Should service dogs be required to be certified?

Question

Should service dogs be required to be certified?

Answer 1

I believe there needs to be certification available mainly because the current system allows for the abuse of the term Service Dogs and people who do not have such an animal are bringing housepets into hotels and on planes for personal and selfish reasons.

Answer 2

I don't like the idea of nationalized testing requirements and certification, but I can see that this will soon be coming, due mainly to the number of fake "service dogs" (which are really just pets who happen to belong to folks with a usually marginal disability) and the attacks upon legitimate service teams by un and under trained dogs masquerading as service dogs.

We are not as affected by the "certification" issue because of the fact that my wifes Guide came from a professional training school, but this issue will hit the owner-trainers especially hard. If the testing is centralized, such as in a DMV type environment, then it could make it difficult for those who cannot get around well to be able to make the trip to the certification center. On the other hand, having an army of traveling certifiers that visit the homes of the disabled persons may well be cost prohibitive.

There is no easy answer; both ideas have pros and cons. But, the fact is: due to the bad behavior of a small minority who ignore and break the laws regarding service dogs, all of the true service dog teams are going to have to take it in the shorts once again.

Answer 3

Changed.



We're training a SD, and it infuriates me when I see a "SD" who doesn't perform any specialized tasks. There's a difference between a pet and a SD, and I'm sorry, but a SD should be able to do more than be a companion.



Not to mention the people that get conned into paying $10,000+ for a dog that has little training, just because they don't know better. My foster will be placed free of charge, mandated by the organization I work with.



You wouldn't believe the number of times that people pull a little dog out of their bag to "say hi!" when I'm training my dog in a public setting. Granted most of these people don't use the term SD to describe their pet, but there should still be stricter regulations to dissuade this sort of thing.



Untrained dogs give real SD a bad name.



* I don't think one should have to get the dog through a national organization, but before being placed the dog should be certified in basic training, and be able to complete 1+ specialized skills for the person they'll be working with. Looking cute is not a skill.

Answer 4

I think they should require certification and proof of training and to a lessor extent a valid dr's note/script. Why? Because I can say about 3-5 times on this board I have seen people ask whether they have to PROVE their animal was a service animal, simply because they wanted to be able to tote it around all of the place.



Not to mention anyone can go out and get a service dog vest and patches. Sitstay.com a pet supply webstore sells them and I am sure plenty other sites do as well.

Answer 5

I personally believe it should be left as is. If the dog does what the law requires - which is to perform tasks a disabled individual requires assistance with - why should someone have to go to the expense of certification?



If you were to set up an agency that would certify dogs - who is going to pay the salaries of the people running it?



What requirements would need to be fulfilled by every dog and what by only some dogs?



Would my mobility assistance dog who does steadying work and aids me in walking by lightly pulling be required to learn other skills that I do not require?



My biggest issue with the idea is the knowledge that many training agencies already have breed specifications ~ which I believe can run counter to the requirements of the individual. Non-traditional breeds of dogs, at times, better fulfill the need of the individual.



I've trained and placed a few service dogs. All non-traditional breeds. If their owners had to go through an agency to obtain the dog, it would have been cost prohibitive. As a general aside.. all dogs I've placed also happened to have CGC's... not because it MEANS anything but it is an excellent additional form of proofing the dog under stress.



Edit: For those who believe a disabled person should have to provide a script for the dog - should they also have to wear a gold six-pointed star or an upside down pink triangle?



(yes, I have a script, no you can't see it)



Edit: Gotta wonder if some of those here would believe my mobility assistance service dogs are "just pets" when they see one of them pulling me up the stairs or hauling me up the ramp while disembarking from an airplane.



I think that requiring certification becomes a slippery slope towards fewer people having dogs who assist ~



Already I spend an extraordinate amount of time educating people when I'm out in public. If I go somewhere that the business owners don't know me I'm asked to leave since I'm obviously not blind or deaf.. I constantly have to say "Its a Service Dog" despite the fact that the dog is wearing a marked vest. I don't think having to constantly provide proof that I need the dog is acceptable.



