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Service Dogs
What is a Service Dog?
A service dog is a type of assistance dog specifically trained to help people who have disabilities including visual difficulties, hearing impairments, mental illness, seizures, diabetes, autism, and more. In the United States, the applicable law is the American with Disabilities Act of 1990. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Disability Rights Section issued "ADA 2010 Revised Requirements; Service Animals" It states that:
"Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medication, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person's disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA."
The revised definition excludes all comfort animals, which are pets that owners keep with them solely for emotional reasons that do not ameliorate their symptoms of a recognized "disability"; animals that do ameliorate the conditions of a medical disability, however, such as animals that ameliorate the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, are included in the definition. Unlike a service animal, a comfort animal is one that has not been trained to perform specific tasks directly related to the person's disability. Common tasks for service animals include flipping light switches, picking up dropping objects, alerting the person to an alarm, reducing the anxiety of a person with post-traumatic stress disorder, by putting it head on the patient, or similar disability-related tasks. A service dog may still provide help to people with emotions related to psychiatric disabilities, but the dog must be trained tp perform specific actions, such as distracting the person when he becomes anxious or engages in stimming or other behaviors related to his disability.
Current Service Dog Teams
Louie and Jada Turrean and Alesone
Seizure Detection Dog Hypoglycemia Alert Dog
Trained by: Chosen 2 Serve, Inc.
Current Service Dogs in Training
Training as a Hearing Dog
