I’ve read a number of recent stories where a veteran has a service dog, the veteran has no physical injuries, the dog has been given to the veteran solely to help them deal with post-traumatic stress, and yet the dog has been trained to perform physical tasks (e.g., picking up dropped objects) for someone with physical issues who requires those functions.  Sometimes you have to read between the lines to figure that out, other times I’ve seen the articles come right out and say the tasks weren’t needed for this person, but were taught in case the dog had a partner with physical issues that needed them.

Whenever you see that, it should raise big red flags with you.

First, you gotta ask yourself – why would somebody go to the trouble and expend all the time, effort, and expense necessary to train a dog to perform physical tasks for someone who doesn’t need them, and very likely never will during the life of the dog? Or put a little differently, why would you train a dog that way and then not give it to a veteran who needed those skills? Particularly when there are so many people with severe physical injuries who actually do need a dog to perform those functions for them.

Now I don’t know the answers to that in these specific cases, and I can’t tell you that this is what’s going on there, but I CAN tell you what the history has been. Which you likely are not aware of unless you’ve followed a discussion that’s been going on in the service dog world for a number of years now.

Historically, this has been done to circumvent (or comply with, depending upon your point of view) the ADA. Where it’s come up has normally only been where someone has a dog whose only stated function is to provide them emotional support for a mental health issue and they get called on it, i.e., what does the dog do for them, is it a legitimate service dog, and do they have public access?

If you look at these cases, what you’ll see is that the person with the dog will often make an argument like this: “Yes, it’s a legitimate service dog and helps me cope with (fill in the psychological issue they are dealing with), BUT I also have (balance problems or hearing problems or some other physical issue) and the dog helps me with that, too.”  In other words, “I’m covered whichever way you wanna go”.

Let’s be clear here – just like in these current stories, the dogs were never described as “dual purpose”. The people made no bones all along about what the dog’s role for them was – the secondary physical stuff only came up when they got pressed on the subject. Hence the title of this post.

Another one we can debate all day long and where the law is not gonna be any help. My goal as always is just for you to be aware of something that might not be so obvious, ask the right questions, and then make your own decisions about what you’re willing to support. Because that’s what’s gonna drive whether or not this kinda stuff continues to be done.

For me, though, just doesn’t rack up right, no matter how you try to explain it.

You know, I honestly didn’t write this today because it’s the 20th anniversary of the ADA with all the associated attention, or because the revisions to the existing part of the regulation covering service animals were just signed by the Attorney General Friday, although both those things make it a great time to bring this up.

My guess is most people are clueless about just how low the bar is for saying your dog is a service dog. All you have to do is be able to answer these two questions the right way:

• Is your dog required because of a disability?

• What does your dog do for you?

If you answer “Yes” to the first one and say something like “He picks up things for me.” in answer to the second, that’s it – you’re in. Assuming, of course, the dog is not a threat to anyone’s safety or out of control, in which case you can be asked to remove it.

Note what’s NOT there. You can’t ask what the person’s disability is, or make them have the dog demonstrate whatever function it is they’ve said that it does, or ask them to show proof (e.g., a card or ID) that it’s a service dog (since, in spite all those registry places you read about, there’s no such thing). No specific standards for how well the dog has to do its job. No cape requirement.

I know what you’re thinking – can’t be that simple.  With all the court cases and legal hoopla you read about all the time, how can that be?

Well, here’s the pertinent section right out of the latest version of the regulation that the Attorney General signed Friday and will take effect later:

(6) Inquiries. A public accommodation shall not ask about the nature or extent of a person´s disability, but may make two inquiries to determine whether an animal qualifies as a service animal. A public accommodation may ask if the animal is required because of a disability and what work or task the animal has been trained to perform. A public accommodation shall not require documentation, such as proof that the animal has been certified, trained, or licensed as a service animal. Generally, a public accommodation may not make these inquiries about a service animal when it is readily apparent that an animal is trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability (e.g., the dog is observed guiding an individual who is blind or has low vision, pulling a person´s wheelchair, or providing assistance with stability or balance to an individual with an observable mobility disability).
28 CFR Part 36 Subpart C 36.302 (6)

http://www.ada.gov/regs2010/titleIII_2010/reg3_2010.html

We could talk about this one for days, but here’s the lesson I want you to take from this: the law is not gonna get us where we wanna go here. Never will.