(I will say, in general, most business owners are quite accepting and even apologetic for having questioned my right to use my dog in their place of business)



Edit: I agree with mariahleadme and would add to his commentary that it seems to be a matter of punishing those who are law-abiding and infringing on law abiding citizens rights in an effort to police law-breakers. In the US we have traditionally accepted the fact that it is better to reserve judgement rather than restrict the restriction of someone's rights unnecessarily.



Edit: Beautifully said, habeogladium - I hope there is room for your final thoughts...



Edit: Wonderful insight, Jeannette.

Answer 6

No. As an owner trainer, I have no intention of seeking any kind of certification for my dog beyond CGC and passing the Assistance Dogs International public access test.



No two people are alike, nor are any two disabilities alike. Each circumstance is unique and I want the right to train my dog according to my own needs. The more legislation there is on the training and designation of service dogs, the less freedom I have to train my dog as I wish.



If I wanted less freedom in regards to choosing every aspect of training, care, and choosing a service dog, I would have gotten one from a school. That's not meant to insult anyone who does have a school trained service dog, the schools or the dogs themselves. However, it is within my means to train my own dog and I want to make every choice about the dog and his care.



I think passing the CGC and public access test are good standards that every owner trainer should strive for. These reflect the most basic of characteristics a dog should manifest in order to function as a service dog. Any dog who would fall short of either evaluation would only prove as a detriment to the partner. Therefore, it would be in the owner trainer's best interest to perform both evaluations. However, it shouldn't be the government's place to dictate the need for either.



The fact that so many people abuse the term "service dog" should not reflect on or affect the handlers of "actual" service dogs in any way, shape or form. Of course it's wrong to tell others that your dog is a service dog in the interest of self gain, but look it from this perspective: if the dog has not received specialized training, it will be immediately obvious. Business owners are allowed to ask if the dog is a service dog and if he is obviously not behaving in a manner to be expected from a trained service dog, he can push the matter further. No one with a "fake" service dog is going to put up a big fight in defense of a dog who is obviously not trained and risk getting caught and prosecuted. On the other hand, if the dog is not a trained service dog but manages to get by as one because his behavior is up to par, who's getting hurt by the situation? Sure, it's morally wrong, but the blood is on the hands of the "faker".

Answer 7

As a mobility dog user, I can see the strength of the argument in both directions. I owner trained my dog. If testing was instituted, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that my dog and I would pass with flying colors. However, taking everything into consideration, I have to say I'm opposed to mandatory certification. Besides the obvious points of location and financing of tests, here are my reasons:



-A certification only proves that the dog was well behaved at one point in time. A certification does nothing to ensure the continuing good behavior and safety of the service dog. This could be argued (and has been) by saying service dog teams should be retested yearly. This still gives dogs 12 months to become unsafe and out of control, and it can happen in far less time than that. How often would service dog teams actually have to be tested to ensure the continued smooth working of the team? Can this be balanced with burden it places on the handler? It my opinion, no. I have seen teams absolutely fall apart within a month or two of passing a program's certification test. Testing a team monthly (or even a few times a year) places an undue burden on the service dog handler, while testing less often makes the certification meaningless.



-How would the reliability and consistency of examiners be ensured? As anyone who has watched CGC or TDI tests has probably observed, even a fairly clear checklist of behaviors does not ensure consistent testing. I can easily see the same thing happening with a national certification test for service dogs. Some testers would test so strictly that hardly anyone could pass, others would let almost anyone through, completely undermining the reliability of the certification. In addition, it would be essentially impossible to make sure testers were not prejudiced towards program trained dogs over owner trained dogs, or against certain breeds or types of service dogs, or to make sure they don't pass people out of pity, or to make sure they aren't pressured or bribed by programs, etc.



