Bonita M. Bergin is an American canine researcher. She is the inventor of the concept of the service dog. She is the founder and president of the Bergin University of Canine Studies and the founder of Canine Companions for Independence.
Career
is a former special education teacher. In her work, she looked "for ways to keep people with disabilities out of institutions". She visited Asia in 1975. During her trip, she saw that disabled people using donkeys to assist them with transportation and other life needs. Bergin assumed that a dog could perhaps provide people the same assistance. She proposed bringing a dog to the Santa Rosa Disability Center to work with interred people. Bergin went to an animal shelter and adopted a puppy and began training it. That was the first dog she ever trained. Bergin has "trained dogs to do everything from read basic words to identify diseased plants in Napa's vineyards." In 2001, Bergin was awarded the Use Your Life award by Oprah Winfrey.
Bergin University of Canine Studies
Located in Penngrove, California, Bergin University is the "first and only program in the world that focuses on training dogs and learning about dogs." The school was founded as the Bergin University of Canine Studies The university is accredited by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. Students come to Bergin from all over the world, and graduates leave equipped with the skills and knowledge to start their own assistance dog organizations or dog-related businesses. The school offers Associate, Bachelor and Master degree programs and follows a unique model where students enrolled in the university train assistance dogs with the goal of placing the dogs with people with emotional and physical disabilities. The school offers classes on all aspects of dogs, from genetics to behavior, nutrition and dogs in popular culture. As part of the curriculum, students also train dogs at local animal shelters, helping those shelters place those dogs in their forever homes. The Bergin University dogs, which are bred on site, start being trained at 3 to 4 weeks old and are worked with for up to two years to learn 106 different commands. After graduation, dogs may be placed to work with paraplegic or quadriplegic people or others with emotional or physical disabilities. These people join a waitlist to obtain a dog for a fee of $2,750. The cost to train a dog at Bergin University is upwards of $25,000. In 2013, the university awarded Cesar Millan an honorary degree in canine science.
