GUIDE DOG LIFE | DOGS | EMERGENCIES

A Guide Dog’s Service in Emergencies

Things we don’t plan for but really should

Have you ever wondered how a guide dog knows where to take their human in an emergency? Sure, they know the routes to work or school and the usual places.

But what does the blind person do in an emergency? And how do they depend on the dog? Does the guide dog even know what’s happening?

Image by author, this is Cooper – a guide dog since 2018

Today was guide dog Cooper’s and my fifth visit to the Emergency Room in the space of six months.

Three trips to the ER were for my husband’s brain tumour, which recurred after being removed initially in 2021, and two were for my mom, who had a fall due to a stroke that resulted in her death in November.

On Thanksgiving Day 🇨🇦 October 14, my husband and mom were in two emergency rooms in two separate hospitals.

I was torn about not being with my mother, and I didn’t know then that she’d be taken in again a month later, and from that trip she wasn’t coming back.

In addition to the ERs, I’d need to find my way to their rooms for their stays in the hospital.

To say the last six months have been difficult is putting it mildly.