At Your Service!

You may have seen a dog help guide a visually impaired person, but did you know that monkeys, horses, and parrots can help too?

They Aim to Please

It seems people and animals have worked together forever. Teams of oxen plow fields, dogs help ranchers herd livestock, and horses pull wagons and sleighs.

Service animals work with humans too, but in a different way. They are specially trained to perform personal tasks for people who can't. Some guide their blind owners through shops and streets; others alert their deaf owners to the sounds of doorbells and babies' cries. Animals pull wheelchairs, open and close doors, turn lights on and off, and retrieve dropped objects. An animal's help enables its owner to be more selfsufficient and live more independently.

Some animals are trained to summon help when their owner has an accident or a seizure. Others provide a psychological service-for example, a parrot that speaks calming sentences during her owner's severe mood swings, or a ferret that relaxes his owner during panic attacks.

Surprised that helper animals aren't always dogs? Today, knee-high miniature horses guide the blind, and monkeys provide a pair of helping hands for paralyzed people-they're trained to do everything from scratching an itch, to operating a CD/DVD player, to warming food in a microwave oven!

Good Job

A service animal does its best work-and enjoys its job the most-when it can rely on its natural instincts.

Miniature horses make good guide animals because they're careful with their footing and choose the safest paths. Plus, having eyes on the sides of their heads gives them a terrific range of vision. They cause fewer allergies than dogs do, and they have a longer work life-25 years, compared with a dog's 10 years. Monkeys can also serve for 25 years, and being able to climb up and down gives them an advantage over animals that can only walk around on the ground.

In addition to enjoying their tasks, service animals benefit from the close companionship and special care their owners give them. One pet parrot plucked out her feathers-a sign of serious psychological distress in birds. But when she became a service parrot, she received so much positive attention from her new owner that she stopped the feather plucking. Working together, service animals and their humans both benefit.

Pets Plus

Clearly, these companions are much more than pets. A service animal must stay focused on its owner at all times while it's working. Throughout the day, the owner gives it breaks to pee and poop, eat and drink, and run around (like recess for you). But only when its harness or vest comes off and the owner calls a command such as "Free!" will the animal relax, play, and interact with other family members.

Service animals wear that harness or vest so that theyunlike pets-can legally accompany their owners everywhere: to the grocery store, to a movie theater, on an airplane. They've been trained to ignore distractions. It's important not to interfere with a service animal by petting or feeding it, so always ask for permission. Just remember, the owner may have to say no if the animal is hard at work on the job.

Copyright Carus Publishing Company Nov/Dec 2007
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved