Service dogs do so much more than we expect from them. They can make life manageable for veterans living with PTSD, they can detect life-threatening allergens for people with severe allergies, and they can make everyday life safer for people with a range of disabilities.
But many people abuse the privileges provided to service dogs, but positioning their pets as real service animals. A fake service animal is any animal that does not have proper training to provide assistance to a person with a disability. Service dogs also undergo good behaviour training and socialization training for behaving in public spaces.
What’s the harm in a fake service dog?
When people brings pets into grocery stores, and those pets exhibit poor behaviour, it creates real consequences for people who need their service animal to cope with daily life.
Pets may bark at other people, other animals, jump up, sniff merchandise, or even relieve themselves in inappropriate places. This creates a health and safety risk for businesses.
Business owners have reported incidences of dogs urinating on furnishings, contaminating food, biting staff, and driving away customers.
The difference between a service animal and a pet
Real service animals on the other hand and incredibly well trained. Service dogs are welcome on business premises under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but if the animal is not behaving appropriately, a business owner is within their rights to ask the handler to remove the animal.
The challenge is, there is no national certification of test that standardizes this and handlers are within their rights to self-train. US Service Dog’s visual identification is not a training program, it’s voluntary visual ID that identifies your dog as a trained service animal. If a handler chooses to register with our database, they are asserting that their dog has been properly trained and exhibits proper behaviour in public spaces.
It is essential for the wellbeing of all people who rely on service animals to make their lives better, that everyday people are not misrepresenting their pets as service animals.
If you’d like to get documentation to identify your dog as a service animal, you are asserting that your dog is trained to behave in public and support you with a task that helps you with a disability.
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