Aso adopts a courageous pro-guide dog stance

When you’re the prime minister of Japan,  those in your own party think you’re a joke AND your finance minister resigns in disgrace after makign a drunken ass of himself on the world stage, what should you do to reassure the citizenry that you’re doing a good job?

Simple – change the subject to cute puppies. Here’s a clip from his latest e-mail magazine:

The Prime Minister’s Office usually has only human visitors,
but last week I received a visit from service dogs accompanied by
their users, including this woman.

Service dogs are a type of assistance dog, just like guide dogs for
visually disabled people and hearing dogs for people with hearing
disabilities. The role of service dogs is to help their physically
challenged users with tasks such as opening doors or getting
changed.

I heard that Sherry is able to open the refrigerator downstairs,
take out a plastic drink bottle, close the refrigerator door,
and then bring the bottle upstairs. Also, I saw for myself
how a service dog called Elmo was able to pick up a business card
holder dropped on the floor when his wheelchair-bound user gave
the command, “Take!”

I myself have lived with dogs for as long as I can remember. Shiro
and Lucky were the names of my two mongrel dogs — one had been
picked up by the local healthcare center and the other was about to
be used for animal experiments.

When I was a child, it was my daily job to feed them and take them
out for walks. When Shiro died, I could not stop crying as
I recalled how he was when he was healthy, and the way he would
always come rushing out happily to greet me each time I returned
home. This was the time when the importance and preciousness of
life were instilled in my young mind.

Given my own experience, I believe that coming into contact with
animals is highly beneficial in many ways for the development of
children.

Assistance dogs are partners for physically challenged people,
acting as extensions of their bodies. The government will step up
its efforts to make assistance dogs more common, through measures
such as putting its weight behind assistance dog training.

At the same time, I would like as many people as possible,
including readers of this e-mail magazine, to know about assistance
dogs. That is my sincere wish.

So, is this some kind of subtle cry for help? Does he want a guide dog of his own? Whatever the case, the image is kind of a step removed from the determination to fix the economy as shown in this attention-grabber:

 aso_pos01g

6 thoughts on “Aso adopts a courageous pro-guide dog stance”

  1. You were supposed to Photoshop a baked good into his hand and change the caption to まずは、ケーキだ。

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