Bonnie Bergin - Development of Service Dog Concept

Development of Service Dog Concept

The Bergins then spent two years teaching in Australia followed by travel through Asia where she saw donkeys and burros carrying kitchen-wares for people who also used them as crutches while making their way to a street corner to sell their wares. Her experiences of this and seeing other disabled people in Asia struggling to fend for themselves led her to consider the possibility of using dogs to do tasks that would allow individuals with mobility limitations to live independently as a part of mainstream society.

With no formal knowledge of dog training, she tried to convince others of the validity of this vision. Many dog organizations and dog trainers with whom she shared her idea all said it would not work NS would be bad both for the dogs and for people with disabilities. She left teaching to work in a dog kennel for $2 an hour to learn about dogs and dog breeds after which she began the experiment that has resulted in the internationally acclaimed “service dog” concept.

Read more about this topic:  Bonnie Bergin

Famous quotes containing the words development of, development, service, dog and/or concept:

    They [women] can use their abilities to support each other, even as they develop more effective and appropriate ways of dealing with power.... Women do not need to diminish other women ... [they] need the power to advance their own development, but they do not “need” the power to limit the development of others.
    Jean Baker Miller (20th century)

    Other nations have tried to check ... the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
    John Louis O’Sullivan (1813–1895)

    Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.
    William Gibson (b. 1948)

    “And how do you know that you’re mad?”
    “To begin with,” the Cat said, “a dog’s not mad. You grant that?”
    “I suppose so,” said Alice.
    “Well then,” the Cat went on, “you see a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”
    Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    Jesus abolished the very concept of “guilt”Mhe denied any cleavage between God and man. He lived this unity of God and man as his “glad tidings” ... and not as a prerogative!
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)