Before Mr Thomas Nathan Chan visits a new place, he makes the effort to find a contact number and call the place a few days ahead to tell them that he has a guide dog. If the staff express discomfort and there are alternatives to the place he plans to visit, he goes to one of those alternatives.
“(Awareness) is improving but I won’t push the boundaries,” said the visually impaired 47-year-old IT executive and bowling para-athlete. “Some of them are just not comfortable.”
Since he was paired with his labrador-golden retriever cross Eve in June 2022, she has been helping him navigate Singapore – while he has been navigating sticky situations. These include rejections from establishments which do not know that guide dogs are legally allowed in public places, or people who are unsure of how to appropriately interact with his guide dog and him.
To boost awareness of the purpose and rules surrounding assistance dogs such as guide dogs for the blind, four students from Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information started a publicity campaign that ran from the end of 2025 to March 2026.
Unlike pet dogs, assistance dogs are trained to support people with disabilities.
The campaign, in the form of offline posters at public areas such as MRT stations and hawker centres, as well as online social media posts and videos on Instagram and TikTok, was their final-year project for their communication studies degree.
Mr Chan, who met the NTU team four times in the course of their project, also allowed the students to feature Eve in their publicity materials and videos, where she took on the persona of the campaign canine ambassador under the name Bark.
The online videos show the rigour that goes into training a certified guide dog, while the posters educate the public on proper etiquette, such as not to pet or distract guide dogs.
The NTU students – Ms Jaymee Tan Yi Xin, Ms Ruth Loo Hui En, Ms Tan Tze Wei, all aged 23, and Ms Jin Qiuhui, 25 – who call their team The Pawfessionals, met Mr Chan through the charity Guide Dogs Singapore (GDS), which they had approached for their research on the topic.
Said Ms Jaymee Tan: “Our biggest takeaway was being able to witness first-hand how guide dogs provide not just independence, but also joy and companionship to their handlers… It was especially meaningful for us to observe the bond between Thomas and Eve throughout our filming sessions with them.”
Assistance dogs can help people with a range of disabilities, though in Singapore, such dogs with full public access are currently seeing-eye guide dogs, said the NTU team.
