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disability DW group; posting it here so my other friends and LJ friends see it.
Hi everyone,
One of my friends has set up a Facebook page to highlight her struggle to have her guide/service dog admitted with her to the rehab facility she is in. Kimberley Robbins, AKA WildKat, is blind (from birth), and has a C6 complete spinal cord injury (since 2004, from transverse myelitis). Although she has been living independently most of the time since initially getting out of rehab in 2005, she has been readmitted because of increasingly severe spasms, which have been causing her injury, and is expecting to have surgery soon.
Kim has had guide and service dogs since before her SCI -- initially a yellow lab named Sophie, which was with her while in hospital after her injury and while in her first rehab placement, and which she additionally trained to do service dog tasks, but which died earlier this year. She had to train Duke herself, because no guide dog school will train a dog to pull someone in a manual chair, only in a power-chair. She refuses to use a power-chair because it will result in loss of the strength she has in her arms
She is in the Miller Center in St Johns, NL (that's Newfoundland in Canada) and the facility is refusing to allow Duke to be there with her. Apparently they allow guide dogs trained in Canada or the USA to stay with patients, but not other guide dogs (Duke was trained in the UK). There is no law to this effect; it's just the facility's own rules. She's asked her friends to publicise her struggle, so this is the page (it's public):
Let Duke the Guide/Service Dog Have Access to the Miller Center
disability DW group; posting it here so my other friends and LJ friends see it.Hi everyone,
One of my friends has set up a Facebook page to highlight her struggle to have her guide/service dog admitted with her to the rehab facility she is in. Kimberley Robbins, AKA WildKat, is blind (from birth), and has a C6 complete spinal cord injury (since 2004, from transverse myelitis). Although she has been living independently most of the time since initially getting out of rehab in 2005, she has been readmitted because of increasingly severe spasms, which have been causing her injury, and is expecting to have surgery soon.
Kim has had guide and service dogs since before her SCI -- initially a yellow lab named Sophie, which was with her while in hospital after her injury and while in her first rehab placement, and which she additionally trained to do service dog tasks, but which died earlier this year. She had to train Duke herself, because no guide dog school will train a dog to pull someone in a manual chair, only in a power-chair. She refuses to use a power-chair because it will result in loss of the strength she has in her arms
She is in the Miller Center in St Johns, NL (that's Newfoundland in Canada) and the facility is refusing to allow Duke to be there with her. Apparently they allow guide dogs trained in Canada or the USA to stay with patients, but not other guide dogs (Duke was trained in the UK). There is no law to this effect; it's just the facility's own rules. She's asked her friends to publicise her struggle, so this is the page (it's public):
Let Duke the Guide/Service Dog Have Access to the Miller Center
