Canine companions for the visually-impaired people
A dentist in the city is training street dogs to guide visually impaired people.
The trainer Dr Vishakha Shukla, an intern in dentistry at King George’s Medical University, holds a two-year degree in ‘animal communication and behavioural training’ from the Royal College of London.
“Indian street dogs are sturdy and intelligent. They use their brains ,” said Dr Vishakha.
All other dogs I have trained such as German Shephards, Labradors and Golden Retrievers lack abilities to become guides.
They are like a child who learns by rote but an incident that they are not trained to handle confuses them, which is not the case with the Indian street dogs.”
Dr Vishakha, brought up in Mumbai, loves animals and dogs are her favourite.
“Since childhood I had my heart set on animals. It was something I was born with,” she said.
Her latest passion is to train Indian street dogs to become an able guide for visually impaired people.
She hopes that the dogs she trains would be adopted by the handicapped people and they would live together so that the dog has a home and the master gets a guide for the streets.
She is presently keeping six Indian dogs whom she rescued from the streets and is training them to live with masters who cannot see them.
For this, she is herself experiencing how a person lives without vision (by blindfolding herself ) and then interacts with the dogs, gives them instruction and even feeds them.
“I wish when they reach their masters’ home they start living as a companion from the very first day. Though this training will take a few months, when they are trained they will be perfect as they have the instinct to tell them they should treat babies and the elderly differently,” she said.
“I wish those who cannot see did not carry a stick but took help from these trained dogs.
Training is easy for me as being trained in animal communication I know how to tell them what I want from them,” she said. Dr Vishakha’s efforts have got 40 street dogs adopted by families in the adoption camps she held.