Guide Dogs Essay

There are between 45 to 55 million dogs per household in America (American Humane Association 2012). Furthermore, according to a national survey, the majority of dog owners chose to get a dog for the companionship as the major reason for having a dog (American Animal Hospital Association, 2004). After all, dogs are nonjudgmental, give unconditional love, can be trusted with our most intimate feelings and emotions, and are highly intelligent. These dog characteristics can significantly enhance the lives of thousands of youth and adults, especially those with disabilities and/or those who live in continuing care facilities. There are approximately 20,000 service dogs in the U.S., which includes 10,000 guide dogs (American Humane Association 2012)

There are 3 different types of service dogs people can have: Emotional Support Animals, Therapy Animals, and Service Animals. Emotional Support Animals have one task and that is to provide comfort and support, emotionally, to someone who needs it and has a documented health condition. Therapy Animals are registered through an agency and their purpose is to provide therapeutic value to those who need it. Service animals are trained to perform tasks the owner simply cannot do on their own, guiding blind people, detecting seizures, helping people who have lost legs or arms.

Once a puppy dog being trained as a service dog reaches eighteen to twenty months, they leave their training family and are brought to the training organization for further training along with other service dogs. The dogs are trained to have good manners. During their training time they learn fifty plus commands. They are trained to perform tasks that are difficult and uncomfortable such as crawling along the floor so that they can get under furniture to retrieve items that their owners may have dropped. The dogs must be strong in case they need to push or pull a wheel chair through a narrow area. At the end of training, they are given difficult tests to test their shyness and submissiveness, if they startle, and if they are forgiving and loving. If they pass all their tests, they go through a boot camp where their potential owners are trained how to take care of them. During

Have you ever seen the ASPCA commercials where they show pictures of abused and neglected animals while the Sarah McLachlan song “In the Arms of an Angel” plays in the background? It is heart wrenching to watch and I always want to help those poor, defenseless animals. I took this opportunity to volunteer at the Town and Country Animal Shelter; a non-profit, no-kill shelter run entirely by volunteers serving eastern Nebraska and beyond. They are dedicated to providing a safe and caring living facility for pets in need until a loving home can be found, as well as helpful information for those wishing to rehome or adopt an animal. I chose this organization because they are a no kill shelter and they take in animals of all different sorts.

Since being involved in a dog rescue organization, I’ve learned a lot about how an animal control shelter works. They are not just people who will take your dog if they get out of the yard. They are animal lovers who try their best to educate the community pet population control and help homeless pets find a new home. I sat down with a friend of mine who I met through the animal rescue group with both volunteer with to find out more about a day in the life of a shelter worker.

They adopt dogs from animal shelters around them and train them. Then the process is to find them a home with a deaf impaired client that needs assistance. They tend to get dogs that are six months old with high energy and they go through extensive testing for six to eight months. The test involves noises that are typically heard throughout the day, along with the emergency alert tones like fire alarms etc. When the client has been pared with one of Internationals hearing dogs, they are transport to their new place of living. A trainer will travel with the dog to the new home and help make the dog accustomed to its new surroundings and noises. It will cost around $8,000 for this whole process to happen. This covers the dog’s food, provide Living quarter until time being, flying the dog and trainer out to the client’s home. This nonprofit has been alive for 35 years and has paid for all their expenses through grants and donations. The international Hearing Dogs Inc has helped over 1,200 Dogs find partners in their line of work. (The Denver Post. (2016, June

Many dogs and cats will walk in and out of many shelters in the U.S. but many Pit Bulls will be able to walk out with a family. I tried to look for someone who has had experience within the kennels and to see firsthand the consequences of the negative reputation Pit Bulls in order to demonstrate the struggle that Pit Bulls faced. I met Jenna Keyes, a Humane Educator, who works for the St. Joseph Animal Shelter and deals with animal control and rescue. I walked into her office where the many pictures of animals on the wall cued to me that she clearly was an animal lover and I was in the right place for my interview. Keyes explains that before working at the shelter, she worked with horses and did dog training at boarding kennels. In addition,

Imagine that for Christmas you got a brand new puppy, you feed it, you train it, you play with it, and one day you run over it. That story could have made you a little sad, even if you didn’t get a dog for Christmas and run over it. Next, does it surprise you that 6.2 million dogs die per year, according to The National Animal Interest Alliance, “3.8 million in homes, veterinary hospitals and under the wheels of a vehicle, and an additional 2.4 million in shelters.” When I said that it probably sounded like I knew what I was talking about with plausible detail.

