People Behind the Pups

Learn more about the namesakes of each of our Giving Bark Thursday, Give Bark 250 litter! 

Judith Heumann
Judith Heumann is known as the “Mother of the Disability Rights Movement.” She contracted polio at 18 months of age and used a wheelchair for most of her life. After being denied access to public schools as a child, she became a champion for equality, accessibility, and independence. In 1977, she helped lead the Section 504 Sit-In,  a disabilities rights protest. She also played a significant role in advancing the Americans With Disabilities Act. She died in 2023.  

Helen Keller
At the age of 19 months, Helen Keller became deaf and blind after an illness. With the help of Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to communicate using a variety of methods. She was an advocate for people with disabilities, and in 1925, she charged Lions Clubs to become “Knights of the Blind” and to make vision issues one of the tenets of their mission to help others. She wrote numerous books and traveled extensively on lecture tours. She helped challenge misconceptions about people with disabilities. Keller died in 1968.

Haben Girma
Haben Girma is an advocate for people who are deafblind. She was the first deafblind individual to attend and graduate from Harvard Law School. She is the best-selling author of Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law and developed a speech-to-braille communication system that gives individuals who are deafblind new avenues for communication.

Marla Runyan
Marla Runyan is the first legally blind athlete to compete in the Olympic Games, and the only American to compete in both the Olympics and Paralympics. After losing her vision at age 9 to Stargardt’s Disease, she went on to earn two master’s degrees. While in college, she began competing in track-and-field events. She is a five-time gold-medal winner at the Paralympics and a gold medalist at the Pan American Games. In her New York City Marathon debut in 2002, she was fourth woman overall. The following year, she finished fifth among women. 

Marca Bristo
Marca Bristo is a former nurse who was paralyzed at age 23 after an accident. She founded Access Living, a Chicago-based nonprofit that advocates for independent living and was a leading advocate for the Americans With Disabilities Act. She was appointed chair of the National Council on Disability in 1994, the first person with a disability to serve in that role. She also co-founded the American National Council for Independent Living and served as the president of United States International Council on Disabilities. She died in 2019. 

Dennis Billups
Dennis Billups was left blind by medical intervention as a baby. He participated in the Section 504 Sit-In in 1977 to protest that Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act was not being enforced. Fed up with the government’s inaction, protestors occupied the San Francisco federal building for 25 days. Billups was called the “spiritual leader” of the sit-in. He appeared in the Netflix documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution in 2020. 

Jacob Bolotin
In the early 20th century, Jacob Bolotin became the first totally blind physician in the US fully licensed to practice medicine. Originally a door-to-door salesman, he dreamed of becoming a doctor. Fighting the prejudices of the medical establishment, he obtained his medical degree and eventually specialized in diagnosing and treating heart and lung ailments. He was an early advocate for the rights of people who are blind. He died in 1924 at the age of 36.


Jennifer Keelan Chaffins
Jennifer Keelan Chaffins has been a wheelchair user since the age of 2 after a diagnosis of cerebral palsy. At the age of 8, she joined other disability rights advocates in the “Capital Crawl,” a march from the White House to the U.S. Capitol Building to climb the Capitol steps without the use of mobility aids. She is the co-author of All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight for Americans With Disabilities Changed Everything, a children’s book that details her story.

Lisa Carl
Lisa Carl has cerebral palsy. In 1988, she wanted to attend a movie in Tacoma, Washington, but she was denied entry because she is a wheelchair user, with the theater citing fire-safety regulations. She challenged the policy in court, later testifying before Congress about the barriers faced by people with disabilities and the need for civil rights legislation protecting their rights. She was a guest when President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.

Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder is a legendary musician who has been inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He lost his vision due to retinopathy of prematurity. A musical prodigy, he signed with Motown Records at the age of 11 and is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the modern era. He has won 25 Grammy Awards and advocates for disability rights, racial equality, and humanitarian causes.