Dying: A Book of Comfort
 

 

Scroll down for 

After links to dictionary-style online sites come links to helpful sites with practical

PRACTICAL ONLINE SOURCES OF MEDICAL AND HEALTH INFO

• About Herbs, Botanicals, and Other Products (Memorial Sloan Kettering)
• Advance directives, living wills, wills, and other practical matters
• America's Health Rankings
• Assessing Cardiovascular Risk: Systematic Evidence Review from the Risk Assessment Work Group (NIH/NHLBI)
• Bereavement, grief, and recovery
• Blogs, podcasts, news for medical and health care journalists (Writers and Editors)
• Brain Tumors: A Primer (American Brain Tumor Association)
• Buying drugs, devices, and procedures smartly, cheaply, safely
• Calculate Your Body Mass Index (BMI) (NIH, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)
• Cancer.gov (National Cancer Institute--the nation's leader in cancer research)
• Cardiovascular disease: Heart and coronary conditions and care
• CareZone A worry-free way to organize health information and access vital health services. Document patient symptoms, organize medication lists, store important service provider info, such as doctor's names, insurance info, reminders for refills. Share with caregivers, helpers.
• Caring Village (an online organizer for caregivers--From storing documents and prescription info to sharing calendars, this powerful app helps caregivers communicate, coordinate, and care.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Click on the CDC A-Z Index.
• Clinical Guidelines and Recommendations (AHRQ, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) Evidence-based research provides the basis for sound clinical practice guidelines and recommendations
• Cochran Database of Systematic Reviews
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine Guide (University of Maryland Medical Center)
• Coping with chronic, rare, and invisible diseases and disorders
• CountyRX card Save up to 75% off on all FDA approved drugs at 57,000 pharmacies nationwide. For more, see Buying drugs, devices, and procedures smartly, cheaply, safely
• Caring Bridge No more repeating the story over and over. Create a personalized web page on which to update family and friends about a loved one's care. Connect with all of your family and friends at once, giving you time to focus on what matters. They can look in the middle of the night to see how things are going.
• Covering health reform, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act
• Cut to the Heart (companion site to PBS Nova series on radical but promising new form of heart surgery)
• Eldercare Locator (or call 1-800-677-1116)
• Epocrates (a medical app)
• Evidence-based medicine (Writers and Editors site)
• EWG's Guide to Sunscreens
• familydoctor.org (American Academy of Family Physicians, information and resources about illnesses, conditions and diseases)
• 15 steps you can take to reduce your chances of hospital-acquired infection (Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths)
• Fighting drug price gouging and making drugs more affordable
• Flu.gov (CDC: Get a flu vaccine every year)
• Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Score
• Free community clinics (PatientAssistance guide to free clinics, by state and county/city)
• Generic drugs: overpricing, shortages, quality-control problems, market manipulation, and other issues
• Grand Rounds (live and archived, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock)
• A Guided Tour of the Visible Human Washington University Medical School - The MAD Scientist Network) See more projects based on the Visible Human dataset.
• A guided tour of your body (Well Guide, New York Times) A well-illustrated, excellent, many-layered guide.
• HealthFinder.gov (your source for reliable health information, Health & Human Resources)
• Health information privacy (HIPAA)
• HealthNewsReview (rates health and medical stories for accuracy, balance and completeness), VERY interesting and helpful, though it doesn't cover all stories
• Health Screening: What Tests You Need and When (NIH Medline Plus, 2007)
• Health Screening for Children (OnHealth)
• Heart Disease Risk Calculator (Mayo Clinic)
• Heart failure: Warning signs
• Heart/Stroke Recognition Program (HSRP) (voluntary program designed to recognize clinicians who use evidence-based measures and provide excellent care to persons with cardiovascular disease (CVD) or who have had a stroke)
• HIV InSite Comprehensive, up-to-date information on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention from the University of California San Francisco
• Hospitals and hospitalization (links to useful information)
• How to find a disease specialist (Genetic and Rare Disease Information Center, 1-888-205-2311)
• How to Find Good Health Information (Medical Library Association)
• Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF, Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues)
• Kaiser Health News (KHN, a nonprofit news service covering health issues--an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente)
• KidsHealth (#1 most-trusted source for physician-reviewed information and advice on children's health and parenting issues. For parents, kids, teens, and educators, in English and in Spanish.)
• ***Lotsa Helping Hands A calendar-based system for organizing help for someone in need. A central place to coordinate meals and help for friends & family. Helps organize meals or caregiving schedules and assign dates and times with "help needed" and "needs met."
• Managing living arrangements for elders and disabled (on this website)
• Managing medications, tests, procedures, and treatments
• Managing pain (links to useful information)
• Mayo Clinic, Patient Care and Health Information
• Meal Train. Organize meals for a friend after a birth, surgery or illness, with reminder emails and a way for people to sign up to help supply meals.
• Medical Journeys (MedPage Today) Each episode of this journey through a disease state contains both a physician guide and a downloadable and printable patient resource.
• Medical mysteries (stories about conditions and diseases difficult to diagnose)
• MRSA Infections: The Basics
• National Institute on Aging (NIA, browse A-Z topics)
• NetWellness
• The NNT. The Number Needed to Treat -- a tool to communicate benefit and harm that both patients and doctors can understand (traditionally, the number required to prevent one death). See also the Lancet article, Numbers needed to treat (needlessly?) by Peter Bogaty and James Brophy, suggesting that the NNT obscures the reality that many patients are treated without benefit. Figures on such questions as whether taking an aspirin prevents a heart attack (or does harm), whether beta blockers prevent myocardial infarction (or do harm), is the Mediterranean diet helpful after heart attack, do statin drugs given for five years (with or without known heart disease)help or harm health, in what ways? and so on.
• Participate in Clinical Studies (NIH Clinical Center)
• PatientAssistance (helping patients get medication--government benefits available in each state)
• Patient assistance programs
• PatientsLikeMe (a for-profit patient network and real-time research platform. Through the network, patients connect with others who have the same disease or condition and track and share their own experiences with the goal to improve outcomes.)
• A Patient's Journey Patient stories, MedPage Today.
• Psych Central. Your mental health is as important as your physical health.
• Symcat symptom checker. See Harvard researchers tested 23 online ‘symptom checkers.’ Most got failing grades. Here’s how they stack up. (Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, 7-10-15)
• Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering (Ray Moynihan and David Henry, British Medical Journal, PMC, April 2002)
• Shelter in Place (Police & Public Safety information, IU Notify, for communicating emergency info on campuses)
• A Single Mother (grants for single moms) Links to many resources in 50 states and 100 cities.
• STATS (checking out facts and figures behind medical news -- the gateway to statistics)
• Suicide and Suicide Prevention
• Symptom checker (Symcat)
• Tips for the Undiagnosed (Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center, GARD)
• Top Health Websites (Medical Library Association)
• Vaccines and vaccinations (see which ones you and your family need)
• Vision Surgery Rehab Network (information and support for patients with undesirable outcomes from vision surgery (Lasik,etc.)
• Vitamin D
• Where journalists get their medical news (Pat McNees, Writers and Editors)

