Dogs for Disabled Ireland are on the hunt for people to care for puppies for the next 12 months.
The dog charity, which trains assistance dogs, has put out a post on their social media looking for people to look after some of their pups for a year.
Dogs for Disabled was founded in 2007 and has persevered since to train assistance dogs for those with disbailities in order to give them independence and a better quality of life.
They posted on their Facebook page with a photo of six adorable black puppies.
Their social media post read: “We’re currently looking for puppy families to look after our puppies for 12mths.
“Must have fully enclosed garden and not be out of the house for more than 4hours at any time,” they continued. “Training and support will be provided. Please email Elizabeth@dogsfordisabled.ie.”
Followers of the page were quick to swoon over the cute pups.
“Omg look at those faces,” said one person.
Another wrote: “So adorable.”
“Soooo cute,” said another.
Service and assistance dogs are often a lifeline to their handlers, offering more freedom and a boost to overall wellbeing. There are different types of assistance dogs, such as guide dogs, hearing dogs and response dogs.
Guide dogs are amongst the most common assistance dogs you’ll encounter. Specially trained to support blind and visually impaired people, guide dogs have been used for this purpose for centuries and there’s much debate about where the practice of training them began
Typically, Labradors and Golden Retrievers are favoured for this job as they’re smart, lovable, highly trainable and their kindly appearance makes them seem less threatening to those in public who may be fearful of dogs. What’s more, Labradors possess soft mouths, making them excellent at picking things up for their handlers.
Just as dogs can help the visually impaired, they can also assist those with hearing loss. These incredible service dogs can inform their owners about smoke alarms, doorbells, oven timers and even crying babies! When they hear the noise, the assistance dog is trained to place a paw upon their handler, then lead them either towards or away from the noise, depending on the cause.
Once again, Labradors and Golden Retrievers are very popular choices for this type of service dog, but recently other breeds such as Poodles and Miniature Spaniels have been used too.
There are some dogs which can be trained to recognise when their handler is about to have a seizure and can call for help and position themselves to protect them during the episode. In fact, larger support dogs can even move their owners away if they’re in a dangerous location such as a road. As dogs are so in tune to our emotions, it’s thought that they can sense the behaviour change prior to a seizure and can be taught to detect and respond accordingly. However, there have been reports of some owners saying that their pet dogs have predicted a seizure coming, with no training at all!
If you want to enquire about fostering an assistance dog with Dogs for Disabled Ireland, you can email them on elizabeth@dogsfordisabled.ie or call on 0214316627.
