A Guide to Service Dog Ethics

A Guide to Service Dog Ethics

I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a while. Let’s have a chat about Service Dogs. Particularly, what makes a dog a service dog, what is required for an individual to need a service dog and finally how ethics play a role in the use of service dogs. In today’s world a Service Dog can be trained to assist with many disabilities. But that’s what they are for, Disabilities.

Let me start by defining what a disability is. A disability is a medical, psychiatric, learning, or physical condition that alters an individual’s ability to function in the same way the majority of society does. Now, that’s not exactly how the ADA defines it, but for the purpose of the service dog world, that’s how we are going to talk about it here. A condition has to alter your life just about 99% of the time you are attempting to do something to warrant the need of a service dog. Since I’m a college student with a lot of stress in my life I’m going to us a psychiatric example to explain this. Let’s use Anxiety. Everyone at some point in their life has anxiety. Anxiety is essentially being afraid of something. Last week, I was really afraid of the big oral Animal Nutrition exam I had to take, but after I took it, it was over. That’s a perfectly normal example of test anxiety. Now let’ say for the purpose of this example that I have an Anxiety Disorder (in the real world I don’t). I’m waiting to take my test when suddenly I go into a full blown panic attack, sending my body into shock, passing out on the floor with no one around to help. How could a dog have helped prevent this? Psychiatric support dogs are trained to respond to a change in emotion. A dog would have heard my heart rate starting to increase, smelled a difference in the scent of my sweat, and alerted me with a distraction to leave the situation. If I would have continued to go into shock a dog would have been able to bark alerting those around me that I needed help. If I had fallen on the ground a dog could have stood over me and possibly protected my head from hitting the ground. The anxiety attack isn't just a one-time deal; it’s a constant battle that happens every time someone with an anxiety disorder is in an event that triggers anxiety. It’s a life altering disability for many and yes, a service dog can help with it. But please don’t mistake having anxiety about your mom coming for a visit with having an anxiety disorder. Having normal anxiety does not warrant a service dog.

 Next, I’ll define what a service dog is. A service dog is a dog that in most cases has been breed from a superior genetic pool of other extraordinarily successful service dogs. However, there are some extra-extra ordinary exceptions to this rule. All service dogs, no matter what purpose they serve, can perform at least 3 tasks that aid their disabled handler in leading a healthier life filled with more independence. Service dogs are however limited to psychiatric and physical disabilities. As much as I wish they could, unfortunately a dog can’t write or read to help someone with a learning disability. But they can, guide the blind, alert the deaf, assist with mobility issues, alert to seizures, hypoglycemic attacks, changes in psychiatric condition, and the list goes on and on. That’s why these dogs are typically bred to do what they do. A higher degree of physical health, natural ability, and intelligence is not always something you can pick up from your local AKC Labrador breeder. Occasionally you will find a one in a million dog in the pound that you take home as a pet and instead of being a pet starts naturally alerting to whatever medical condition you may have. You can’t take an abused dog, rescue it from the humane society, and force it to work for you. That is just another form of abuse called emotional abuse. Upon occasion you can take a dog from a rescue and after it has settled in to your life for many months and established your trust, then and only then could you start introducing it to potentially being a service dog. And even then you have to find a program, private trainer, and expensive testing to make it all work. So in the long run it might be easier to go through an established program. Any dog can be great with the help and training of a human but not every dog can be a great service dog. To conclude what I just said, since I’m kind of going off on a tangent, to be a service dog, a dog must willingly perform AT LEAST three tasks that assist their disabled handler.

This brings me to my final discussion, what is an ethical amount of work to ask a service dog to do? I’m not going into extreme “no one should own pet’s and dog’s shouldn’t do anything but sit on the coach and eat potato chips all day” views as some animal rights groups might. But I would like to get you thinking logically about what is a fair amount of work to ask a dog to do for a human. Let me start this by saying, asking your pet to go everywhere with you is unethical. They will be exposed to screaming children, loud noises, offended people, other animals, toxic substances, potential viruses, and more. Just don’t do it. It’s not only illegal and punishable by a $1,000 fine to say that your pet dog is a service dog, it’s also unfair to your dog’s emotional health, safety and overall wellbeing. A dog, just as a person, can only do so much before they reach a breaking point. Many students work 40 hours a week, go to school full time, and often some have families to take care of at home. They make compensations in their life to be able to do all that, maybe they aren’t involved in the clubs they want to be involved in, don’t go to the gym, and sleep only a few hours a night. A service dog has a 24/7 job to take care of his disabled partner in crime. That dog needs breaks, out of harness or uniform time to play, relax and still be a pet dog. Even while he’s on breaks he is still keeping himself mostly focused on his handler. So how much is to much for a dog to handle? A dog trained to guide a blind epileptic doesn’t sound to bad, but if that dog is a seizure alert guide dog is that to much? Maybe, maybe not, It depends on the dog and the person. What if the handler is a blind, epileptic, confined to a wheel chair and requires the dog to assist with mobility tasks, is that too much to ask? These things come up in the world of service dogs and ethics are going to play a huge role as these issues continue to grow. What are some of your views?

 

Signing off,

Girl and Pup

Everything discussed here is my own personal opinion. Everyone is entitled to their own however, this is mine and I wanted to share it with you as I feel it is very important for everyone to know where they stand on this issue. This is not the view of New Mexico State University, Aggie P.A.W. Service Dog club, Guide Dogs of the Desert, or Foundation for Service Dog Support. This is my view, and my view only.