[Back to Top]

ONLINE MEDICAL REFERENCE SITES

   In alphabetical order.
• Cochran Library Evidence-based medicine. Review. Database. Trials. More resources.
• The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care (slow loading)
• Drugs.com (a free drug information service)
• First Aid (Mayo Clinic's alphabetical links to how to  Read More 

Some deaths come too soon and Helen Sarchielli's was one of them. When she succumbed to lung cancer on October 11, 2000, she was not yet 61—and she was a young 60. It was not only that she was too young to die—it was that she was so unlikely a person to stop being alive. Being alive was what Helen Jean did best.

 Read More 

Nate Beeler's cartoon ‘Past Prologue?’ captures the heart of the Republic dilemma. Looking at a tome called Obamacare in 2010, the Democrat says, "We need to pass it to find out what's in it." Looking at the same tome in 2017, the Republicans say, "We need to repeal it to find out what to replace it with."

     Having promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans had better come up with something that, if not better, at least won't be worse. Here are links to some thoughtful pieces that might help them think things through:

• The Health Care Plan Trump Voters Really Want (Drew Altman, New York Times, 1-5-17) Altman draws on observations from focus groups in rust belt states of people in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces who voted for President-elect Trump and say they may not like their coverage under the ACA but could like Republican replacement plans even less. “The Washington debate is disconnected from the concerns of working people,” he says.

• The Latest from the Kaiser Family Foundation. A roundup of key points to consider, and documents to study.
• Major Considerations for Repealing and Replacing the Affordable Care Act (Kaiser Family Foundation, or KFF.org, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget). Video of a public forum to discuss the process and implications of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. The discussion covered the implications of using the budget reconciliation process to repeal the ACA, and what an ACA replacement could mean for health insurance coverage and costs.

