Service Dogs - Real or Fake?
We get phone calls and emails many times a week from people who want our help making their pet into a service dog. For the people who have a disability, and their dog can be trained to mitigate that disability, we talk to them and see if we can work with them. We have had many people bring their dogs to us from out of state to train as their service dog. In fact, we do not provide fully trained service dogs to people, but we do help people owner-train their own dog as their service dog, complete with basic and advanced obedience, public access, and task training.
However, we also get phone calls from people who tell us “I am not disabled, I just want to take my dog with me everywhere. That would be fun! I’d love to take my dog with me everywhere!”, “You get to take your dog to Disney! I want to do that!”, and “I can register my dog online as a service dog and he can fly with me for free! I am not disabled, but I’d love to fly my dog for free!”
No, I will not help you lie about your “service dog” and commit a misdemeanor in the state of Florida.
413.08 Florida Statute
(9) A person who knowingly and willfully misrepresents herself or himself, through conduct or verbal or written notice, as using a service animal and being qualified to use a service animal or as a trainer of a service animal commits a misdemeanor of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083 and must perform 30 hours of community service for an organization that serves individuals with disabilities, or for another entity or organization at the discretion of the court, to be completed in not more than 6 months.
To have your dog be a service dog, some things must be met:
You must be disabled.
Your dog must be task-trained to mitigate your disability.
Your dog must be individually trained, complete with basic and advanced obedience.
Your dog must be public access trained if your dog will be out in public.
Your dog must be polite in public.
Your dog must be service dog material and up for the job.
We have all seen the “service dogs” who are not trained well. They bark and jump at people, lunge and bark at Arrow when we are out. While I am not the service dog police, I will advocate for my service dog.
In situations where it is not obvious that the dog is a service animal, staff may ask only two specific questions:
Is the dog a service animal required because of a disability?
What work or task has the dog been trained to perform?
That’s all. You cannot ask for registration papers, as there is no legal registration for service dogs. The ones online are scams.
We encourage you to read the Frequently Asked Questions about Service Animals and the ADA.
Before contacting us, or another service dog trainer, ask yourself – in an ideal world – what tasks would you like to train your dog to perform to mitigate your disability? Google some ideas or to see if those tasks are realistic. We had someone who wanted to train their french bulldog as their diabetic alert dog. We will not do this. First of all, french bulldogs have short noses, many times they have breathing problems, and you cannot ask a dog like that to work as a sniffer dog for diabetes, especially in Florida. We have also had someone who wanted their shetland sheepdog to be their mobility dog and bring things to them because they could not bend over. Could we do that? Maybe, but it’s a sheltie! They would have to reach down almost to the ground to get what the dog brought anyway.
Service dogs require hundreds of hours of training, it is expensive. I will not put all that time (and money) into a dog that will just barely be a service dog. It isn’t fair to the dog, and it isn’t fair to the owner.