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.

Nowhere do I see this problem more than with the almost constant daily barrage now of feelgood stories about dogs doing wonderful things for military people, both active duty and veterans, particularly those who are suffering with post-traumatic stress as their primary issue.  Problem is, when you look closer and you know what to look for, there’s a lotta bull in those stories.  Well-meaning bull, but bull nonetheless.

And it’s not simple true or false stuff you can just punch into Snopes and it’ll tell you which it is, either – there’s more to it than that and you’ve gotta learn what to look for.  That’s been my intent all along on this site – educate people and correct a lot of the misinformation that floats around.  I don’t care so much whether you agree with me (although that’d be great) or not – you make your own decisions – I just want you to be smart, know what to look for, and have the facts when you make them.

My constant dilemma is what do I just let go, what’s worth bringing up, and if I’m going to do that, how do I do it in an effective way that doesn’t just come across as one big continuous whine or “it’s all about me” arrogant.  Because of that, I’ve sat on most all of these stories, countless times where I’ve written something and then said, “Nah, why bother? People just wanna hear feelgood stuff. Leave it alone.”  Well, I’m at a point now where I don’t know if I can do that any longer, and I want to set the tone for that.

Some of that is due to the cumulative effect of all those stories on me over time, but mostly it’s because things are getting worse, with more and more people pushing the same shaky concepts day after day as if they were accepted fact and already working as advertised.  Or maybe they just don’t know any better.  My fear is the more that stuff sits out there unchallenged, the more it gets accepted, maybe even unconsciously, as “well, everybody knows THAT” fact (I already see that happening) with potentially disastrous results for both people and dogs.

Feeling good or wanting to do good are simply not enough.  We need to be absolutely sure that what we do is really helping and not actually making things worse and placing people or dogs at risk.

My plan is to start writing much shorter posts more often, stop sitting on stuff and just get it out there. The trick will be to not turn this into one big rant site (we have more than enough of those already) without going the other way and “chugging on over to namby-pamby land” like R. Lee Ermey says in that hilarious Geico commercial, either.

Guess I shouldn’t worry, though.  Never fails that every time I wrestle with something like this and then give in and say something, I’ll hear from at least one of my friends with a service dog who will tell me they’ve seen exactly the same thing and thank me for saying it.  That means the world to me – they live it 24/7/365,  I don’t, and they are ultimately why all of us involved in this world do what we do.

We’ll see how it goes.

I went looking a couple days ago for a detailed description of the most well-promoted ’service dogs for veterans’ organization’s training program – couldn’t find it, which really surprised me.

Funny thing is, I was actually trying to give them a break, not pick on them. I felt like I might’ve been too tough on their program lately and wanted to find something good that’d change my mind and give me more confidence in them.

I finally gave up after 15 or 20 minutes of hard looking on their website. Only thing I could find were some vague references about training dogs to meet every individual’s requirements and training them anywhere, and I had to look hard to find those.

Now, if this was some home-grown, DIY, rinky-dink website for a small organization, it still wouldn’t be OK, but I could maybe understand it a little. But it’s not – this is a very, very slick professionally done site from a very well funded organization who definitely knows how to promote itself and does so at every opportunity, which makes the omission even more glaring.

What I expected to see (and what you need to expect from any service dog organization as well) is something EXACTLY like this: Canine Companions for Independence’s Training And Placement page. Most importantly, because of the program content – it’s the gold standard against which you should compare all assistance dog organizations’ programs – but also because it’s a well-laid-out, detailed, one-page, start-to-finish description of the two-year process AND it’s pretty easy to find – just go to cci.org -> Programs  -> Training And Placement.

