Let's Hear It For Guide Dogs
Today, the last Wednesday in April, is International Guide Dogs Day, when we celebrate the great work that these dogs do for people or are blind or severely visually impaired.
And they have been helping humans this way for much longer than you may realise. Excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which were buried by a volcano eruption in 79AD revealed paintings of dogs helping to guide blind people.
Guide dogs were used in many countries and cultures down the centuries - China and medieval Europe - but they were largely unsung heroes.
It was only in the 17th Century that the first legislation appeared recognising the importance of guide dogs.
In 1838, the requirement to pay a dog licence fee was waived for both sheep dogs and “those kept by the blind as guides”. There was no formal training organisation for these dogs.
During World War I, many soldiers lost their sight to poisonous gases, and Dr. Gerhard Stalling in Germany came up with the idea of mass formal training of guide dogs to help the returning servicemen. In 1916, he opened the first guide dog school.
In the 1920, guide dogs schools started to spring up in America, and then in 1931 two British ladies, Muriel Crooke and Rosamund Bond, organised the training of the first four British guide dogs from a lock up garage in Wallasey, Merseyside.
Since then, the charity Guide Dogs has helped transform over 36,000 lives in the UK with the partnership of a guide dog.
Eyesight is complex. Light enters the eye through the pupil and hits photoreceptor cells in the retina at the back of the eye called rods and cones. Rod cells are responsible for peripheral vision and night vision, while cone cells react to brighter light, colour and fine details.
The cell activates, firing a nerve impulse through the optic nerve to the occipital lobe at the back of the brain where it’s processed and perceived as a visible image. The occipital lobe sends this visual information to the hippocampus in the temporal lobe, where it’s stored as a memory.
All of this happens within the tiniest fraction of a second, allowing us to perceive the world in essentially real time.
But eyes do more than just see - they allow us to express emotions. They are the windows to the soul!!
We should all try to take care of our eyes. Vision is something that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
People can be visually impaired for many reasons: they may be born blind, or they may lose their sight due to an accident affecting either the eyes or the occipital lobe; a degenerative condition of the eyes, occipital lobe or optic nerve; or due to damage caused by a condition such as type 2 diabetes.
But there is no doubt that the partnership and companionship of a guide dog makes their lives easier and more fulfilling, enabling them to do more and live a more normal life without having to ask other people for help.
Please share any thoughts you have on guide dogs and any pictures, gifs, music or videos to do them them or sight and eyes in general.
All are welcome.
And please feel free to share all discussions you enjoy.
