey, the trainers did everything they could to make sure the dogs were ready.

“They send out an instructor in a car to try and run you down,” Schneider said. “They want to make sure the dog will do everything as far as push you backwards.”

Now that Garlyn has finished her training and continues to settle into her new home, her proud mother asks that students not speak directly to Garlyn and ask before they pet her.

“Don’t stare at the dog when the dog’s working,” Schneider said. “She will lose focus of what she’s doing.

“Leave it to her … she is a very friendly beast.”