Colleges : Campus scene : Group Hopes to Help Pay for Trained Dog
Campus Colleagues, the disabled students’ club at Orange Coast College, has launched a fund-raising campaign to pay for a trained dog for one of its members.
Kathy Browne, an OCC student who has a rare genetic disorder known as Friedreich’s Ataxia, has been waiting for a trained Labrador retriever for years.
A dog trained to help people with disabilities other than blindness is now available, but Browne and husband Vince do not have the $1,350 required for a mandatory three-week session to learn how to work with the dog.
Browne, 46, has not walked in three years and is too weak to push her wheelchair up inclines. She cannot operate an electric wheelchair because her hands are too unsteady to guide the steering mechanism.
With a trained dog, Browne said, she would be able to run errands.
“I’d like to be able to go out alone--to the library or the market,” she said.
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