Specially trained mobility assistance dogs can help improve physical activity and social engagement in children with mobility issues, a study led by Trinity College has found.

Dr Heather Curtain from Trinity School of Engineering and the Gait Laboratory was the first author of this research.

She said that while mobility dogs have been around for centuries, Cork charity Irish Dogs for the Disabled are the first to train dogs to act as mobility aids for children with the likes of cerebral palsy.

“So, we know that children with walking impairments like cerebral palsy often have difficulty walking,” she told Moncrieff.

“They often need help to walk, be this by using a walker or aids or splints or holding someone's hand.

“The idea with the dog is that it acts as a balancing aid physically [and] encourages them to walk more by it being fun and motivating.

“But also, there's a huge emotional and social facilitation effect through the dog as well.”

Assistance dog wearing vest or harness with patch reading working dog do not disturb. Image: Gillian Pullinger. 20 July 2024

According to Dr Curtain, therapies have shifted their focus away from purely physical supports in recent years.

“Therapies should look at how it can be fun for the child, how it can include family, look at their fitness and the future for the child, look at their function and include their friends,” she said.

“There's a huge opportunity for mobility dogs to meet all of those efforts.

“It's a very, very novel and new training method; you have to look at that with a very wide lens.

“So, that's where the kind of Trinity Research Project came in."

'The dog is an icebreaker'

Dr Curtain said the study monitored the children’s overall quality of life through interviews with friends and family, and also their physical activity by using an ankle monitor.

She said that the results from both the interviews and the ankle monitors showed that the mobility dogs improved the children’s physical activity as well as their social life.

“We have all these exercise guidelines, and children with disabilities should be meeting these guidelines,” Dr Curtain said.

“It might help them to meet those guidelines through the dog because it's fun, and then there's massive gains in social facilitation.

“The dog was described as an icebreaker; a lot of people have said that it's quite difficult to interact with someone with a disability because sometimes they don't know what to say.

"But having the dog is this medium that they can talk about and talk through.”

According to Dr Curtain, the current waiting list for a mobility dog from Irish Dogs for the Disabled is up to two years long.

Main image: English 'Assistance Dog' laying down on street, resting, next to wheelchair. Image: Malcolm Fairman. 10 June 2018