Ocean Park To Help Breed Local Guide Dogs

The Guide Dogs Association and Ocean Park have teamed up to double the number of guide dogs in Hong Kong in the coming two years.

The association said there are more than 170,000 blind people in the city, but only 45 serving guide dogs, and most of those dogs are from overseas.

To alleviate the situation, the group says it wants to step up local breeding, and a key part of this will be sourcing frozen semen locally.

Ocean Park's vet services director Dr Paolo Martelli said: "We have used semen that have been in store for more than 10 years and obtained babies, so that opens very different possibilities, you can use a dog for breeding long after he’s passed away of a natural long life."

The Guide Dogs Association's chairman, Lam Wai-pong, said currently blind people need to wait two years to be allocated a guide dog, and the association hopes to make a difference by breeding at least 20 puppies every year.

But Lam admits there is still a long way to go, saying: "of course we want to improve the number as many as possible, but we have other constraints like the financial constraints, the spaces, and also other facilities. So we have to solve them one by one to make sure that we can make the quality guide dogs sufficient quantity to serve the society.”

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