Gripevine

ON  August 30, I saw a post by a friend on my Facebook timeline that made my day. An FB user who goes by the name Eddie Fendy Mkah posted that he offers taxi services to blind people with guide dogs. This is a screenshot of the Facebook post. In any other country or any other situation, no one would have batted an eyelid if they came across this post. But this is Malaysia, and animal lovers here, both non-Muslims and Muslims are fighting an arduous battle against the huge bias and fear of dogs in Malaysian society. So deep rooted is this fear and lack of understanding of man's best friend that in May this year, visually impaired Stevens Chan was asked to leave a mall because he had his faithful guide dog Lashawn in tow. After being told to leave, he could not even get a cab home, because the drivers did not want a dog in their cab. In light of the problems faced by Chan which shone a harsh spotlight on the plight of the visually impaired, Eddie's post went viral...

WHEN you're a guide dog in Malaysia, being able to walk into a mall and not get kicked out is a big deal indeed. In fact it is such an achievement that it would warrant some amount of media coverage which it did. Breakthrough for the blind as guide dog is allowed into mall Lashawn however has been creating history ever since he landed in Malaysia. For starters this professionally trained Labrador is the first-ever guide dog for the visually impaired permitted into the country. Can you believe it? After all these years of economic progress, having the world's tallest building and what not, and we did not even have something as basic as trained guide dogs for the disabled. Lashawn and his master Stevens Chan the CEO and founder of Dialogue in the Dark (DID) as well as Save Ones Sight Mission Bhd (SOS Mission) and Malaysia Glaucoma Society are out to change all that through the "Dogs for Sight" campaign. DID ( www.did.my ) is committed to bridging the ...

SOMETIMES it just takes one incident to shine a harsh spotlight on how unevolved we are as a society. In this case it was a simple experiment undertaken by a man on a mission to provide sight and mobility to the blind via guide dogs. The man in question is Stevens Chan the founder of Malaysia Glaucoma Society (MGS) who took his guide dog Lashawn - who is Malaysia's first and only guide dog for the blind (A professionally trained labrador who is the first ever guide dog permitted in the country) to a mall in an exercise to gauge public response as part of Chan's Dogs for Sight Campaign . What happened during that exercise was reported in the malay mail online on May 24, 2014 and outraged netizens when the article made its rounds on social media. Man's best friend not loved by everyone Besides being asked to leave the mall, Chan was also unable to get a cab home because the drivers insisted that animals were not allowed in cabs. What followed next was a fl...