Guide dogs graduate from US training program

The nation now has an official total of 18 guide dogs for the blind, after the Taiwan Guide Dog Association yesterday accredited four American guide dogs and their Taiwanese owners, who had returned from a one-month training program in the US earlier this month.

The four new guide dogs, which were born in the US, are all Labrador-Golden Retriever hybrids, and were trained by Detroit-based Leader Dogs for the Blind, the association said.

Their trainer, Chang Hsin-jung (張心蓉), said that the association had spent three weeks matching the dogs to their future masters and one month training them to get used to life in Taiwan.

She said that the dogs were paired with their new masters after taking into account factors such as height, walking pace and personality.

Chang said that the dogs were likely to be their masters' eyes for the next eight to 10 years.

The association estimates that there are about 50,000 blind people in the country, and that 500 of them urgently need guide dogs.

Although not every blind person needs a lead dog, the numbers of blind people and guide dogs in the country are still highly disproportionate, Chang said.

Association secretary-general Chen Chang-ching (陳長青) said that Chang and her colleague Huang I-shan (黃一山) were the association's first two instructors to be stationed in the US for training.

Chen said that although the Welfare Regulations for the Mentally and Physically Disadvantaged (殘障福利法) stipulate that guide dogs and their owners should be able to gain easy access to public places, many of these areas still prohibit dogs.

"This causes great inconvenience for the owners and their families," Chen said.

Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who attended yesterday's event, said that the mutual trust between guide dogs and their masters offered people a chance to "reflect on their trust and love."

"Guide dogs are like the eyes of the blind, and you cannot ask someone not to bring his or her eyes into a place," Hsieh said.