So this is really awesome! These are Disney princesses reimagined as disabled and drawn with service dogs. The artist, Arien Smith, drew these in 2017, but they have become viral only recently. Arien features all types of dogs in his portrayals as a way to educate about disabilities and service animals. He also does other dog related art. Arien can be found on Facebook under Royal Service Dogs or the major barkana. Hopefully more artists, or, you know, actual major film/tv/book creators begin to incorporate disabilities and service animals rather than pretending like they don’t exist (but that’s a different rant for a different day, 🙃).
Image descriptions: Disney princesses Cinderella, rapunzelle, tiana, sleeping beauty, belle, Snow White, and Pocahontas featured with various disabilities and service dogs of various breeds assisting them in daily lives. The last image in of a Facebook post that features the same pictures, but as line drawings, so they can be colored in.
Yup, that’s the point you just stay still and let it do whatever the fuck it wants that doesn’t involved you getting eaten.
REALLY FUN FACT for big cats cheetahs are fucking docile as shit
my grandfather ran a cheetah sanctuary in south africa and he’d just lie with them and sleep among them and they’d rub against him and chirp at him they’re big fucking babies
Another Fun Fact: Cheetahs are incredibly nervous animals. One of the (many) reason’s they’re going extinct is that cheetahs are so sensitive and nervous, some of them are literally too nervous to breed. Others will breed, but stress themselves out so much, they’ll lose their cubs.
So zoos with breeding programs had to figure out how to make cheetahs comfortable enough to first of all, get laid and secondly – not spazz themselves into miscarrying.
So what’d they do? They gave the cheetah’s their very own Service Dogs!
The dogs make them feel safe, protected and secure!
This is one of the best interactions I’ve ever had.
Two school age kids: “Oh look at the big white puppy!”
Their mother: “Come here, let me explain something to you. That dog is a Service Dog. Whenever you see a dog in a store like this you can’t distract it cause it’s working.”
Two kids: “What do you mean he’s working?”
Mom: “He helps that girl. You know how at school your teacher tells you to be quite so you don’t get distracted doing your work? It’s the same thing with that dog. You can’t distract him.”
Two kids: “What does he help her with?”
Mom: “That’s her business. Your business is to not distract him so he can work.”
If children can understand so can you.
This is so sweet.
This is how you educate, destigmatise and support people with service dogs in a way that isn’t othering or ‘inspirational’. It’s giving able people a useful role, which is often where they struggle with interactions with disabled people. Your business is to let service dogs do their job. Why they need the dog is not your business.
Remember how I promised to post an adorable fic I wrote about when Sam and Riley met Steve and Bucky? Yeah, I almost forgot about it.
Almost.
Lucky for you, I remembered.
A couple years back—a lifetime ago, really, in the days where he slept like a caveman and waited for letters from home (not home the place but home the person)—Sam overheard one of the guys talking about how, sometimes, little kids are drawn to broken people. “Well, kids and dogs,” the guy’d joked, and Sam’d grit his teeth to keep from reaching over and punching the laughter right out of him.
Broken people, he’d scrawled in a letter a couple days later, the sand beating against the roof like the world’s most persistent hail. Who the fuck says that, huh? Who the fuck thinks we’re not all coming out of this broken?
knitting in the dark 