Guide Dog
Guide dogs are assistance dogs trained to lead blind and visually impaired people around obstacles.
Although the dogs can be trained to navigate various obstacles, they are partially (red––green) color blind and are not capable of interpreting street signs. The human half of the guide dog team does the directing, based upon skills acquired through previous mobility training. The handler might be likened to an aircraft's navigator, who must know how to get from one place to another, and the dog is the pilot, who gets them there safely.
In several countries, guide dogs, along with most service and hearing dogs, are exempt from regulations against the presence of animals in places such as restaurants and public transportation.
Read more about Guide Dog: History, Research, Breeds, Guide Dog Accessibility, Discrimination
Famous quotes containing the words guide and/or dog:
“In the continual enterprise of trying to guide appropriately, renegotiate with, listen to and just generally coexist with our teenage children, we ourselves are changed. We learn even more clearly what our base-line virtues are. We listen to our teenagers and change our minds about some things, stretching our own limits. We learn our own capacity for flexibility, firmness and endurance.”
—Jean Jacobs Speizer. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Collective, ch. 4 (1978)
“There are many who say that a dog has his day,
And a cat has a number of lives;”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)