The Taipei City Government and an animal welfare group yesterday launched a program aimed at training dogs at animal shelters to assist people who need rehabilitation while boosting animal adoption rates.
The Taipei Animal Protection Office launched the Stray Animal Star Program to find homes for the animals at the Taipei Animal Shelter, selecting select 20 to 30 dogs that are friendly and can be trained as “dog doctors.”
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and a dog demonstrated how medical service dogs can help rehabilitation patients as Ko raised his leg and the dog jumped over it, and Ko tried to put a ring on the dog as it stepped back; some of the ways patients could exercise different muscle groups while having fun.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“Dogs can perform services that human doctors cannot. An aging population is a serious problem facing Taiwan. Some senior citizens have no one to talk to. Pets can provide comfort in addition to medical assistance,” said Ko, a former physician at the National Taiwan University Hospital.
“The association has been training and certifying dogs for therapy, and matching dogs to owners and institutions for the past 15 years,” Formosa Animal-Assisted Activity and Therapy Association chairman Collier Chang (張泮崇) said. “We have trained more than 300 dog doctors from different species, of which one-third were rescued dogs, and all the dog doctors you see here today were adopted.”
Dog doctors can help improve a patient’s strength, minute motor control, and social and cognitive functions, Chang said.
It takes 18 months to train a dog doctor, from selecting trainable candidates, matching, training and certification, while the association needs to raise NT$3.6 million (US$111,152) on top of government funding to carry out the star program, Chang said, calling on the public to join the cause.
Adopted animals are often returned because of behavior problems stemming from their inability to adapt to new environments, so the program follows adoption procedures used in other nations by carefully matching dogs with owners while assigning experienced trainers to the adoptive family to help dogs adapt to the new environment, and instruct owners to train dogs in a loving and nonviolent way, the office said.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei MRT is to begin accepting mobile payment services in the fall, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said on Saturday. When the company finishes the installation of new payment units at ticketing gates in October, MRT passengers can use credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, the operator said. In addition, the MRT would also provide QR payment codes — which would be compatible with Line Pay, Jkopay, iPass Money, PXPay Plus, EasyWallet, iCash Pay, Taiwan Pay and Taishin Pay — to access the railway system. Currently, passengers can access the Taipei MRT by buying a single-journey token or using EasyCard,
RSS