[nagdu] Therapy dog

[Cindy Ray]

Except that the therapy dog program that refused me the opportunity to certify my dog said that it confuses the dogs if they are doing both guide work and therapy work. For instance, in a hospital, you would take the harness off and let the person love on them or whatever, and at that point the dog would not be a guide. Now, theoretically, in the read program you would be taking off the harness. Of course, I'm just playing devil's advocate there because I think it should all be a no brainer, and with those kind of credentials and a well trained dog I don't see the difference either.
Cindy


-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jody Ianuzzi via nagdu
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2015 10:31 AM
To: the National Association of Guide Dog Users NAGDU Mailing List
Cc: Jody Ianuzzi
Subject: [nagdu] Therapy dog

Hello Karla and all,

I have been thinking of Karla's post and I have a few ideas I would like to share.

First of all and most important is the issue of therapy dog.  The purpose of getting a therapy dog certification is to be able to take a dog places where a pet dog is not allowed.  A guide dog already has this certification.  To be a READ dog the dog sits quietly and pays attention to the child who is reading.  A guide dog would do this.    Therefore the whole idea of getting the certification is totally unnecessary.  

As for safety, I love the way schools always throw that out as a barrier to anything they don't like.  Some schools even say a blind child can't use a white cane for safety reasons.  This is just hysteria to put up another barrier.
 
As for Karla's qualifications, they should be thrilled to have a PhD and retired professor assisting with their students.  Instead they don't understand how a blind person can help a child read.  Really?  Give me a break.  When my children were learning to read they would read out loud to me and when they came to a word they didn't know I would have them spell it and we would sound it out together.  Again, the school is putting up another barrier.

So lets remove all the barriers and what do we have left?  Plain and simple prejudice.   If it were me I would first decide if I really wanted to be in such an environment or if there were a better place to volunteer where I would be appreciated like the public library reading program.  If I decided to fight the prejudice I would first  talk to the person putting up all the barriers and I would tell them exactly how I felt discriminated against by their behavior.  If they still insisted on their position I would go to the next level up all the way to the Superintendent of schools and if they still closed the door to me I would contact the media.

Just my two cents but really the therapy dog certification is not the issue here.  

JODY 🐺
thunderwalker321 at gmail.com

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."  DOCTOR WHO (Tom Baker) _______________________________________________
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