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	DISABILITY RESOURCES ONLINE
	Monitoring, Reviewing and Reporting on Resources For Independent Living
	Updated 11/2010
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Long-time readers of this website and Disability Resources' prior newsletter will know that, here at www.disabilityresources.org, we have a soft spot in our heart for working dogs. Be they service or guide dogs or another type of canine who mitigates a disability or helps make life's tasks easier, assistance dogs deserve all the recognition and praise they can get. With two members of our staff using a guide dog and a service dog, we benefit daily from the help and love these special canines bring. If you are unfamiliar with the various types of assistance dogs or simply want to learn more about how dogs can make a difference, check out the new resources below:

Through A Dog's Eyes
by Jennifer Arnold

Spiegel & Grau, 2010. Hardcover, 224 pages, $25.00.

As a teenager coping with the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis, Jennifer Arnold never dreamed that she would one day be the focus of a PBS special and the author of a book about one of the premier assistance dog schools in the United States. While she was facing daily physical and social challenges, Arnold's father, having learned of service dogs, began planning what would become Canine Assistants. Following his untimely death, Arnold made his dream her own reality, working tirelessly to develop the Georgia-based service dog school.

In the Spring of 2010, Arnold and Canine Assistants were spotlighted on a PBS documentary. In this companion volume, she combines memoir and dog training in a book that is warmly personal and intriguing. She mixes her struggles with MS and the stories of those individuals who become partners with a dog from Canine Assistants with her choice-based positive training techniques and philosophy to deliver a book that will both delight and inform.

Healing Companions: Ordinary Dogs And Their Extraordinary Power To Transform Lives
by Jane Miller.

New Page Books, 2010. Softcover, 256 pages, $16.99.

Although most people recognize a guide dog when they see one and much of the general public knows how a service dog performs helpful tasks for someone with a physical disability, many individuals have no idea what a psychiatric service dog (PSD) is and how this type of assistance dog helps a handler. In Healing Companions, clinical social worker Jane Miller provides a comprehensive look at PSDs and the people whose lives they enrich.

In this first volume dealing with the PSD topic, Miller offers readers insight into the lives of her clients and demonstrates how working with a trained PSD helps them cope more effectively with their depression, dissociative identity disorder, or bipolar illness. In addition, she gives extensive information on obtaining a PSD, dog behavior and training, and responsible handling. Miller's book is long overdue and is a wealth of information about an often misunderstood subject.

Independent Vision: Dorothy Harrison Eustis And The Story Of The Seeing Eye
by Miriam Ascarelli.

Purdue University Press, 2010. Softcover, 124 pages, $16.95.

Although guide dogs are easily the most recognizable and most understood of assistance dogs, most people have scant knowledge of how these dogs are trained to guide their visually impaired partners. In Independent Vision, readers interested in the beginning of the guide dog movement and the history of one particular guide dog school will find a concise and fascinating account of how one woman's passion heralded a new day of independence. This is, however, strictly an historical account and provides little information for individuals seeking current guide dog handling programs.

 

-Reviewed by Sally Rosenthal