Animals have always played an important role in my life. While growing up in Irondequoit, my family chose to have cats as pets and once I was done with school and out on my own, I continue to have cats as pets. Right now, I have three at home.

Since I started work at Center for Disability Rights, Inc. last year, I have been constantly reminded of the important role that service animals have working with the disability community. One of our employees brings her service dog to work with her every day and we occasionally get visitors to the Center that come accompanied by their service dogs. The Americans with Disabilities Act guarantees people with disabilities – including those with service animals – access to all public places. Most people today are familiar with seeing eye dogs that assist people with visual impairments, but did you know that the Seeing Eye Inc. of Morristown, NJ, trained the first guide dogs, and many people still refer to all service dogs as “Seeing Eye dogs”?

There are three main types of assistance dogs that are trained to work with people with disabilities:

GUIDE DOGS for the blind and the visually impaired
HEARING DOGS for the deaf and hard of hearing
SERVICE DOGS for people with disabilities other than those related to vision or hearing

GUIDE DOGS
Guide Dogs assist people who are blind or visually impaired by avoiding obstacles, stopping at curbs and steps, and negotiating traffic. The harness and U-shaped handle fosters communication between the dog and the blind partner. The human’s role is to provide directional commands, while the dog’s role is to insure the team’s safety even if this requires disobeying an unsafe command.

Labrador and Golden Retrievers and German Shepherd dogs, as well as other large breeds, are carefully bred, socialized and raised for over one year by volunteers, then trained for 4 to 6 months by professional trainers before being placed with their blind handlers.

HEARING DOGS
Hearing Dogs assist deaf and hard of hearing individuals by alerting them to a variety of household sounds such as a door knock or doorbell, alarm clock, oven buzzer, telephone, baby cry, name call or smoke alarm. The dogs are trained to make physical contact and lead their deaf partners to the source of the sound.

Hearing Dogs are generally mixed breeds acquired from animal shelters and are small to medium in size. Prior to formal audio response training, the younger adoptees are raised and socialized by volunteer puppy raisers. Hearing Dogs are identified by an orange collar and leash and/or vest.

SERVICE DOGS
Service Dogs assist people with physical disabilities by retrieving objects that are out of their reach, pulling wheelchairs, opening and closing doors, turning light switches off and on, barking for alert, finding another person, assisting ambulatory persons to walk by providing balance and counterbalance and many other individual tasks specific to the person’s needs.

Service Dogs are either rescued from animal shelters or bred in selective breeding programs and raised by volunteers prior to their formal training. Most Service Dogs are Golden Retrievers or Labrador Retrievers. Service Dogs can be identified by either a backpack or harness.

There are a large number of not for profit agencies, including Guiding Eyes for the Blind, located in Yorktown Heights, NY, that specialize in training these dogs to get them ready for their new life of assisting a disabled person. These agencies don’t charge the person with a disability who receives the service dog but instead rely on contributions from individuals, corporations, foundations, and civic organizations. From information posted on the Guiding Eyes for the Blind website, it costs approximately $45,000 to prepare students and dogs to become a Guiding Eyes team. If you know someone who might be interested in obtaining a service dog, one website to visit to obtain more information would be http://www.guidingeyes.org

When you think about it, it’s really amazing how animals can and do make such a difference in so many lives. The large amount of joy and affection that they provide to you in return for just a place to live and some food is one of the best deals around!

Service dogs make it possible for many individuals with disabilities to become independent and able to live on their own or with minimal assistance in the community. Helping people achieve Independent Living is one of the goals of the Center for Disability Rights and obtaining a service dog is one way that a person with a disability can become more independent.