Quote:
Originally Posted by RKDinOKC
I am training my Golden Retriever to be a Diabetic Alert Dog.
They can notify you of both low and high blood sugar 30 minutes before it shows up on a meter.
I can tell when my sugar starts to get too low, unless I am asleep. So that is what I am training my dog for.
She wakes me up and leads me to my testing meter. She has done this 5 times in the last 3 months.
A trained Diabetic Alert Dog sells for $20,000.
In my research what people call certification is BS. It is just a diploma they give the dog's ower. Even dogs for the blind! The certification is just a document showing your dog has gone thru training. It does not make the dog a support dog.
The actual laws for service animals are very general.
The only Law is that you must tell anyone that asks that you have a problem (hippa laws mean you do not have to say what that problem is) and what that dog does to help you with the problem,. Also, Legally any business owner or whatever can refuse to allow any service dog in their establishment. In fact, if any service dog fails to obey the owner or exhibits poor behavior that animal can be removed.
Real service dogs they work on obedience first before the actual service training. In looking for help training a Diabetic Alert Dog, before any of the trainers will do anything for you and your dog it must pass obedience training. And that includes not just being house broken, but going to the restroom on command, when and where told.
With the addition of support dogs/animals for PTSD sufferers, Diabetic Alert, Severe Anxiety, Epileptics, even Heart Attacks, etc. has opened up a whole new venue for people to abuse the current service animal laws.
My nieces boy is going thru cancer and chemo and all that. He has a support dog. The family tried getting a dog when all the kids were younger, but with their 6 kids they were not able to train the dog and gave it away. Now that they have the support dog for the boy, none of the other kids are allowed to play with it, and he must work on training for at least 30 minutes every day. It is doing great and goes to his treatments with him.
There is NO WAY any sort of support animal should harm anyone no matter what that person does. With the ONLY exception being someone harming the person the support animial is supporting.
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Thanks! This is all correct and I'm happy to see it. I've trained and worked with 'therapy dogs' for years and hate to see dog owners abuse the reputations of legitimate working dogs. I saw this coming ten years ago and it makes me sick. What used to be a pretty simple situation will now undergo massive legislative change -- yuck!
Unless something has changed recently, in Connecticut, a service animal is an animal that performs a service for someone with a disability. The statute specifically states that this DOES NOT include 'emotional support.' That's the full extent of the written law.
The only additional mention of service animals in the statutory law, clarifies that it's perfectly legal to train your own service dog.
So the issue of certification gets rather muddy. You can 'certify' the dog yourself or get certifications from a private organizations, some of which do a fine job and others that are just scam operations. Since it's (rightfully) illegal to question someone's disability, it's nearly impossible to identify the scam dog owner -- "my service dog scratches my big toe; but you can't ask me about it."
The therapy dogs I work with are certified by a reputable, national, non-profit, organization. Their training program is quite extensive, but they have no greater legal standing because of that.
I don't know how all this 'emotional support animal' stuff came about, but half dozen years ago I started meeting owners at dog exercise areas who claimed their canines were 'emotional support dogs.' One woman in particular out-rightly stated that she wanted to get her dog a free seat on airlines.
Anyway, it totally disgusts me that people are abusing this situation. More and more, I meet people who claim their animal is a 'service dog' when that's patently untrue. One woman in the post office introduced me to her 'service bull-dog!' Let's get real!
While theoretically any dog can be a service dog, responsible trainers choose breeds that are best suited to the task. The enormous amount of training time invested demands it. Labs and Shepards are often favored because of their temperment and aptitude.
A service dog performs a service and usually they are not to be petted. 'Seeing eye' guide dogs are not overtly friendly because they have a critical task to perform and shouldn't be distracted. 'Therapy dog' is not a legal definition, but is a dog with extensive socialization and obedience training. One of their primary tasks is to BE PETTED! -- in schools, hospitals, nursing homes.
I've volunteered bringing highly trained therapy dogs into all these places. These dogs have been wonderful in giving emotional support to the sick. And a superb learning experience to young people in schools and alternative juvenile incarceration centers.
A dog well trained for this work would NEVER randomly attack anyone.
Oddly, none of the half dozen or so 'emotional support dogs' introduced to me, were qualified to go into a nursing home. None of them qualified as having basic obedience skills. And frankly, the owners didn't qualify either! (My apologies to emo dog owners who don't fit this category).
End of rant, I'm sorry.
Robert