While Joey Ramp was working as a horse trainer in 2006, she got into a traumatic accident that damaged a region in her brain and broke 23 bones. This left her with lasting physical and psychological trauma. But fortunately, she met Sampson, a golden retriever service dog, who assisted her in walking, picked things up for her, and helped her manage PTSD.
When Joey decided to go back to school to understand the human brain better, she brought the pup with her. However, she immediately discovered that the STEM field didn’t take kindly to people with disabilities, especially those with service dogs.
You see, Joey’s chosen scientific field required her to be in a laboratory most of the time, but the university had issues with service animals being inside labs. They were worried that the animal would get in the way or someone might be allergic to them.
This drove Joey to develop a guideline for allowing service dogs into laboratories. This included having the pup dressed in the same personal protective equipment (PPE) that humans wore in the lab, and the dogs must always be in the direct line of sight of their handlers.
They must also be trained to retrieve things on command instead of automatically and to lie on a rubber-backed placed out of the way of the lab traffic mat for up to four hours. Fortunately, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign greenlighted Joey’s guidelines after some discourse.
This made Sampson the first-ever dog to be granted access to a chemistry lab in the university. Joey wouldn’t stop there, though, as she and her service pup are already starting to work with colleges worldwide to encourage and help them adopt the guidelines, which would ultimately introduce more people with service dogs into the labs. Look at Sampson in his adorable lab outfit here.
Courtesy of Dr. Kelly’s Mobile Vet
