That’s no ordinary dog with techie Kushal Chakrabarti

/Home/News/Headlines about Dogs

Friday, April 10, 2009 | Modified: Monday, April 13, 2009, 5:00am PDT

Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) - by Eric Engleman Staff Writer
Photo: Dan Schlatter

Kushal Chakrabarti, a 26-year-old Seattle techie, often brings his dog, a 9-month-old yellow Lab named Dusky, to the office.

He also takes Dusky on airplanes and into hotels, brings him on runs to Costco, and takes him to parties with his 20-something friends.

Sound a bit odd? Dusky, it turns out, isn’t an ordinary canine, but a seeing-eye dog in training. Chakrabarti, who is not visually impaired himself, has for several years trained puppies in the early stages of becoming a guide dog. His task: to take the dog everywhere he goes, to get it used to being with a human 24 hours a day.

Chakrabarti, who had a German shepherd as a kid growing up in the Los Angeles area, got interested in guide dog training after seeing one of them on the street in Seattle. He started working with a group called Guide Dogs for the Blind in 2005, and got his first puppy, a black Lab named Louie, in early 2006.

Chakrabarti takes the dogs for about a year and a half, before they go to the Guide Dogs for the Blind academy outside Portland for more intense training. In addition to putting the dogs through standard house training and taking them everywhere he goes, he does some fairly intense obedience training.

“If a blind person wants them to come to them, they better come,” Chakrabarti explains. “If you have young kids come up and poke them, they still have to stay professional.”

Chakrabarti has taken three dogs: Louie, followed by Lester, and now Dusky. He admits to being devastated when it comes time to give them up — “I was bawling,” he recalls of turning over his first dog, Louie — but says it’s ultimately a rewarding experience.

“For me, I love dogs and I get to keep a dog and do something that’s incredibly empowering, helpful to a lot of people,” Chakrabarti said, adding, “You get this never-ending supply of cute little puppies.”

Having a mobile dog works for the busy Chakrabarti, a former Amazon.com engineer who is working on a new nonprofit startup called the Vittana Foundation. Vittana’s website will allow people to make loans to students in developing countries. Chakrabarti calls the model “microfinance for education.”

Chakrabarti has seen direct evidence of how his work with dogs has benefitted the blind. He’s met up a few times with a blind man in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood who is now the owner of Louie, the first dog that he helped train.

“Louie remembered me,” he said. “I got completely bowled over by my old dog.”

Chakrabarti says he doesn’t fit the profile of people who volunteer for this type of dog training. They are typically older folks and retirees, or teenagers, he says.

“I don’t think there are a lot of single 20-something guys who do this,” Chakrabarti says. But he’s staying committed to it, even as he launches his own startup and flies around the country for business meetings, with dog in tow.

“They’re my carry-on,” Chakrabarti says. “Instead of putting my suitcase under the seat in front of me, I put my dog under the seat in front of me.”

eengleman@bizjournals.com | 206.876.5430