Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/service-dog-wears-ppe/

A golden retriever service dog was trained to wear PPE to assist his owner to work in a science lab.

Sampson the golden retriever is the first dog to gain access to a scientific laboratory. Sampson didn’t just get to show up for a day, either. He regularly accompanies his owner, a disabled neuroscientist, to work in the lab.

According to PEOPLE, former horse trainer Joey Ramp was in a serious horse-riding accident back in 2006. As a result of the accident, she broke 23 bones, suffered permanent nerve damage to the left half of her body, and injured her prefrontal cortex. Because of her injuries, she needed a service dog to function with day-to-day activites.

Rather than let her accident bring her down, Ramp decided to face it head-on by going back to school to learn more about brains and neuroscience. Since then, she’s graduated with two BA degrees in neuroscience and is working towards a Ph.D.

At the time that Ramp was studying, she needed to train in labs to successfully complete her degree and continue to work. But she was faced with a dilemma: Service dogs weren’t allowed in labs. She needed Sampson to support her and wasn’t about to give up on her dreams of becoming a neuroscientist.

So, rather than give up, she decided to create guidelines that her school could adapt to allow service dogs to enter the scientific space.

As PEOPLE reported, she shared with SWNS, “I couldn’t possibly navigate academics or a neuroscience program without his assistance. There’s more focus on the dog than the service they are providing, and they were barring an entire population of students from entering lab work and ultimately the STEM field.”

Ramp got to work to create safe and practical guidelines that her institution could implemment. She was able to work out a system so service dogs could be allowed in the laboratory if they followed strict training protocols, including wearing full PPE, including eye googles, a coat, and shoes.

As Ramp shared in a Facebook post, in addition to nearly 18 months of service dog training, Ramp also spent 9 months training Sampson for the lab. She exposed him to sirens so he’d know how to react in a laboratory emergency, as well as how to respond to fully geared firefighters, police officers, and EMTs. She said, “They are trained to enter safety showers, to not automatically retrieve items from the ground, and to wait patiently for hours under benches.”

Ramp now advocates for others with disabilities, so they can have their service dogs by their sides in the science space. She uses the guidelines she created for Sampson to gain entry to the chemistry lab and presents them to other school programs and scientific labs, in hopes of making the space more inclusive for those with disabilities.

To her, the first step to getting people with disabilities into the field is by having schools adapt service dog guidelines and policies.

“It takes the mystery out of what a service dog does and how you can accommodate them in a lab. It also gives handlers an idea of what training their dog requires, because learning to wear goggles takes time,” she shared with PEOPLE.

Thanks to Ramp, there’s now a much smaller barrier to entry into the laboratory space for those who need service dogs to assist them.

WAtch the video below to see Sampson in action:

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You can follow Sampson and learn more about their mission on Twitter.

Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog