Service Dogs: Service Dogs play many roles, without them people would suffer in many ways - Term Paper Example

This paper hopes to shed some light on the history of service dogs and the roles that they portray in human life. The love affair of humans and their service dogs began 15,000 years ago when man learned to tame a species of wolves. Creating a loyal breed of companions that were quite helpful to man during his hunting expeditions. Helping him to down prey and come in for the final kill. However, when exactly these canine companions became assistants to humans with disabilities is not historically known.

The earliest known form of canine assistance was that of a blind man being led by his dog. This story being preserved and discovered among the ancient ruins of the Roman city of Herculaneum in the first century, A.D. Similar stories could also be found in European wood carvings and Chinese scroll painting from the Middle ages. It was not until the 17th century when the first formal record of a seeing eye dog was recorded in Paris. This was followed 70 years later by the feats of a blind Austrian named Josef Reisinger who managed to train a spitz and poodle to assist him so well that to some people, it almost seemed as if he was not visually impaired.

Austria seems to hold a historical place in the story of assistant dogs as Johann Wilhem Klein, another Austrian, became the founder of the Institute for the Training of the Blind in Vienna. He is credited with having published the first manual for coaching guide dogs in 1819 where he also recommended poodles and shepherds as the canine breeds most suitable to the task which required the use of a harness on the dog paired with a pole. Germany became the home base of the modern guide dog after World War I after their importance became evident in the lives of the now blind soldiers.

It was through the intercession of Gerhard Staling, the president of the German Ambulance Association, the organization that had trained dogs to assist humans during the war, that the suggestion to retrain these war time dogs for the