According to a study initiated by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, there are nearly 1 in 50 people living with paralysis — approximately 6 million people. That's the same number of people as the combined populations of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. And that number is nearly 33% higher than previous estimates showed.

It's been a while since our last blog entry. We've been very busy — hard at work on the major update to our website, adding features and making things clearer based on the input we've received from our members. There's a lot of planning, meetings, programming, writing, artwork (and more meetings) involved with what we're doing! As we move further along we'll post screen captures and more information on Twitter so be sure to follow @servicedog!

Want to learn more about how Service and Assistance Dogs can be trained to help kids with diabetes? Mercy Medical Center in Canton, OH will host a special program titled "Understanding Diabetes and the Role of an Alert Service Dog" from 6-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17, at the hospital's Ambulatory Care Center Auditorium.

Excellent news! The United States Senate has officially passed Sen. Al Franken's bill "The Service Dogs for Veterans Act," during a late night session last week. The bill is aimed at providing more Service and Assistance Dogs to disabled veterans. The program will partner with existing non-profit groups which train Service and Assistance Dogs. The three-year pilot program aims to train dogs to assist up to 200 disabled veterans who have mental or physical disabilities. During the course of the program The National Academy of Sciences will conduct a study to measure its effectiveness.

Yesterday Al Franken wrote an article for the Minneapolis Star Tribune about his first piece of legislation as senator of Minnesota. He could have written his first bill for anything, but he chose to write it to help disabled veterans get Service Dogs.

There is still a large prejudice in the general public over what exactly qualifies as a Service or Assistance Animal. Small animals especially are at risk for discrimination because of their size, but sometimes those animals are perfect for assisting with certain types of conditions such as hypoglycemic episodes in diabetics.

This is by no means Service Dog news, but it is absolutely incredible nevertheless. A stray dog wanders into traffic on a highway in Chile and is hit by oncoming traffic. Another stray dog sees the injured dog and pulls it to safety with it's paws. The injured dog lives after being spotted by highway workers.

We're proud to say one of our registrants is in the news! Darlene Guthrie, a retired Police Animal Control Officer uses her dog, Fancy, to help with her epileptic seizures. She's been featured on local television news and in the newspaper.

Dogs for the Deaf in Oregon has launched one of the first programs in the country to train Autism Assistance Dogs — and they were featured a few months ago on KDRV Channel 12 in Medford, Oregon. A news crew came to film Dogs for the Deaf President and CEO, Robin Dickson and Canine Instructor, Carrie Brooks in a local mall where they were introducing the program to the public.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services came out with a report this morning with some not-so-surprising results. The number of adults in the United States reporting disabilities increased by by 3.4 million between 1999 and 2005,. The study, published in today′s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, finds an estimated 1 in 5 U.S. adults (47.5 million, or 21.8 percent) report a disability. The three most common causes of disability among adults in the United States are arthritis or rheumatism, back or spine problems, and heart disease.