Dorothy Harrison Eustis - Personal Life

Personal Life

Eustis married her first husband, Walter Abbott Wood Jr., the wealthy son of a farm machinery manufacturer, on Oct. 6, 1906 in Old St. David’s Church in St. David’s, Pa. and then moved to her husband’s hometown of Hoosick Falls, New York, a small community just ten miles south of the Vermont border. The couple had two children: Walter Abbott III (1907–1993) and Harrison (1914–1938) .

During her years in Hoosick Falls, Eustis and her husband, a local politician, developed an experimental breeding program for cattle on their farm. In 1914, during a trip to Europe with her husband, Eustis acquired her first German Shepherd, a dog named Hans. The dog later proved to be part of the inspiration for The Seeing Eye. As Willi Ebeling, 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 life was spent bringing his owners to the realization of what a wonderful dog the old-fashioned German Shepherd really was. The last half of his life was spent watching his owners attempt to regain the old over the present day breed; (sic) to find and retain the working temperament and the usefulness that was present in the breed before the great war (World War I)’’.