Guide dogs: for people who are blind or with visual impairments.
Hearing dogs: for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Service dogs: for people with disabilities other than vision or hearing, such as physical disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, autism, seizures, and other medical conditions.
- Visit an animal shelter.
- Watch the reaction/interaction of the child with dogs of friends & family.
- Find a service dog organization in the area and ask to visit (most such organizations welcome the addition of children and strangers as they train their dogs and it is a good environment in which to assure that the child is not in harm’s way from unknown animals),
- Rent a movie about dogs and see if the child is interested,
- Read children’s books about dogs,
- Watch a lot of animal planet shows about dogs & of course, have conversations with the child (if possible) about how they feel about dogs.