Fake Service Dogs

I wanted to take a moment to explain why fake service dogs are so extremely harmful.

As a reminder, a service dog is task-trained to mitigate a specific person’s disability. This takes between 2-3 years generally.

A fake service dog is an emotional support animal or pet that an individual takes into public. Even if you are disabled and have a dog, this doesn’t mean you can bring them with you.

You can ONLY take a dog in non-pet-friendly places if they are task trained, public access trained, know basic obedience, and are housebroken. If your dog meets all these criteria AND you’re disabled, great! You have a service dog! If not, that dog is not to be in non-pet-friendly places.

This not only causes immense stress to the animal that is not prepared to be in these environments, but is a health code violation, and can create very stressful situations for real service dog handlers who rely on their dogs to function. I deal with access issues because businesses can’t trust that my dog is legit.

If you are a service dog handler, I encourage you not to approach a person with an untrained dog. This could result at the end of your dog’s career. Instead, go to an employee and inform them of their rights (they can ask the two legal questions and ask them to leave if they are lunging, barking, or acting aggressive (there is a link to the ADA at the bottom of this page for more information))

If you are an employee, read the ADA. Recognize and identify whether a dog is a service dog or not. You can only determine if a service dog is real by whether they are task trained and if they behave in public, not by their size or breed.

This is an extremely important subject and affects disabled people who have service dogs daily.

Reach out with any questions!