-Who would set the standards? I would guess that the ADI test, or something similar to it would be the testing format for a national certification, given how widely this test is used in the US and abroad as a program testing standard. However, the ADI test is extremely loose. It fails to test certain key areas of behavior, most notably the response of the service dog to other dogs. If all service dogs were certified with the ADI test, I doubt we would see much of a reduction in the number of poorly behaved service dogs. Honestly, I'd say a combination of the CGC or TDI test and ATTS test would be a better indication than the ADI test.



-Why are service dogs singled out? I understand that poorly trained service dogs have the potential to hurt people, annoy people, and to damage property and merchandise. So does a poorly instructed power wheelchair user. So does someone that smokes by their oxygen tank. What I'm trying to say is that there are many medical devices that have the potential to cause a lot of personal injury and property damage if used incorrectly. However, I see no push to making people get licenses to drive wheelchairs, or have to pass a test to use supplemental oxygen. Requiring certification for service dog users, and not for people who use other potentially dangerous medical devices unfairly singles out people who choose to use service dogs. Certification would need to be all or nothing...either everyone using a medical device with the potential to cause harm must be tested, or no one.



-How would task training be assessed? Unless there is a nationally approved task list, the determination of what is considered a task and what isn't is left to the examiner. This allows for a huge amount of personal interpretation and a lot of variation between examiners. On the other hand, if there is a national task list, someone who has come up with a task for their dog that we would consider to be a valid task now would be out of luck when it came to certification. Also, the performance and effectiveness of a task can be difficult to assess. Certain tasks are overt responses to cues, such as seizure response or hearing dog work. Other tasks are more subtle. For instance, one of a guide dog's tasks is to guide the handler around obstacles. This could, theoretically, be tested on an obstacle course. However, it is impossible to determine whether the dog is guiding the handler around the obstacles or if the handler is perhaps using some residual vision to get around the obstacles. If a sleep shade was placed on the handler, the test no longer simulates actual working conditions, as it is possible the dog has been trained to work specifically to complement the handler's residual vision. This is just one example. If tasks aren't tested, then all certification would be is a national version of therapy dog testing and it becomes pointless.



-Finally, I th

Answer 8

As much as we understand the need for preventing people from attempting to portray thier pets as service animals in an attempt to bring them with wherever they go, I believe that forcing centralized certification/registration would impose an undue hardship for many of those who are in legitimate need of the assistance that a SD can provide.



I got into training service dogs because of the near insurmountable obstacles that a person close to me was encountering in a small community when trying to resolve her need for a service dog. This community had NO public transportation, and the only few trainers in the region were more than willing to train someones animal to do service work, at a cost of thousands of dollars for that said labor. ( "Oh you are handicapped? yes I can train your dog to be a certified SD at 50 dollars an hour in *your own home*!" doesnt matter if you are on a fixed income, you could raise the mere few thousand easily by collecting cans or such, (yea do the math sometime to see how many cans would it take to raise 5 thousand dollars, its a LOT of cans! more than most handicapped people could easily accomplish hauling home from bins in front of stores (if others didnt raid the bins first, let alone picking up by ones self)



I would compare nationalized certification of SDs to attempting to make people install limiters (governers) into their cars that would prevent them from driving over the speed limit and prevent them from parking badly and parking in no-parking zones. in order to prevent the percentage of bad eggs that break the laws, or just do what they do in bad method what you really do is inconvienience the innocent to attempt to thwart the real wrongdoers that will invariably find another workaround.



