I Had Always Thought,

that guide dogs for the blind or partially sighted, 

were a fairly recent thing, say in the past 150 years or so, but according to Dr. Krista A. Murchison of Leiden University, guide dogs were used centuries before then, he has found references to guide dogs from medieval manuscripts, the kind that bored monks illuminated with drawings of everyday life, the drawing above is from a manuscript from the late 12th century, he has rounded up quite a few rare depictions of guide dogs from medieval Europe, including some that show dogs carrying bowls, which may have been to collect alms, I would never have thought in those times the idea of a guide dog could have take place, but there it is, something I thought was relatively new came a long way from the past.