What do you do when your guide dog loses its sight? You get your faithful companion and helper a guide dog, that’s what:

Edward and Opal.

A Suffolk man was devastated when his faithful guide dog lost his sight — so he got a new dog to act as eyes for both of them.

Edward had given Graham Waspe, 60, six years of loyal service until he had to have both eyes removed after developing inoperable cataracts.

Mr Waspe, from Stowmarket, couldn’t bear to be parted from his canine companion — so he got a new guide dog to look after them both.

[Via Guide dog gets a guide dog | Orange UK.]

[Photo from original article.]

The US Military is hard at work looking for ways to detect roadside bombs. They’ve thrown billions of dollars at the problem and come up with aircraft, robots, hi-tech sensors. But ultimately they rely on dogs:

Pip the Arms and Explosives Search (AES) dog.

But in the war against improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, no weapon is as effective as well-trained soldiers and their bomb-sniffing dogs, said Army Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, director of the Joint IED Defeat Organization.

“Dogs are the best detectors,” Oates said at an Oct. 20 news conference at JIEDDO headquarters in Arlington, Va.When dogs are teamed with small dismounted teams of U.S. and Afghan troops, they are capable of detecting 80 percent of IEDs, he said. “That combo presents the best detection system we currently have.”

[Via Technology Falls Short in the War Against IEDs - Blog.]

Try as we might, we still can’t match Nature.

Photo by Defence Images — http://flic.kr/p/8xvN79

I recently listened to a very interesting radio interview about New Zealand Kiwi birds, dogs and the work of the Save the Kiwi Trust:

Tahi, the one-legged Kiwi at Wellington Zoo.

Feature Guest – Hugh Robertson
Our national bird is under threat from predators, cars, dogs, environmental destruction, from poachers, you name it. (duration: 24′45″)
Download: Ogg Vorbis, MP3

Hugh Robertson, coordinator of the Kiwi Recovery Programme. What does the future hold for our national bird? Hugh is joined by his dog Kara, who’s in training to sniff out kiwi.

[Via Radio New Zealand National : Programmes A-Z : Nine to Noon : 2010 09 23.]

One stunning moment in the interview was when Hugh told the story of how one farm dog massacred 500 Kiwi in the space of 6 weeks a while back.

On the other hand, properly trained dogs can help sniff out Kiwi so researchers can protect and study them.

Listen to the interview (links above) to find out more.

What a great idea! In Japan there are public displays of what guide dogs, hearing dogs and assistance dogs can do. For a country with 127 million people, it doesn’t have many such dogs. Building public awareness should help everyone.

Guide Dog in Harness.

Apart from Japan’s 51 service dogs, it has 19 hearing dogs who can help deaf or hearing impaired people by alerting their handler to important sounds such as doorbells, smoke alarms, ringing telephones or alarm clocks. They may also work outside the home, alerting to sounds such as sirens, cars and a person calling the handler’s name.

Japan also has 1,045 guide dogs …

“In Japan, there are special associations for the three types of dogs and they will hold 200 to 300 promotional activities a year in public places, … to help people better understand the animals and their works.

“They also provide brochures about assistance dogs or channel information through the Internet,” he added.

[Via Dogs with a care factor.]

For more information about service dogs in Japan see:

• Japan Guide Dog Association
• Japan
  Hearing Dogs For Deaf People

Guide dogs bring new freedoms to visually impaired people in many Western countries, but it’s not so easy in China:

Despite the convenience guide dogs bring to the blind, there is no regulations in China at present that guarantee a legal identity to the dogs.

Guide Dog in Harness.

Currently, ownership of big dogs like Golden Retriever and Labrador Retriever in Beijing is restricted, and big dogs are barred from public places. Since guide dogs are a new phenomenon in the country, they are not an exception under the law.

Ping said that her dog Lucky, a 1.4-meter-long Golden Retriever, was barred from public places quite a few times. …

The current laws and regulations concerning guide dogs in China are ambiguous. According to Article 58 of the Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons, blind owners shall observe the relevant provisions of the country when entering a public place. But it does not name the exact provisions to follow. In practice, the guide dogs do not have a legal identity card and the blind owners need to ask for permission every time they appear in public.

[Via Global Times - Blind faith.]

Guide dogs are new in China — in 2010 there are about 15 graduated pairs of blind people and guide dogs in the whole of China. It could be a long while before people become accustomed to the dogs.

In this blog we like to celebrate working dogs — those who sniff out drugs, explosives or bodies, guard, guide or help people, draw loads, and retrieve objects. But some of those working dogs are taken into war.

