Which breed was the first guide dog for the blind, used in the 1920s?

The German Shepherd was the breed used in the first organized guide-dog programs of the 1920s. When Dorothy Harrison Eustis began formal guide-dog training in Switzerland during that decade, her dogs were German Shepherds.

Eustis had established a breeding and training facility near Vevey, Switzerland, and studied European efforts to help soldiers blinded during the First World War. Her 1927 article about guide dogs attracted Morris Frank, a blind American who traveled to Switzerland to learn the work.

Frank was paired with a female German Shepherd initially called Kiss. He renamed her Buddy, and the pair returned to the United States in 1928. Their public demonstrations helped change attitudes about guide dogs and led Eustis and Frank to establish The Seeing Eye in 1929, the first guide-dog school in the United States.

The wording can cause confusion because Germany had begun training guide dogs during World War I, before the 1920s. German Shepherds were therefore among the earliest modern guide dogs, not the first animals ever used to assist blind people. Labradors and Golden Retrievers later became more common because of their steadier retrieving-dog temperaments.