• The Complex Mess of Health Insurance (David Leonhardt, OpEd, NY Times, 1-5-17) "A lot of Americans are deeply frustrated by the logistical headaches built into our health care system. Strikingly, some of the Trump voters told Kaiser that they resented lower-income people who were enrolled in Medicaid, which they viewed as a better deal. Medicaid has its own complexities (and its own problems), but government-run programs do tend to be simpler than private ones. It’s true of Medicare, and it’s true of single-payer systems in other countries....Wouldn’t that be ironic? The Republican passion for getting rid of Obamacare could ultimately lead to a bigger dose of Big Government."

• A Better Way: Our Vision For a Confident America (House Speaker Paul Ryan, 6-22-16). KFF's summary of “A Better Way,” a policy paper offered by Speaker Paul Ryan as a framework for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is not a legislative proposal and, as such, lacks some of the details and specificity of legislative text.
• Hospitals Worry Repeal Of Obamacare Would Jeopardize Innovations In Care (Kristin Espeland Gourlay, Repeal and Replace Watch, Rhode Island Public Radio, NPR and Kaiser Health News, 2-1-17)
• Demand For Popular Short-Term Insurance Plans Could Surge If Health Law Is Relaxed (Michelle Andrews, Repeal and Replace Watch, Kaiser Health News, 1-31-17) 'As Republicans look for ways to weaken the health law’s coverage requirements and explore the possibility of not enforcing the requirement that people have health insurance, short-term plans may be poised to grow even more. If that happens, consumer advocates warn it could be bad for consumers....“To many consumers it looks like health insurance, except it’s cheaper,” said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. But the plans don’t protect people when unforeseen events occur such as a car accident or a cancer diagnosis."'
• Getting Patients Hooked On An Opioid Overdose Antidote, Then Raising The Price (Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News, ) First came Martin Shkreli, the brash young pharmaceutical entrepreneur who raised the price for an AIDS treatment by 5,000 percent. Then, Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, who oversaw the price hike for its signature Epi-Pen to more than $600 for a twin-pack, though its active ingredient costs pennies by comparison. Now comes Evzio, a device that administers just enough naloxone to stabilize someone who has overdosed on drugs. Its manufacturer, Kaleo, may be positioning itself to find profits in a dire health care crisis. (Will Republicans, who are heavily supported by the pharmaceutical industry, be willing to limit price-gouging on life-saving medicine and devices? Not likely.)

(assembled by Pat McNees to facilitate conversations about death, dying, and final wishes)

• One path to a happier life: Thinking more about death ( Dana Milbank column, Washington Post, 2-20-26)
    "Once a month, Curry, Tate, Hutchinson and four other women, all ranging in age from 78 to 89, get together to share a midday potluck and talk about their demise. They discuss their care needs, their living options, their end-of-life wishes. They’ve signed do-not-resuscitate orders together and drafted their own obituaries.
    "It may sound macabre, and terribly depressing. But the women, all but two of whom have been widowed, say it has been just the opposite for them: a life-affirming exercise that has given new meaning to their final chapters."

 
• We should all have the end-of-life conversation (Ellen Goodman on The Conversation Project). "Too many people are dying in the way they would not choose. Surveys tell us that 70 percent of Americans, for example, want to die at home but 70 percent end up dying in hospitals and institutions....Too many survivors, for that matter, are left not just mourning but feeling guilty, depressed, uncertain of whether they have done the right thing.... And we cannot wait for "the right time"  Read More 

Norman Bauman provided helpful links and comments about the 21st Century Cures Act in the Association of Health Care Journalists' discussion group. I share them here:
• With media watchdogs on the sidelines, pharma-funded advocacy groups pushed Cures Act to the finish line (Trudy Lieberman, Health News Reviews, 12-6-16) ‘Progress’ touted by pharma is a huge step backward for patients. "If the committee’s masterful sales job for the Cures Act is a textbook example of what constitutes effective PR and advocacy in Washington these days for legislation that may not be in the best interests of the public, press coverage offers a textbook example of media abdication of their watchdog role. As HealthNewsReview.org pointed out repeatedly over the past year and half, mainstream journalists, with some exceptions (including Carolyn Johnson at the Post and Sheila Kaplan at STAT) did not look closely, ask hard questions, or explore the downsides until the last few weeks when the Cures Act was a done deal headed for victory."
• The 21st Century Cures Act is a deal that will give a lot of money to the NIH, FDA, Cancer Moonshot,etc., but will also weaken the FDA's standards of evidence used to approve drugs, particularly randomized, controlled trials (RCTs). It's a handout to the pharmaceutical industry.  Read More 