Landmine Clearing Efforts of the UN Mine Action Centre

It’s amazing any of them cope with the experience, but some develop stress disorders, like Gunner:

Out of the 58 bomb-sniffing dogs the [US] Marines have in Afghanistan, only one — a brown-eyed, floppy-eared yellow Lab named Gunner — is suffering from such severe canine post-traumatic stress disorder that he had to sit out the ongoing offensive …

[Gunner] reacted so nervously to the rattle of gunfire and deep boom of artillery commonplace around military outposts that he never even got a chance to test his mettle on a real patrol. …

Gunner was sent to the main kennel at Camp Leatherneck, a rear base. There, bomb dogs recuperate from illness or injury …

For weeks after he arrived at Camp Leatherneck, Gunner refused to leave the kennel compound. Even now almost any sound sends him into a panic.

[Via : Even His Red Squeak Toy Can't Get First Sgt. Gunner, USMC, to Fight - WSJ.com.]

It’s very sobering, and I feel sorry for both Gunner and all other dogs taken into danger.

Photo by United Nations: Landmine Clearing Efforts of the UN Mine Action Centre.

26 to 28 March 2010 is when the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind are raising funds to help with training Guide Dogs:

Red Puppy appeal.

It costs the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind over $22,500 to breed, then train a guide dog for a blind or partially sighted New Zealander. With no government funding for this essential service public support is truly valued. You can continue to support Guide Dog Services by donating today.

[Via : Whats the Red Pupply appeal?.]

Can you help?

Volunteers are vital to the work of the RNZFB’s Red Puppy Appeal, and in the course of a year over 10,000 people volunteer. This includes volunteers for both the Red Puppy Appeal (previously Guide Dog Appeal) and Blind Week. Volunteering provides a wonderful opportunity to meet people, learn new skills, share existing skills, and have fun and give something back to your community.

In 1957 the dog Laika made history when she became the first living thing to go into space. She died after a few hours in orbit.

Belka and Strelka: Star Dogs

Less well known are Belka and Strelka who spent a day on Sputnik 5 on 19 August 1960 before safely returning to Earth.

Belka and Strelka are now the stars of an animated movie:

An animated feature film called Star Dogs: Belka and Strelka was released on March 18th [2010] to mark the 50th anniversary of the first space flight featuring dogs.

[Via : Belka and Strelka - space dogs: Voice of Russia.]

1957. Laika. Sputnik 2.

Those 3 dogs weren’t the only ones who went into space, either.

Take a look at the Wikipedia article Soviet space dogs to learn more about the 2 dozen dogs in the Soviet space programme:

Dogs were the preferred animal for the experiments because scientists felt dogs were better suited to endure long periods of inactivity. As part of their training, they were confined in small boxes for 15–20 days at a time. Stray dogs, rather than animals accustomed to living in a house, were chosen because the scientists felt they would be able to tolerate the rigours and extreme stresses of space flight better than other dogs. Female dogs were used because of their temperament and because the suit for the dogs in order to collect urine and feces was equipped with a special device, designed to work only with females.

Laika image from Wikimedia Commons.

Robert sent me these links to some great videos:

Thought you might be able to make use of these videos on the site. They are tracking the progress of Cheshire Police’s new border collie puppy as he becomes a drugs detection dog.

Meet Cheshire Police’s newest recruit: Ziggy the border collie. Ziggy is nine weeks old. When he grows up he wants to be a drugs detection dog, but at the moment he is far too busy being a puppy.

In the second part of our series following our new border collie puppy, Ziggy is now 16 weeks old and is getting to grips with basic commands and searching for his toy.

In part three of the series following our new border collie puppy, Ziggy has been creating a bit of the stir in the media. He has appeared on Granada Reports and in several newspapers since we last caught up with him. But his feet are being kept firmly on the ground by his friends George and Storm.

More importantly, Ziggy is progressing very well. So well, in fact, that he is now scheduled to go on his drugs detection course this May [2010] when he will still be just nine months old. That is three months earlier than PC Alison Bowkett, his handler, had initially expected.

See if you can spot the moment Ziggy’s enthusiastic sniffing around cause him to knock into the camera tripod!

Remember to subscribe to the Cheshire Police YouTube Channel for more updates on Ziggy.

I can only link to this 13 minute TVNZ video — Prison pups:

Mobility dogs in training. Still from TVNZ video.

Some of New Zealand’s worst criminals are finding unconditional
love behind bars: meet the prison puppies said to be helping both
society and cell mates.

A group of women in prison in Auckland, New Zealand, have been specially chosen to provide initial training for mobility dogs, as part of the work of the Mobility Assistance Dogs Trust:

The MISSION of the Trust is to “enhance the lives of people living with long term physical disabilities by providing trained mobility dogs to increase independence, confidence, self esteem and participation in New Zealand communities”

The women find friendship and purpose in their training work. With plenty of time at their disposal, they can provide a commitment that may be hard to find elsewhere.

It seems like a perfect partnership: training the puppies brings benefits for prison inmates; the trained dogs bring benefit for people with disabilities.