HISTORY OF THE ASSISTANCE DOGS

 The first written documentation in relation to the use of assistance dogs, refers to Joseph Resinguer, an Austrian who, born in 1775 and after being blind at 17 years old, was able to train his three dogs to help and guide him in his different movements.

It was Leopold Chimani who, in 1827, wrote a book about the history of Joseph Resinguer, and thanks to this, we now know the first techniques used in the training of guide dogs, and the information about the first harness which was used, amongst many other things.

Although, we can sense that the figure of the guide dog has existed for a long time, since, for example, there is a representation of a blind man with a guide dog, discovered in the ruins of Pompeii and dated I century AD. We can also find a picture by Chardin, from1750, and exhibited in the Louvre in Paris, which depicts a guide dog and his owner.

In 1845, Jacob Bierre, a blind German traveller, published a book where he wrote about the techniques that he used to train his dog to be a guide dog.

But it wasn´t until the First World War (1914-1918), that the authorities and governments noticed the benefits of using dogs as guide dogs for soldiers who had lost their vision during the war, and it was the Ministry of War in Austria that began using these types of assistance dogs.  

During the war, until the year 1916, Dr. Gerhard Stalling opened the first modern school of Guide Dogs. And 12 years later, in 1928, Morris Frank, a North-American blind man, and Dorothy Harris Eutis (trainer of rescue dogs at the Swiss Red Cross), opened the first guide dog school in the United States: "The Seeing Eye".

The following year, they opened a centre for training guide dogs "L'Oeil Qui Voit” (the eye that sees), in Switzerland, and in 1930 in the United Kingdom, the first guide dog school in the country was opened.

As the years passed, and different training schools gradually emerged throughout Europe and the United States, other types of assistance dogs also appeared who help their owners in different areas of daily life. In this way, we know the figure of the service dog (trained to assist people with physical disabilities, and later on, the signal dog (trained to advise what different sounds are for people with hearing disabilities).

It is for this coexistence of different assistance dogs and different training schools in different countries of the world, that in 1897, “Assistance Dogs International (ADI)” was born, an international organisation of reference that created common standards for the training of assistance dogs, associations and professions in the field.  Later, "Assistance Dogs Europe (adeu)" would be created.

In Spain, there are currently different reference entities for the training of assistance dogs, such as the "Fundación Once del Perro Guía" (Eleven Foundation of the Guide Dog) or the  "Fundación Bocalan del perro de ayuda social" (Bocalan Foundation of the social help dog), amongst others. Furthermore, in this same year, 2010, some organisations that are working in this area have created Aigat, the “Associació Internacional d'Entitats de Gossos d'Assistència i Teràpia amb Animals", with the objective of uniting criteria to do with these two areas of work.