Updated 8-24-17. This former journalist helps caregivers get to know who their patients once were, before dementia took hold (Tara Bahrampour, The Age, 12-16-16) Jay Newton-Small, a District resident, started a business writing anecdote-filled profiles of dementia patients after her father got Alzheimer’s. 'Until seeing her profile, caregivers for  Read More 

Vanessa Gould’s fascinating documentary Obit, shown at the summer Docs festival in Silver Spring, is a fascinating overview of how The New York Times obituary section is run. We learn how they decide which people to honor with an obit, at what length, with how many photos. The obit writers “document the lives  Read More 

• Is the ‘Hollywood Fire Devil’ Insane? (Natasha Vargas-Cooper, MEL, ) It takes a lot to prove you’re crazy in a court of law. If you plead not guilty by reason of insanity, you have roughly a 1 percent chance of getting

 Read More 

Tweet

by Pat McNees

Doctors complain the tests are unreasonably costly and time-consuming, do not improve the practice of medicine, and are merely enriching the pockets of the certification boards' pockets.
"Over the last few months, we have seen a great increase in the number of doctors ... speaking up against the current MOC (maintenance of certification) that is now in place," wrote Dr. Linda Girgis  in Are Medical Specialty Boards Extorting Physicians? Dr. Girgis explained why doctors do not want to comply with current MOC requirements:
1. The majority of doctors  Read More 

by Pat McNees, updated 2-18-22)
See also FAQs, stories, and articles about assistance dogs and

             Books about assistance dogs

• A Complete Guide to Service, Therapy and Emotional Support Dogs (Karen Wang, Friendship Circle, 5-23-13) Suggests resources for finding mobility assistance dogs, medical response dogs (for humans with seizures, diabetes, severe allergies), signal dogs for the hearing impaired, guide dogs for the visually impaired, autism service dogs, psychiatric assistance dogs, therapy dogs, emotional support/companion animals.
• Demand for Service Dogs Unleashes a ‘Wild West’ Market (Markian Hawryluk, KHN, 2-16-22) Service dogs can help people with ailments from autism to epilepsy, but a trained dog can cost up to $40,000 — and insurance won’t cover it.
• Assistance Dogs International (a coalition of not for profit organizations that train and place assistance dogs, setting standards for the assistance dog industry)
• International Association of Assistance Dog Partners (IAADP) (an important nonprofit, cross-disability organization representing people partnered with guide, hearing, and service dogs). You can read issues of IAADP's invaluable newsletter Partners Forum online, free.
• Alliance of Therapy Dogs (a national therapy dog registry with 14,000+ members, one aim of which is to provide registration, support, and insurance for members who are involved in volunteer animal assisted activities)
• Bright and Beautiful Therapy Dogs
• Canine Companions for Independence (CCI) (nonprofit organization that enhances the lives of people with disabilities by providing highly trained assistance dogs and ongoing support to ensure quality partnerships)
• Canines for Hope (psychiatric service dogs, and service dog training, South Florida)
• Dogs4Diabetics
• Dog Wish ("America's top psychiatry service dog facility")
• 4 Paws for Ability a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to place quality service dogs with children with disabilities and veterans who have lost use of limbs or hearing; help with animal rescue, and educate the public regarding use of service dogs in public places. Mentions service dogs for humans with autism, diabetes, hearing problems, mobility problems, seizures, and kids on the FASD spectrum (fetal alcohol syndrome and/or exposed to drugs prenatally)
• Heeling Allies Assistance Dogs (mental health service dogs, emotional support dogs, and skilled companion dogs enrich the lives of qualified individuals living with certain psychological, neurological and developmental impairments)
• Little Angels Service Dogs (psychiatric service dogs, specially trained to work with veterans with PTSD)
• Love on a Leash (therapy pets)
• New Horizons Service Dogs
• New Life Mobility Assistance (Appalachian State University)
• Paws With a Cause Currently 40% of applicants request a PAWS Seizure Response dog. PAWS’ specially designed temperament test identifies if a dog is most suitable to be a Service, Hearing, Seizure Response or Service Dog for Children with Autism.
• Pet Partners (therapy animals)
Find the bomb! Good boy! Man’s best friend may be our best bet for staying safe. (Andrea Sachs, Washington Post Magazine, 8-4-16) Dogs are being trained and employed in such fields as search and rescue; narcotics, explosives and bedbug detection; and diabetes alert. Some are providing therapy support and detecting ovarian cancer. Nearly 1,000 six-legged teams safeguard more than 100 airports, mass transit stations and cargo-hold sites. In these anxious times, dogs could have a twofold impact on potential terrorist attacks: deterrence and detection. Sachs writes about where some of man's best friends are being trained, and how, to make the country safe.
• Pets for Patriots, companion pet adoption for U.S. military veterans. The Wet Nose Blog: Adoption stories.
• Prisoners and Animals Working for Success (P.A.W.S.) , a program of the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility. (See Working for a Second Chance (Working Like Dogs, 12-11-15)
• Pet Partners established the Therapy Animal Program in 1990, its goal being to establish rigorous standards for both animals and their human handlers -- to ensure safe and effective therapy animal visits in the community
• The Pets for Elderly Foundation (provides companionship to senior individuals through pet ownership, while saving the lives of companion animals in shelters)
• Service Dog Trainers
• Shore Service Dogs, Inc.
• Working Like Dogs (a resource for people around the world with working dogs and assistance dogs)
• West Michigan Therapy Dogs, Inc.
• Seniors and Pets (AgingInPlace, National Council for Aging Care). "Those who work caring for the elderly say that pets pull withdrawn seniors out of their shell, provide mild activity and cardio through walking and grooming the pet, and offer a way to feel needed and connect with the world. Pet therapy can also help with Alzheimer’s Sundowners Syndrome. Nighttime can be very confusing and disorienting for folks with Alzheimer’s disease. This is when some Alzheimer’s patients try to run away or leave their home. A pet can prevent this issue by keeping those with Alzheimer’s connected and occupied."
Let me know if I've missed anything or if you have comments.

