Our education team was also busy this month. Tony López and Julia Salido gave two interviews on the local television Chanel 8’s morning program “Despierta Guanajuato” about service dogs and working dogs, and Tony gave talks about pets and their needs to four groups of children attending a health fair at a local primary school.
In their interview with host Itzvel Ixta Velázquez on February 8, Tony and Julia focused on dogs that provide physical assistance and emotional support to humans. The types of assistance and support range from helping the physically handicapped—such as guiding the blind and assisting people who are wheelchair-bound–to supporting people with autism, mental disabilities, and emotional trauma. Therapy dogs are very perceptive about humans’ emotional and physical states. For example, a trained dog can detect when a person is about to have an epileptic seizure.
Service dogs provide great comfort to the elderly, children and adults who are ill and institutionalized, and those who live alone. Labradors are among the breeds that are especially suited for this type of work, but some mixed breeds can also be effective support providers. When they are working, they should never be approached or distracted by people who do not know them. To watch Julia and Tony’s interview on this topic, click here.
In their interview on February 22 Julia and Tony focused on working dogs. As they explained, working dogs provide many other kinds of service from that of assistance and support dogs, discussed in their previous interview. Those kinds of work include herding sheep, searching for missing people, rescuing people trapped in disasters, helping the police control crowds or capture suspected criminals, and detecting illegal drugs. The dogs are trained for their specific tasks, many of which use dogs’ phenomenal ability to recognize scents. Working dogs can be of numerous breeds, including mixed breeds. They are selected for their aptitude for specific tasks and willingness to be trained to perform them.
You can watch Julia and Tony’s interview by clicking here. Our interviews on the morning program “Despierta Guanajuato” with host Itzvel Ixta Velázquez take place every other Thursday at 10 a.m.
On February 21 Tony López represented Amigos de los Animales at a health fair held at the primary school Centro Educacional Piloto in Marfil. Students there experienced a day full of learning and fun as part of a program called Planet Youth. The topics they explored ranged from taking care of our water to promoting healthy living, respect for animals, protecting the environment, and nonviolence in the schools. The program was sponsored by the Undersecretary of Prevention and other Guanajuato city departments. Several nonprofit organizations including Amigos, were invited to participate.
Tony talked to 86 students in four groups about respecting animals and caring for pets. The children played our giant board game based on Snakes and Ladders.
