History
Guide Dogs for the Blind was the first guide dog training school on the West Coast. Its creation was a dream shared by Lois Merrihew and Don Donaldson, who recognized the need to help wounded servicemen who would return from World War II without their sight. They believed in the potential of dogs to serve as guides for the blind. A German Shepherd named Blondie was one of the first dogs trained; she was paired with Sgt. Leonard Foulk, the first serviceman to graduate from the new school.
In 1947, Guide Dogs moved to its present location in San Rafael, California, about 20 miles north of San Francisco. In order to meet the increasing demands for services, the school opened a second campus in Boring, Oregon in 1995.
Read more about this topic: Guide Dogs For The Blind
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)