History of Anything (HoA) Project: Service Dogs

For my History of Anything Project, I chose service dogs in the United States as my topic.

    I have a few goals for this project. First, I do want to learn more about service dogs and how they help people. Furthermore, I’d like to have an interesting display for my project, whatever that may be. I also hope to get a chance to visit local organizations that work with service dogs and meet a few dogs myself- that’ll probably be the highlight of my project.

    I have always had a passion and love for dogs. Sadly, I do not have a dog of my own, but my interest is kept alive through videos and pictures of dogs on my social media as well as my friends’ dogs. Recently, I have been captivated by the news of the limited availability of service dogs for veterans with disabilities such as the common PTSD. I learned that many veterans commit suicide each day and that if they had a service dog, their suicides could have been prevented.

    The tough part of doing this topic is that there is not a lot of information on this topic, specifically online. I will definitely need to do some deeper research and maybe visit the library. My topic is definitely different and is not necessarily the most researched topic in the world, thus, I face some obstacles with finding the history of service dogs. However, I do have more recent information on service dogs nowadays.

    As for my plans, I need to narrow down my topic a bit so I know precisely what information I need to gather. I will probably outline my project to have main questions/topics to cover. From there, I will gather all the information necessary. I most likely will be doing a project board so I’ll need to get all the materials. Additionally, I need to start researching local organizations that train and/or provide service dogs and get in touch with them because I hope to compile a video of my visit(s) and the information I learn. If I can do art, which I really can’t, I might add some type of interesting aspect to my project board so it won’t just be a project board that I am presenting. Lastly, since we are submitting our project digitally, I need to take pictures of the end product(s) as well as write a short intro/blurb (since the rest of the information will be in the pictures of the board).