Be Educated About Service Dogs and Be Respectful of Those Who Require Service Dogs

Last night (waited until approximately 10pm to avoid rude customers interfering with my service dog; which happens on almost every outing to every location with my SD. I have to admit; he is a beautiful 3 yr old German Shepherd) my service dog and I entered our local Wal-Mart via the garden center.  Upon entering we were stopped by the 2 employees standing around the doors and asked about my SD. I told them yes my dog was in fact SD as indicated by his gear. They went on to inform me that they were having to “crack down” on people bringing their pets into the store due to food and health certification. 

I understand this issue better than they could possibly understand.  Fake SD are not only criminal (misdemeanor) they often interfere with true SD’s which is also a criminal act (it would be equal to someone messing with a person’s oxygen tank).  Fake SD’s have been known to lunge, bite, and fight with SD’s.  This could cause a legitimate SD to miss an alert for their handler, causing serious medical problems and even death. I appreciate that Wal-Mart is “cracking down” on people bringing their pets into the store. 

However, what concerned me enough to write a letter to Wal-Mart was these 2 employees lack of knowledge about SD’s in general and the ADA but they were tasked with “cracking down” on fake service dogs.

According to the American Disability Act, “Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals/equal to medical equipment, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support (ESA) do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.”  (https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm)

There are only 2 questions that a business owner/staff can ask a handler (1) is the dog a service animal required because of a disability, and (2) what work or task has the dog been trained to perform. Staff cannot ask about the person’s disability, require medical documentation, require a special identification card or training documentation for the dog, or ask that the dog demonstrate its ability to perform the work or task.

Wal-Mart’s employees stated that they wished everyone carried their paperwork, registration with them.  First, there is no legitimate certification or registry in the United States for a SD.  If anyone shows such paperwork or id their SD is more than likely fake. 2^nd asking for proof of id, medical documentation, and certification/registry is not allowed under the protections of the ADA. 

The only thing required for a person to have a service dog in the United States is a disability that a doctor has prescribed a service dog to help mitigate their disability and a trained service dog. 

Also, your employees did not know the difference between a Service Dog and an Emotional Support Animal (ESA).  A SD is a dog (or miniature horse – only animals legitimate under the ADA protections for SDs) that has been specially trained to perform a task that mitigates/assists the person’s disability.  An ESA is an untrained animal that is allowed in most residential settings and to fly. They are not permitted public access as SDs are and they are not protected in public access settings under the ADA.

If Wal-Mart is going to task employees with “cracking down” on fake SDs, please make sure they are educated so that I am not stopped every time I enter the store and asked illegal questions or asked to exhibit “fake” proof. 

As we have all seen in recent news stories (an ESA attacking and biting a passengers face on a flight, an aggressive dog attacking and killing a SD in a store) “fake” sds are an issue.  These people just want to be able to take their dogs with them everywhere they go and trust me as someone who adores animals completely understands this. However, these dogs often have no training and sometimes are not properly socialized and often interfere with a true working dog.  People with SDs rely on their working dogs to be their lifeline and often save their lives for various medical situations. If a “fake” SD interferes, disrupts or attacks a SD it is the same as attacking, destroying, disrupting a person’s oxygen tank, wheel chair, walker, etc. By taking a “fake” SD into non pet friendly environments it also creates undue stress to legitimate SD handlers who are constantly stopped and harassed about the legitimacy of their own SD. 

One of my biggest pet peeves is people who create undue hardships for others out of their own selfish needs.  They think they aren’t hurting anyone but how would they like to not be able to go about their daily business without being stopped every place they go and asked about their legitimate medical needs? How would they like to be judged and ridiculed because they are assumed to be “faking” because so many others are?

People should stop and think before making comments such as, “man I wish I could take my dog everywhere I go”. Saying this to a person with a legitimate need for a SD is the same as saying, “man, I wish I were deaf/blind”, “ I wish I had an oxygen tank”, “I wish I had a wheelchair”.  SD handlers have serious difficulty functioning without their SD. SDs undergo thousands of hours and years of training specialized to mitigate their handlers disability. Fake SDs damage the SD community. Distracted SDs could cause serious medical situations for their handlers. Fake SDs can cause misinformation about SDs and the laws and rules that govern them.