I would also suspect that people would learn to forge SD certifications in a very short period of time ( for example a few months ago I discovered the evidence of a ring of college students that had been forging "21year old" drivers lisenses for underage students....they were incredible quality, could easily pass for legit, even had UV holograms, I knew they were faked because I found the 4 color badgemaker tape with student IDs mixed inbetween different states IDs, passed it on to the DMV and they picked up the kid who sold me the printer )



I do know there are many people out there with legitimate needs of properly trained Service animals that are attempting to use improperly trained animals to fulfill those roles that need addressing as well... (one horror story I heard last week from another trainer was how she witnessed seeing a woman in a wheelchair in a store using an electric collar on a misbehaving dog in a SD vest while it screamed in pain, she shoulda been wearing the coller and let the dog carry the remote... ) but I dont think that imposing forced certification will cure the problem without imposing an unfair amount of inconvienience to the ones who do not deserve to be inconvienienced. One time or even yearly testing may or may not weed out problematic SD partnerships, willing education is probably the best approach



The problems of funding such nationalized testing sites and certification testing would have to be at the federal level, and then who would pay for the supplemental training needed for the "qualified disabled individuals" as well as for those whose animals required "more" training? how would standardization be acheived? one tester may be more easy, than the next, and heaven forbid you ever gacve a tester a reason to dislike you (I once had an argument with a DMV clerk over how he didnt like my signature, insisted I use a different one that was "more cursive" that I could never duplicate well, to this day I use the third variation that is my initials in a doctor-esque scribble, couldnt imagine if he was SD tester...)



In a best case scenario most individuals would have easy source of public transportation to get to their respeective testing facilities and everyone would pass the first time, not having to retrain in order to retest. a worst case scenario would be countless dollars spent fightings pro-bono lawsuits filed on the behalf of individuals who lost their ability to use the animal they had been using successfully for the last few years. individuals who "had" a SD that found out that their SD failed by one or two points out of a hundred would suffer untold grief.



IN ESSENCE: *AS* a service dog trainer, I see national certification testing to primarily be beneficial to the dog trainers who would have governamt jobs created for them by this requirement, Trainers who would have to sign off on who had trained said dogs and beneficial to the lawyers that would be employed fighting the inevitable suits, not the individuals.



yes it could in the long run make its easier for the few who could ride out the problems of instituting these programs, but it would be expensive and inconvieniencing to those who have a hard enough time as is just trying to live a somewhat normal life.



I suggest instituting a punishment program rather like house arrest for those who are found to be guilty of illegally using benifits intended for the handicapped. pretend like you are handicapped, get busted for passing "piddles" or "poopsie" off as a SD and spend a month with house arrest ankles/boots assigned to a wheelchair 16 hours a day...go to and from work IN A "special" WHEELCHAIR...go to the store, try to live a "normal life" while wearing a shirt and having the wheelchair prominantly labeled as " I am not really handicapped, this is court ordered because I faked being handicapped" - THAT would fix many fakers.

Answer 9

I believe the existing laws are sufficient, and should be enforced. Businesses already have the right under the DOJ rules implementing the ADA to exclude badly behaved or dangerous dogs, but the fear of lawsuits often deters them from doing so. I believe a better, cheaper, and less invasive solution than implementing a national certification program would be to engage in an intensive education and awareness campaign to clearly communicate both the access rights of service dog teams AND the rights of businesses and other places of public accommodation to exclude badly behaved or dangerous animals. I am against a national certification requirement, although I encourage teams to get as much training and independent testing as they can manage.



If national certification were to become a reality, I would want to see the rights of responsible owner-trainers respected. Many of the certification proposals I have seen put forward, including those already written into many state laws, simply define legitimate to mean graduated from a state-recognized program. This does little more than restrict access to service dogs - the waiting lists for these programs attest to the fact that they cannot produce enough dogs to meet demand, even with private training still a legitimate option, and if private and/or owner training were removed from the legitimate options, the imbalance between supply and demand would only get worse. Also, many of the recognized programs concentrate on training for one or only a few disabilities, and this approach would leave those with less-common disabilities out in the cold.



Anyone who has worked with dogs knows that training can deteriorate rapidly when not maintained, so graduation from a recognized school is not now and would be then no guarantee of a well-functioning team. Others have already pointed out the problems with both a one-time test and with constant recertification.



