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Guide dogs, also known as seeing eye dogs, are assistance dogs trained to lead blind and visually impaired people around obstacles. Although the dogs can be trained to navigate various obstacles, they are partially (red–green) color blind and are not capable of interpreting street signs. The human half of the guide dog team does the directing, based upon skills acquired through previous mobility training. The handler might be likened to an aircraft's navigator, who must know ''how'' to get from one place to another, and the dog is the pilot, who gets them there safely. In several countries, guide dogs, along with most service and hearing dogs, are exempt from regulations against the presence of animals in places such as restaurants and public transportation. ==History== References to guide dogs date at least as far back as the mid-16th century; the second line of the popular verse alphabet "A was an Archer" is most commonly "B was a Blind-man/Led by a dog".〔Opie, Iona and Peter Opie, ed. ''The Webster Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952.〕 In the 19th-century verse novel ''Aurora Leigh'' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the title character remarks, "The blind man walks wherever the dog pulls / And so I answered."〔Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. ''Aurora Leigh'', Book V., ll. 1028-9.〕 The first guide dog training schools were established in Germany during World War I to enhance the mobility of returning veterans who were blinded in combat, but interest in guide dogs outside of Germany did not become widespread until Dorothy Harrison Eustis, an American dog breeder living in Switzerland, wrote a first-hand account about a guide dog training school in Potsdam, Germany, that was published in ''The Saturday Evening Post'' in 1927. Earlier that same year, U.S. Sen. Thomas D. Schall of Minnesota was paired with a guide dog imported from Germany,〔Putnam, Peter Brock, ''Love in the Lead: The Miracle of the Seeing Eye Dog'' (2nd edition), University Press of America, 1997, p. 20〕 but the guide dog movement did not take hold in America until Nashville resident Morris Frank returned from Switzerland after being trained with one of Eustis's dogs, a female German shepherd named Buddy. Frank and Buddy embarked on a publicity tour to convince Americans of the abilities of guide dogs and the need to allow people with guide dogs access to public transportation, hotels, and other areas open to the public. In 1929, Eustis and Frank co-founded The Seeing Eye in Nashville, Tennessee (relocated in 1931 to New Jersey). The first guide dogs in Great Britain were German shepherds. Four of these first were Flash, Judy, Meta, and Folly, who were handed over to their new owners, veterans blinded in World War I, on 6 October 1931 in Wallasey, Merseyside.〔http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/dog-walk-marks-80th-anniversary-3362267〕 Judy's new owner was Musgrave Frankland.〔(Article ), ''The London Paper'' at exacteditions.com〕 In 1934, The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association in Great Britain began operation, although their first permanent trainer was a Russian military officer, Captain Nikolai Liakhoff, who moved to the UK in 1933.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「guide dog」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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