Emily Chan
She wrote about her observations of the guide dogs and their training success. The article was published in the Saturday Evening Post.
Eustis soon received a letter from a blind 19-year-old man from Tennessee named Morris Frank. He expressed his frustrations with his lack of independence and asked her to help train a dog for him so he could show people that he didn’t always need to rely on others.
The following year, Frank traveled to Switzerland to meet with Eustis. He returned home with his new guide dog, Buddy, who gave him the confidence to strut through busy streets with confidence.
In 1929, Eustis and Frank founded The Seeing Eye, the first guide dog school in America, which is still in existence today. The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association was founded in England five years later.
In the 1970s, dogs began to assist people with other disabilities besides visual impairment, and it was all thanks to Bonnie Bergin, an American doctor and canine researcher.
The idea of service dogs was inspired by her travels abroad. During her trips to parts of Europe, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, she observed people with disabilities using donkeys and burros to aid them.
She thought dogs could do the same and went on to work with a quadriplegic woman to train the very first service dog, Abdul.
In later years, she founded several institutions for service dogs and helped pioneer the term. Since then, service dogs have been a great success.
Today, service dogs help people with a wide range of disabilities, from mobility, visual, and hearing impairments to anxiety, autism, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
