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Originally Posted by donnaz Are you meaning like a seeing eye dog? What kind of service dog do you have. |
A service dog is a dog trained to assist or otherwise help in the day to day life of a person with a qualifying disability. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act a person who cannot live a normal day by day existence due to a disability of any sort can have a dog trained to assist with that disability and that dog is granted access to all public places with no restrictions other than those placed on normal able bodied persons.
So, it doesn't have to be a seeing eye dog although those are the most common, it can be as little as a dog who provides a stress relief for someone with high blood pressure, or a dog who senses when it's owner is about to get a migraine headache so she can take her preventative medication, or who detects changes in body temperature and other signs to alert it's owner to an epileptic or other form of seizure.
I have several family members with partial hearing loss and some of my dogs are trained to alert to certain sounds that they cannot hear easily like a forklift backing up in Costco for instance.
Dogs are amazing animals as we all know from reading the stories on here about dogs who knew their owner was pregnant or sick before they did. Mother doggies who sense a sick puppy and either don't nurse it or try to hide it, etc.
Depending on the disability, some dogs need no special training and some need training from an owner and a professional or just one or the other. At any rate I am happy to help anyone learn more as it has been a benefit to both myself and my dogs to make them service animals.