The issues with point-in-time certification aside, a certification exam like the ADI PAT, the CGC, or the TDI, even in combination with the ATTS, is not truly an objective measure, and has fairly poor inter-rater reliability. What this means is the ability of a given team to be certified would depend a great deal on who was judging the exam. Requiring a subjective exam would open people with disabilities to discrimination on the part of the tester. What if the local official county tester privately believed, for example, that people with psychiatric disabilities, or diabetes, or seizures weren't *really* disabled and didn't deserve to have the right to use service animals? It would be easy for such a person to find excuses to fail teams that didn't meet his or her personal standards, even if the tester in the next county or state (or even in the office in a different line) might have passed them with flying colors.



I believe that the legislators who hammered out the wording of the ADA and the ADA Restoration Act knew what they were doing, and the people at the DOJ who wrote the rules implementing the ADA, after a lengthy public comment period, had good reasons NOT to require national certification. I believe that punishing actual violations of the existing service dog statutes is far preferable to subjecting all of the competent and responsible teams already working today to additional burdens and to raising barriers to the future use of service dogs by those who wish to acquire them.



Edit-

some definitions:



A Service Animal or Service Dog (SA or SD) is trained to perform specific tasks that mitigate its disabled handler's disability. Under the DOJ rules implementing the ADA, disabled individuals accompanied by service animals have the same access to places of public accommodation and to housing and transportation as non-disabled individuals, even if pets would ordinarily be prohibited. Service animals are not legally considered to be pets.



An Emotional Support Animal (ESA) provides emotional support and comfort to its elderly or disabled owner but is not trained to perform mitigating tasks. ESA's do not have public access privileges, but they do have special housing access even in "No pets" housing.



A Therapy Dog visits hospitals, nursing homes, and other venues to help lift spirits and provide calming or therapeutic interaction with people other than its handler. There are no public access rights for therapy dogs. They may only go where the handler has obtained permission for them to be.

Answer 10

I agree that there are plenty of laws already on the books that if better enforced, in fact enforced at all, we would not have many of the problems we currently do. Better knowledge on the part of legitimate service dog handlers, businesses, and law enforcement of state and local animal control laws along with enforcement would go a long way in weeding out frauds, under trained, and dangerous dogs. Service dogs are not and have never been exempt in anyway from animal control laws, despite what some try to promulgate. This is why you must have your dog on a leash, licensed, etc. I also believe we as responsible members of a community need to be consistent and present a united front on educating business about the questions they can ask of people entering their business with a "service dog". Furthermore, we as people who choose service dogs as a method for mitigating the effects of our disabilities need to be prepared to answer those questions with out getting huffy. After all, we were the ones who decided having a service dog was the best way to lessen the effects of our disabilities.

Lastly, I think we as a community need to do a better job of reporting people whose dogs are dangerous, under trained or ill cared for. I doubt many people know they can call a program and report a team whose dog lunged at someone, growled, is consistently dirty or in ill health to the program.If the dog is not from a program then report them to animal control.

If the above things were done I believe much of the current problem would cease. I am not naive;however, the time for such simple solutions may have long passed. I know certification is coming and as someone who has owner trained. I would put my dog to any test a program dog has to pass. I would in no way support a certification system that held owner trainers to a more rigorous standard than program dogs. Even programs can only vouch for their teams based on what they did at the time they were last evaluated. Many programs depend on handlers calling them when their is a problem.Unfortunately, many first time handlers don't recognize problems when they are first starting and by the time they do the problem may have reached such proportions that fixing it may require any one of a myriad of interventions:

-Not working the dog in public during retraining

-Returning to the training center for retraining

-Having a trainer work with the team on their home turf

-Retiring the dog.

All of these options may require the person with the disability to go without their dog for sometime. This prospect is unthinkable to many first time partners.However, no one truly gets the best out of service dog partnership unless everyone holds up their part of the bargain.

