Assistance animals require retraining when attacked by others that perceive them as passive targets for attacks

If a strange dog barks, lunges or nips at your dog, it’s usually not a big thing. But if your dog is a guide dog, it’s a huge thing — an attack on a $50,000 investment and a trauma to the service animal that can require lengthy training to repair.

That was the case for Sharon Ely of White City, whose golden retriever, Navajo, was attacked twice on local shopping trips and had to be sent away for eight weeks of retraining.

The retraining — designed to ensure that Navajo focused on his blind mistress and not on other dogs — worked and Navajo is back to watching out for curbs, signs, fire hydrants and overhanging branches. And Ely, 42, an independent living counselor and board member of Rogue Valley Transportation District, is out trying to train the public about their loose canines — who can easily bring havoc to a guide dog "team."

She says many dog owners simply don’t recognize that their pets can pose a threat to a guide dog.

Trained to see other dogs only as "obstacles" to be steered around, guide dogs may be viewed by other dogs as passive punching bags. Forty-two percent of 1,800 graduates from Guide Dogs for the Blind, based in Boring, Ore., are being violently attacked, while 89 percent report "nuisance encounters," like barking and lunging.

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Of the canine victims of violent attacks, half cannot be rehabilitated and must be retired.

"When I got Navajo a year and a half ago, he was great, wonderful, excellent," says Ely. "He’d stop at curbs and overhangs. The attacks didn’t injure him, but he became more scared, distracted and looking around. He started missing curbs and would run me into things more often. I finally called Guide Dogs and told them I couldn’t take it anymore."

There are some existing legal protections such as leash laws, but those are often ignored by dog owners.

Oregon does not have a statewide leash law, but many cities do. Medford police say leashes are required on all dogs off their own property. Ashland police say dogs must have a leash or be under the control of the owner.

At the request of the Guide Dog Users of Oregon, a bill was introduced in the Oregon Legislature this year to punish owners of a dog that "without provocation, injures, disables or causes death of assistance animal." It received a House hearing in May but with the Legislature closing in on adjournment, it’s unlikely to pass.

The attacks last year on 88-pound Navajo came first from an unleashed German shepherd in a Medford social services agency and then in an Ashland market parking lot, when a cocker spaniel took off on a flexi-lead (the kind that unwinds as the dog pulls) and it couldn’t be pulled back by its owner.

"The attacks made Navajo very skittish and hard to control when other dogs were around," said Rosanna Schuh of La Pine, Ely’s caretaker at the time. "The attacks were real scary. I was outside the building and could hear Navajo yelping loudly inside, as the German shepherd was pulling on his ear."

With Navajo back — and put through three days of re-integration work with Ely at her home — things are again on track and Navajo stops at every curb.

The pair exercise two miles a day and when he’s "off work," he’s a beloved pet, one empathetic to her every mood and ailment, Ely says.

"He’s an awesome guy, a love and a buddy," says Ely. "He’s a very special dog to me. When he was attacked in that building, he focused only on getting me out of there."

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