International Uses
1) About Assistance Dogs
What?
Assistance Dogs not only provide a specific service to their handlers, but also greatly enhance their lives with a new sense of freedom and independence.The three types of Assistance Dogs are GUIDE DOGS for the blind and the visually impaired, HEARING DOGS for the deaf and hard of hearing and SERVICE DOGS for people with disabilities other than those related to vision or hearing. Although Guide Dogs for the blind have been trained formally for over seventy years, training dogs for physically and/or mentally disabled individuals is a much more recent concept.
Assistance Dogs can come from breeding programs, with volunteer puppy raisers caring for them until they are old enough to start formal training, or in some cases the dogs are rescued from animal shelters.
In most countries in the world disabled individuals with Assistance Dogs are guaranteed legal access to all places of public accommodation, modes of public transportation, recreation and other places to which the general public is invited.
Where? Assistance Dogs are everywhere now, and are being trained and sent out to many, many countries including Germany, Italy, etc.
Who? http://www.assistancedogsinternational.org/
2) International Guide Dog Federation
What? The first special relationship between a dog and a blind person is lost in the mists of time, but perhaps the earliest known example is depicted in a first-century AD mural in the buried ruins of Roman Heculaneum. From the Middle Ages, too, a wooden plaque survives showing a dog leading a blind man with a leash.
Where? The International Guide Dog Federation (IGDF) was formed in 1989, following meetings over several years of Guide Dog schools around the World.
