Assistance (service) dogs have greatly expanded their “jobs” beyond assisting those with seeing and hearing impairments to include medical response (such as alerting someone to low blood sugar), mobility and task assistance for a person using a wheelchair, psychiatric support for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to name a few. Many of these functions may be for an individual with a hidden disability.
That’s a quote from a recently published two-part blog by the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) about assistance dogs in the workplace. The blogs cover a diverse range of topics, everything from preparing the dog for the workplace and preparing the co-workers for the presence of the dog to dealing with co-workers who are allergic to animals and accommodating the dog’s elimination needs.
Here are the links to this interesting two-part blog:
part 1 http://askjan.org/blog/?p=612
part 2 http://askjan.org/blog/?p=630