Answer 11

I use a service dog (owner-trained) and I think that requiring certification is a good idea; however, I can see that implementing national service dog certification could be tricky.



I support certification for several reasons - first, certification will help to weed out people passing off pets as service dogs along with people using dogs who are not appropriately trained (as well as dogs who are not temperamentally suited for the job).



It will also help to level the playing field for owner-trainers and provide a solid benchmark for the amount of training required in a service dog. Unfortunately, novice owner-trainers may not realize what constitutes appropriate behavior and training for a service dog - I have come across several people with no prior training experience who thought that passing a CGC made their dog ready for public access. It will also help prevent shoddy "programs" from graduating dogs that are not ready to work in public.



Right now, there are no laws saying whether or not certification is required. Please note that the ADA does not mention service dogs at all. Service dogs are mentioned in the CFR (code of federal regulations), and certification is never mentioned. The place where certification is mentioned is in the DOJ guidances - it is specifically mentioned in "Commonly Asked Questions About Service Dogs in Places of Business" (http://www.ada.gov/qasrvc.htm) and is touched on briefly (but not in specifics) in the ADA Business Brief (http://www.ada.gov/svcanimb.htm)



By the way, one poster stated that they had a "therapy dog" that was allowed to come to doctor/dentist visits because the poster has panic attacks. Their dog was not a therapy dog, rather, it was an emotional support animal. Therapy dogs are dogs that go into places such as hospitals or nursing homes in order to interact with and bring comfort to the patients/residents there. In contrast, emotional support animals help their disabled owner at home by providing comfort and affection. Emotional support animals do not have to have any special training (although obedience training is a good idea for any pet), and they do not have public access rights. The poster who brought her ESA to the doctor did not have any sort of legal right to do so, and could have been told to remove her dog from the premises at any time.

Answer 12

Many places require all dogs to be lisenced. Why not have the disabled owner fill out a form at the same time as getting the liscence certifying that they are a person with a disability that significantly limits major life functions, and that the dog has recieved extensive training in obedience and skills to mitigate the disability. There could even be a form required to be signed by a doctor like those that are required to get a disabled placard.



A police station or drivers liscence location could easily take these forms and check them. There could also be an online site where users register their service dog(s) or service dogs in training. They could list what specific tasks the dog does and say how the dog has been trained. Their doctor could sign in to verify the disability or fill out a form to mail in. A liscence tag could come in the mail.



Having at least a way to get a tag that says service dog would be good. If your area does not require a rabies tag then you might not be able to take your dog places where rabies tags are absolutely required. Get a rabies tag and a service dog tag at the same time, even if you have to do it at the same time.



There will always be fakers. But having a website with guidelines that people have to verify that they read it is a start. There could also be an ID number on the tag so that business owners can check the website to see if the tag is legitimate. The website could give very basic information like the type and color of the dog and what city it is registered in. The person could be traveling outside their own city, but there should be an identification tag on the dog that gives their city or phone number which the area code gives an approximate location of where the owner lives.



This wouldn't be perfect and it would not be good to have to show your tag everywhere you go. But the business owner should be allowed to see the tag if the dog does not act right or appear to be a service dog (ie someone says the dog provides balance as a task but the dog is too tiny).



I personally would prefer to show my tag when I enter a store rather than tell the person what tasks the dog does. Telling them the tasks gives them an idea of what my disability is. They should still ask "Is that a service dog" and usually leave you alone. But they should be allowed to see the tag and write down the ID to check the website when questions arise.



This would be good because by using the tag the owner says they have read the rules and their dog is a legitimate service dog. This would mean that fakers could be prosecuted more easily since it is provable that they knew the law. There could also be an audit to identify fakers. Some things on the registration form could trigger an investigation like someone who suddenly needs to have their dog everywhere but has worked full time for a long time. They could have an additional form sent to them or their doctors.