[Back to Top]

Stories and articles about assistance dogs

• What is the difference between a Therapy Dog and a Service Dog (Off Leash Dog Training)
• A Complete Guide to Service, Therapy and Emotional Support Dogs (Friendship Circle Special Needs Resource Blog, 5-23-13) "The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) of 2011 defines service dogs as those trained to do work directly related to a person’s disability. Emotional support animals and dogs used as crime deterrents are excluded from this definition. A service dog is expected to accompany a person with a disability at all times." Most service dogs receive training in one of the following areas (described in this article, with links to where to find each type of dog):
--- Mobility assistance
--- Medical response (seizures, diabetes, severe allergies)
---Signal (hearing impairment)
---Guide (visual impairment)
--- Autism assistance
---Psychiatric assistance
There are also
---Therapy dogs
--- Emotional support/companion animals
Frequently asked questions about Medical Assistance & Diabetic Alert Dogs (Dogs4Diabetics) For example: Medical Assistance Dogs are service dogs that have been trained to respond to an identifiable element that is available to their senses in order to provide support to their handler, allowing the handler to address some aspect of that medical condition. Diabetic Alert Assistance Dogs are a specific type of Medical Assistance Dog that has been trained to use their highly sensitive scent capabilities to identify the changes in blood chemistry that occur during rapid changes in blood sugar levels. Medical Response Dogs are another type of Medical Assistance Dog that has been trained to assist persons based on recognition of symptoms pertaining to a specific medical condition.
• Once unwanted, these dogs are now on the front lines of wildlife conservation (Rebekah Barnett, Ideas.Ted.Com, 11-6-18) These incredible detection dogs sniff out poachers and smugglers, sniff out invasive plants and animals, track endangered species, diseases as well as , and more, thanks to the work of wildlife biologist and conservation-dog expert Megan Parker. Thanks to Parker and the team at Working Dogs for Conservation (WD4C), some of these dogs have found a new leash lease on life. Worth watching as video Dogs for Conservation (Megan Parker (TedXJacksonHole, 11-5-15) talks about training dogs to work for conservation and preserve endangered species. "Dogs love telling what they know and they have this unrelenting energy and drive. Those are the characteristics I look for in a dog." These dogs families try to get rid of turn out to have remarkable skills and they "don't quit."
• New ADA Service Animal Definition July 23, 2010 (IAADP)
• Federal Service Dog Law in Plain English (Kea Grace, Anything Pawsable, News and more for service and working dogs, 7-10-13) Many helpful and interesting articles on this site.
• Partners in Independence (short film about assistance dogs)
• Assistance Dog Tasks (Joan Froling, Sterling Service Dogs, 10-29-2003) Guide dog tasks (described in detail) include avoiding obstacles, signaling changes in elevation, locating objects on command, retrieving dropped objects, etc., and some are being trained for dual impairments, working with deaf blind students or mobility impaired blind students, for example. Hearing dog tasks are trained to alert their human partners by touch (a nose nudge or pawing) to various sounds at home or outside, including a child crying, a knock at the door, a fire alarm, etc. Service dogs receive six months to a year of training, and some teams master up to 50 different tasks. "A number of the traditional tasks listed [in the article] are proving useful to individuals with hidden disabilities such as a seizure disorder, a psychiatric disorder, a potentially life threatening medical problem or conditions which cause chronic pain." Some tasks help individuals "conserve energy, reduce or avoid pain, minimize dependency on loved ones, prevent injuries or get help in a crisis." Froling lists various retrieve-based tasks, carrying-based tasks, deposit-based tasks, tug-based tasks (such as helping remove shoes and socks), nose-nudge-based tasks (such as nudging shut a dryer door), paw-based tasks (such as calling 911 on a K-9 rescue phone), bracing-based tasks (such as steadying partner getting in and out of bathtub), harness-based tasks (mobility assistance).