“While showing the love the dogs has brought great attention to our organization, we realized we can do more for the animal community as well. This epidemic has risen in recent years and needs to be recognized.”

Service dogs assist people that have physical and mental impairments. It was not until after World War I, a modern guide dogs school was founded. However, the United States did not have a guide dog until 1928. Now there are service dog schools across the United States like the Guide Dogs of America and Occupaws. There is act that has passed to allow services dogs to assist their owners in restaurants,

The North Shore Animal League will first discuss animal rights and how animal abuse and homelessness is at an all-time high today among animals. There will also be various pictures and statistics shown to offer the audience insight on which dog and cat breeds are the most abused and homeless. For example, due to their small size and temperament with people Chihuahuas are among one of the most abused and homeless dog breeds. The organization will then discuss their plan to remedy the issue of animal abuse and homelessness by opening up animal shelters in urban areas in Staten Island and Brooklyn to lower animal abuse and homelessness. These shelters will provide the animal’s food, water, and medicine, which are the main necessities for them to survive. By opening these new shelters, it will ensure the animal’s safety and well-being until people are ready to adopt and bring them home.

These dogs learn many tasks so they are specialized for their certain patient. Therapy dogs learn special tasks to decrease the anxiety in a patient during certain situations, so “Stanek trains his dogs to perform 10 or so PTSD-specific tasks. Some of them are designed to ease concerns about blind spots, not unlike the way a military unit designates someone to watch troops' backs or to scout ahead. Stanek's 2-year-old Catahoula mix, Sarge, for example, has been trained to check around the corner to see what's in the next aisle at a store.”(Thompson 3). When therapy dogs are in public areas, they tend to use tasks like checking around the corners at stores. Those with PTSD sometimes believe there are attackers around the corner. This helps relieve stress of the war veteran by assuring that when the veteran turns the corner they will not get hurt. Not only do the dogs go through training to become perfect for their patients, but they also have to become trained in “normal” tasks, whether their patients use it or not. A therapy dogs may be complicated or not but either way “To qualify as a service animal, dogs must be trained to do work or perform tasks like providing safety checks and room searches for a person with PTSD.”(Thompson 3) . When dogs successfully pass the tests to become a therapy dog, people know therapy dogs are effective at reducing symptoms due to all the standards they must meet. People can usually tell when it is a therapy dog or a pleasure dog just by how they act. Therapy dogs tend to be much calmer and are very good at calming people down. The special training dogs go through make them not only able to but also extremely talented at decreasing a PTSD patient’s

Did you ever wonder what service dogs do? Well read on to find out more on service dogs. Service dogs are tools for to people with disables and they aren’t trained to be family pets. The training process of service dogs and the ways service dogs help people with their disabilities are the main focus of the service dog’s lifestyles.

Countless lives locked away in cages and forgotten about have overwhelmed our society, it has left blood stains on our history as a species and if history has taught us anything, it’s that we have a choice to change our ways of adjusting to situations. A war which was fought in pursuit of ending such criminal means, yet we as human beings do little to nothing to end the horrific crimes of animal deaths in shelters. It is no secret that this world has become infused with problems that have extended from one side of the globe to the other. Amongst these problems lies a terrible truth: nearly every year, sums of almost eight million cats and dogs have been placed in shelters around the world. Out of these vast numbers, half will be

It is often said that a dog is a man’s best friend. In the last 14,000 years, dogs have accompanied man by helping him hunt, guard, and protect. In our modern world, dogs help us combat in war, search-and-rescue, guide the blind, deaf, discapacitated, rehabilitate patients in therapy, aid law enforcement, and are part of our family as beloved pets (Coren). Although canine superstars such as Lassie, Old Yeller, and Rin Tin Tin portray the perfect dog we all want in our lives, these ideals are far from the truth. Many first-time dog owners expect dogs to know behaviors such as how to walk on a leash, not bite, not destroy the house, and in addition to many others. In reality, dogs must be trained on what their handler wants them to do. It is