[2] In 1927, Eustis was 41 years old and living in Switzerland where she bred German Shepherds as police dogs when she wrote an article for The Saturday Evening Post, a popular weekly magazine.

The piece described a German dog guide training school for blind veterans of the First World War and sparked a flood of mail, including a letter from a 20-year-old blind man named Morris Frank[3] who promised to help set up a similar school in the United States if Eustis would train him to use a dog guide.

[8] Eustis’s mother was the great-granddaughter of Robert Morris, who helped fund the American Revolution and the great-great-granddaughter of John Nixon, who was chosen to do the public reading of The Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia four days after it was signed.

[12] During her years in Hoosick Falls, Eustis and her husband, a local politician, developed an experimental breeding program for cattle on their farm.

As Willi Ebeling,[14] who worked closely with Eustis to get The Seeing Eye off the ground and served as the organization’s executive vice president for many years, explained: "The first half of his [Han's] life was spent bringing his owners to the realization of what a wonderful dog the old-fashioned German Shepherd really was.

[15] A turning point in Eustis' life came Oct. 8, 1915, when husband Walter died of complications from typhoid fever, making her a 29-year-old widow with two young children, ages 1 and 8.

We can then set up an instruction center in this country to give all those here who want it a chance at a new life.’’[19] By the end of 1928, Eustis had divorced her second husband George and launched a new venture: The Seeing Eye.

[citation needed] For the first three years of its existence, The Seeing Eye had no permanent facility, so trainers traveled to different cities to hold their classes.

That changed in 1931 when Eustis purchased a ten-bedroom mansion in Whippany, New Jersey that had enough room to house students while they were learning to work with their dogs.