Just how important is a service dog to someone who is visually impaired?

For one St. John’s woman it’s life changing – for both her personal safety and social life.

Anne Malone says her service dog, Cheryl, is her threshold into the world and without her it would be nearly impossible for Anne to live a life as fully and independent as she does today.

She won a lawsuit against a local cab company in 2014 after being denied a taxi three separate times because of her service dog. In 2006, Malone says she essentially lost most of her vision overnight. She went from being able to read a screen and see cars to not being able to do either, or recognize faces.

She says she lost all confidence and became very anxious about entering social situations – and Cheryl fixed that.

Malone says people can be very wary of approaching someone with a white cane, as they don’t know what to do and will stay away – which can be very isolating for the person with the cane. In her experience, with the dog, people were drawn to it and it brought her back into the social realm.

Although it’s been the law since 1992, that you can’t deny access to someone with a service dog to any premises to which the public would normally have access, it still happens.

Malone says there is still a lot of work and consciousness raising that needs to be done.

She says it’s imperative that people working, administering or supervising or even existing in a public space are aware of the fact that they do not have a legal right to deny access to a person with a service dog.