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ASSISTANCE DOG - DEFINITION

Assistance Dogs The term assistance dog is generally recognisable around the world, but has many definitions, not all of which are entirely helpful or accurate. Broadly speaking, such a dog is trained to help a person with one or more disabilities; usually a disability of mobility, hearing, sight, or medical condition, such as epilepsy.

The ‘Seeing Eye’ dog movement, in the early 1900s, (precursor to the UK Guide Dogs for the Blind), was one of the first to recognise that dogs could be trained to help people with disabilities, but now there are dogs, both private and supplied by charitable or “not for profit” organisations, which can turn on lights, open doors and washing machines, summon lifts and emergency services and even, as in the case of ‘Canine Partners’ in Britain, operate bank cash machines; indeed its dogs are trained over some 2 years, to master 103 different commands and it is claimed one of its dogs can understand and obey 154 identifiable commands.

Dogs also exist to assist those who are deaf, or hard of hearing: see Hearing Dogs (UK). Such dogs aid their human counterpart, by alerting to sounds and also aid others to identify people with hearing issues.

Certain dogs are of course extremely useful, in helping people with physical problems (lifting, reaching, stretching and fetching), but a less well recognised aspect is the companionship that such dogs give, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, providing considerable therapeutic benefit. Several studies have indicated that such assistance dogs not only help their human partner with practical and physical tasks, but they induce a verifiable physical improvement, through effectively forcing or “bribing” the human partner to exercise and concentrate upon problems other than personal ones. In some cases, the presence of the dog is also claimed to reduce discomfort and even pain.