• Remember For Me – The Alzheimer’s Aid Dogs (Myrna Shiboleth, Kings Valley Collies)
• Assistance Dogs: Learning New Tricks for Centuries (Jennie Cohen, History in the Headlines, 8-8-11)
• Working Like Dogs: The Service Dog Guidebook
• Her Research Could Improve Training for Service Dogs (Emily Anthes, Lost Science, NY Times, 11-6-25) “This is a type of science that has an impact that most people could see in their homes,” said Erin Hecht, a canine researcher at Harvard. “Now there’s just no money.” This is a type of science that has an impact that most people could see in their homes.
• Turning Your Pet Into a Therapy Dog (Jane E. Brody, NY Times 2-29-16) Jane Brody signed up her dog, Max, to be a therapy dog. "Therapy pets differ from service animals like those that guide the blind, detect impending health crises for people with epilepsy or diabetes, or stimulate learning for children with autism or cerebral palsy. Pet therapy most often involves privately owned animals – usually dogs, but also cats, rabbits, even kangaroos, birds, fish and reptiles – that their owners take to facilities to enhance the well-being of temporary or permanent residents. Thus, in addition to relieving the monotony of a hospital stay or entertaining residents in a nursing home, Max might visit a school where young children wary of reading aloud will happily read to a dog that does not care about mistakes."
• Pets Allowed (Patricia Marx, New Yorker, 10-20-14) There’s a lot of confusion about what emotional-support animals can legally do. People with genuine impairments who depend on actual service animals get annoyed at what people with "emotional support animals" try to do. Service dogs are allowed to go anywhere. They are trained to perform specific tasks. An emotional-support animal (E.S.A.) "is defined by the government as an untrained companion of any species that provides solace to someone with a disability, such as anxiety or depression." Their rights are more limited.
• Adopt A Retired Military Working Dogs (MWD) (Saveavet.org)
• International Dog Assistance Week (IADW)
• Troops betrayed as Army dumps hundreds of heroic war dogs (Maureen Callahan, NY Post, 2-14-16) Daniel, who doesn’t want to use his real name because he’s on active duty, is one of at least 200 military handlers whose dogs were secretly dumped out to civilians by K2 Solutions in February 2014, a Post investigation has found. It’s a scandal that continues to this day, with hundreds of handlers still searching for their dogs — and the Army, the Pentagon and K2 Solutions covering up what happened, and what may still be happening.

[Back to Top]

Books about assistance dogs

When you buy a book from Amazon after following one of these links, this site earns a small commission without raising the price of the book.
• Teamwork: A Dog Training Manual for People with Disabilities, Book 1 by Stewart Nordensson and Lydia Kelley
• Teamwork II by Stewart Nordensson and Lydia Kelley
• PTSD and Service Dogs: A Training Guide for Sufferers by Rick and Heather Dillender
• Chelsea: The Story of a Signal Dog by Paul Ogden
• Partners in Independence: A Success Story of Dogs and the Disabled by Ed and Toni Eames
• Lend Me an Ear: Temperament, Selection and Training of the Hearing Ear Dog by Martha Hoffman
• Life on Wheels by Gary Karp
• Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence by John Hockenberry
• Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto
• Training Your Own Psychiatric Service Dog by Katie Gonzalez
• Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled by Nancy Mairs
• Working Like Dogs: The Service Dog Guidebook by Marcie Davis

[Back to Top]