Make no mistake – training and placement are the core of any assistance dog program, and if you’re interested in a service dog for yourself, a family member, a friend, or someone you are professionally advising, that’s one of the very first, if not THE first, things you need to evaluate.

It’s like I told so many people at the Warrior Games a coupla weeks ago who got to see CCI grad Jason Morgan and his wonderful service dog Napal and were so impressed by them: that kind of match and a dog that great doesn’t happen by accident – it’s a two-year process and only about a third of the dogs make it all the way through.  And in spite of all that swell and wonderful feelgood stuff they might’ve heard about “the dog picking the human” (like in one well-publicized recent TV special), there’s a whole lotta focused and very specific effort involved to make a lifelong assistance dog team partnership like Jason and Napal’s.

Pretty much without fail, that explanation got the classic big eyed, raised eyebrow expression of surprise from everyone I told, which confirms for me what I already knew – most people have no idea what it takes to really do it right. Which is perfectly understandable, but which also makes it all the more critical for organizations to clearly and honestly explain their training program in detail and put that explanation where you can easily find it.

They owe you that.

Definitely watch the video, but the real key here is WHY they were visiting – concerns over both existing/pending legislation and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ response – and you really need to read the two AMVETS blog posts associated with the visit to understand that.

“AMVETS, Paws With A Cause Take the Hill”

“AMVETS, Paws With A Cause Take the Hill (Part 2)”

As explained in the first post:

AMVETS Deputy National Legislative Director Christina Roof and Paws With A Cause National Marketing Manager Deb Davis joined the veterans, helping to explain shortfalls in current policy toward assistance dogs and pushing to close loopholes and improve access for veterans who could benefit from new programs.

The post then describes some of the major concerns Assistance Dogs International accredited and member organizations have with both the legislation and the VA response (which, in spite of the impression that may have been created elsewhere, is still being worked on and has not been finalized):

- Statutes and policies must be clear to veterans and implemented throughout the VA system with a clear point of contact. The current language found in Title 38 of the U.S. Code is too vague, failing to identify what VA’s actual responsibilities should be.

- When drafting responsible assistance dog placement and training legislation for veterans, a standard must be established based on proven assistance dog industry standards and practices exemplified by Assistance Dogs International, or ADI, and the International Guide Dog Federation, or IGDF. The bills currently before Congress are too vague and misuse certain industry terms interchangeably, such as guide dog, service dog, therapy dog, and assistance dog, making policy nearly impossible to properly implement.

- Decisive action must be taken in the short term, since thousands of veterans could potentially benefit from any new program, and AMVETS and Paws With A Cause are happy to work with legislators to make this happen. Though VA may have concerns over cost, the return on investment from veterans who take advantage of assistance dogs would have far-reaching effects as veterans re-enter the work force and live up to their full potential.

I can tell you that volunteers and staff from Canine Companions for Independence and other ADI member organizations as well as other veterans organizations are actively working those issues and have been making visits to Congress, both formal and informal, for some time.

You normally don’t see much, if anything, in the news about those visits, though, so it’s very nice to see this kind of publicity, and kudos to AMVETS and PAWS for making that happen.

Bottom line, as I’ve been saying for a long time, is that it’s not enough to just say we’re for service dogs for veterans, we have to make that happen in the right way.

“We have always served veterans … but it wasn’t until around late 2006 that we actually embarked on what we called the Veterans Initiative to make our services known and to target veterans returning home from the current conflict.”

- Clark Pappas, Director of Participant Programs at Canine Companions for Independence

That’s something I’m convinced most people, including veterans - especially veterans, in fact – aren’t aware of, and that we need to continually get across. (Clark is a super guy, BTW, and someone I’m proud to call a friend.)