When You Hear “Service Dog”, Think “Public Access”

Posted on | July 24, 2010 | No Comments

Because public access is what drives and frames the whole service dog discussion.

When somebody says their dog is a service dog, public access is really what we’re talking about. If I describe my dog that way, the clear implication is that the dog does stuff for me and I can take it with me wherever I want. And, when it comes down to it, that’s the primary, if not only, reason to differentiate your dog in that way. (Note I didn’t say that that’s what defines a service dog – that’s another post.)

Keep in mind that, unless I state otherwise, my goal here is to give you brief, real world, practical, useful definitions and explanations that you can operate from daily, and not textbook, dictionary, or legal ones – you can go look those up for yourself, anyway. In that vein, think of public access as “having your dog somewhere dogs normally aren’t allowed.”

Public access is the big threshold. Once you say a dog team (and note I said “team” – the human is an oft-overlooked critical component here, funny as that might sound) needs to be able to function in the public access environment, that changes and colors EVERYTHING – selection, training, evaluation, conditioning, legal factors, breed choice, you name it – it’s a lot longer list. It adds an orders-of-magnitude level of stuff on top of just having a regular ol’, well-behaved, nice dog.

And that’s where the heart of this issue lies. If you really do need public access, it’s great to know it’s there for you and it’s a wonderful thing, but that comes at a price – there’s a lot of effort and responsibility that goes with it.

On the other hand, if you don’t really need to be able to have your dog in places where dogs aren’t normally allowed, and all you really want is a nice companion dog who’s maybe even trained to perform some service dog-like tasks for you, and to be able to go out in the vast majority of outside public areas where dogs ARE allowed, why bother?

Because once you remove that requirement, it opens things up tremendously, and makes things a lot easier for both you and those of us who are trying to help you.

It’s like how a very nice young lady occupational therapist from the South I was talking to at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Denver a coupla weeks ago put it. I was talking about this very subject, and I said “…and if somebody doesn’t really need one…”, and in her sweet Mississippi accent she finished my sentence with “…you could just get one from the pound!” Wasn’t said in a mean way at all, either – in fact, exactly the opposite – very nicely and just a simple statement of an obvious fact.

Exactly.

Where this issue normally comes up is in one area – “on the line” dogs where there’s a legitimate question about whether the dog is a true service dog, or a companion – a “feelgood dog”, as you will see me refer to them here. But here’s the thing – if you remove the public access part, that problem and the associated dance about whether the dog is actually performing any real tasks goes away.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that if somebody truly needs a service dog they should suck it up and not get one. All I’m asking is that you take a hard look at whether you or someone you’re trying to help really needs public access, and let’s not press the issue just for the sake of pressing the issue when there’s no real need to do that.