Bridget and her service dog Coal Photo by: Vanda Bidwell/The News-Gazette
As Bridget Evans heads from class to class at the University of Illinois, her constant companion is a fuzzy 11-year-old black Labrador retriever named Coal. Evans, 21, a senior from Orland Park, was born with spina bifida. She relies on Coal to pull her wheelchair across campus, pick up things like remote controls or cell phones, open doors for her and turn lights on and off.
"He carries my books, he goes to classes with me and he helps me when I fall," said Evans. "I don't know what I'd do without him."
Coal wears a red vest marked with the words, "Service Dog," and the Lab often wags his tail as he helps Evans experience life at the UI.
"Coal loves going places with me, and he loves having a job to do," Evans said. "He feels fulfilled."
Starting in January, Evans will enlist the help of as many as 14 fellow UI students, all sophomores and juniors, to train service dogs to help other people with disabilities.
The UI Applied Health Sciences Student Council is teaming up with a nonprofit organization, MidAmerica Service Dogs' Foundation, and the UI College of Veterinary Medicine to train two 7-month-old puppies to become service dogs. Sixty students turned out for a presentation a week ago introducing them to the program.
The effort is billed as the first program of its kind on a college campus, but Jack Giambrone, director of training at MidAmerica, said a women's prison had a similar program for about eight years.
"I was looking for an untapped population that would be interested in training service dogs," Evans said. "When my friends said they would be interested, we began to pursue bringing a training program to the UI."
Click here to see the full story including how the program will work and future plans:
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/social-services/2010-10-18/training-service-dogs-called-first-college-campus.html