There could also be a way for business owners to complain on the website about a certain dog. That complaint would not be visible to anyone except the website worker (not even the owner).Boxes could be checked on the website to the type of complaint (like bad grooming, sick dog, ill-mannered, aggressive, not trainedm, etc). If a certain number of complaints came up or the complainer marked a box that said the dog was aggressive then that person could be investigated.



The funding for the investigators could come from people who fake a service dog. Those who knowingly fake a service dog should have huge fines, like $20,000. Those who really think they should have a service dog but disregard the requirements to be actually disabled or have a trained dog should have a smaller fine. They shouldn't have to go to jail because they won't be able to make money there and it costs too much to put someone in jail.

Answer 13

I believe the law should be changed. I've talked to apartment complexes, and I state that my dog is CGC and TDI certified. Almost every time they think that Therapy Dog means service dog. It's against the law to ask someone to "prove" that their dog is a service dog, at least the way the law is now. People don't understand though that there is a difference. WHen the law was made, Therapy Dogs weren't really a prominent or a common thing. However, it now is common and there are a lot of misconceptions.



I know that some types of service dogs already have their own tests to pass, but there should be some method to identify them or provide proof.



As great as it would be to have my dog living with me due to someone else's lack of knowledge, I'm an honest person and I wouldn't be able to do that. However, there are people that DO take advantage of it. The law needs to be set up so that this doesn't happen.





Animal Artwork: I consider a service dog as any dog that's trained to assist someone with an issue. My dog is not trained to assist me, but he happens to help with my depression, anxiety, and anger issues. He is not a service dog. It's a hard line to draw because you shouldn't be forced to prove that it's a service dog, but too many people are dishonest. There should be SOMETHING instituted, or at least make the vests not available by purchase to the public.

Answer 14

Yep. I have a service dog and we go to hotels. Just something to keep in mind- a lot of places will still want a pet deposit. You DON'T have to pay it, the only way you have to pay extra is if your dog damages something. They can't charge deposits or cleaning fees for the dog. Like others have said, there is not certification for service dogs. But new service dog owners I've met (mostly those who self-train the dog) are confused on that point. Good luck with your dog. :)

Answer 15

We have a local lady that will test them and certify them via her standard as a therapy dog. She does this to help keep down any commotion when someone uses the dog as a therapy animal. As for my experience with service dog, once they get their training you receive a certificate of program completion verifying that they past the course. At this point, I do not believe it necessary for the State or Federal laws to be changed.

Answer 16

What is even worse is the certification sites that are charging as much as $365 to "certify" the dog. This is nothing but a scam.

Answer 17

There is a difference between service dogs and therapy dogs. Service dogs are trained and therapy dogs are for other reasons. My Crickett(the pic you see) was a therapy dog. She was only allowed to be with me for Doctor and Dentics visits as I have panic attacks and needed her. She died last summer and now I bring a friend(human). She gave me comfort in the times when I couldn't cope. I know that she was too old to train.

Answer 18

What kind of certification are you spekaing of? there are many types out there. all a certificate is is a piece of paper that says your dog blah blah blah, i can issue out certificates, joe can, it doesn't matter. there is no set organization to do so, same as with therapy groups, there are many that require you pass their certification, but all vary...be a bit more specific

Answer 19

Not only should they be certified, but whoever does the certification should make sure that these dogs are actually doing what they are supposed to. Any owner who is not keeping up the training should not keep the dog.



I know one deaf lady who got a hearing dog, only she didn't continue working with it, and the dog became just a pet.



These service dogs are often paid for by taxpayers.

Answer 20

Leave as is. My friend is disabled by AIDS and he has a service dog. The dog is tiny, yappy, and worthless, but it does provide valuable companionship to this person.

Answer 21

Let it be. We already have too many laws and codified rules. Let the service provider (airlines, hotel, etc...) make the call.