The Taiwan Guide Dog Association (TGDA) got on the bus in Taipei City yesterday for an awareness-raising event.
Two guide dogs, Journey and Diane, rode the number 52 bus operated by Shin Shin Bus Company with association members in tow showing bus riders the correct way to interact with guide dogs and their owners.
"Guide dogs are still so rare in Taiwan that people do not know the proper way to act around them," said the association's publicist Joyce Feng (
"Guide dogs are highly-trained animals. People need not fear that they will attack or otherwise behave inappropriately," Feng said. "But they are working dogs, so please do not distract them or pet them without the permission of the owner."
There are only 20 guide dogs in service in the country, but there are more than 50,000 blind people, according to the association.
Even though a guide dog is not right for every blind person, that number is still way too low, Feng said.
"Because we don't have our own breeding and training programs, all of the guide dogs in this country have to be imported,"Feng said. "The number of guide dogs in this country should be closer to 500."
Twenty-two-year-old Chiu Wen-shen (
"In addition to distracting Journey, it's an invasion of my privacy," Chiu said. "I usually don't mind letting people pet Journey, but please ask first."
Even though it has been more than three years since the Legislative Yuan enacted amendments to the Protection Act for the Handicapped and Disabled (
"Sometimes, the bus driver will not even give me the time to explain that Journey is a guide dog. They drive off as soon as they see him," Chiu said.
Chiu said that he was turned away by a bus driver as recently as earlier this month.
The law is on his side, and Chiu has the relevant parts of the act printed right on the back of his proof of disability card. But that does not stop some restaurants from finding excuses not to let him in with his guide dog.
"They'll say `we're so sorry, but we have kids here who are afraid of dogs,'" Chiu said.
Despite the occasional rejection, Chiu said having Journey to help him has changed his life for the better.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater