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The Forum: Guide dogs for the blind: A history

A guide dog in Shanghai, China

19/03/2020 GMT

Guide dogs for the blind: A history

BBC World Service - The Forum, Guide dogs for the blind: A history

How did the idea of systematically training dogs for the blind originate?

How the training of guide dogs, and their acceptance by sighted people, changed over the centuries.

We are now familiar with dogs helping people with sight loss but where did the idea come from? And how have the ways of selecting, training and using guide dogs changed over time? 

Bridget Kendall explores the history of guide dogs with Pieter van Niekerk, Head of Public Relations for the South African Guide-Dogs Association and with Karin Floesser, one of the guide dog leaders of the German Federation for the Blind and Partially Sighted. Bridget is also joined by journalist and educator Miriam Ascarelli, biographer of Dorothy Harrison Eustis, the philanthropist who in the 1920s co-founded the American Seeing Eye school, and she hears from Michael Hingson, a blind survivor of the 9/11 attacks.

(Image: A guide dog in Shanghai, China. Credit: Wang He/Getty Images)

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