A few weeks ago, I read a post on Facebook from someone with a service dog who was accosted by a small pet dog in a pet-friendly department store. Her reaction was to be less likely to support pet-friendly businesses, since she has had bad experiences with pets who were not well behaved in public. This post really got me thinking about the issues surrounding pets and service dogs in public.
One considerable challenge for people with service dogs is the practice of fake service dogs, which casts a bad light on genuine service dogs and makes businesses less likely to want to admit them. Anyone can go online and buy an official-looking harness and even paperwork proclaiming their dog to be a service dog. Additionally, since there are a wide variety of service dogs, including diabetic alert and seizure alert dogs who may be smaller than what most people perceive as a service dog, it’s very difficult to be determine what is, indeed, a valid service dog. Added to this is the fact that the American Disabilities Act, which regulates service dog interactions in public, doesn’t allow businesses to ask very many questions or demand paperwork.
My take on this issue is that if more businesses were pet friendly, there would actually be less need for people to pretend their dogs are service dogs. I believe businesses, including those involving food service, should be allowed to decide for themselves if they will allow pet dogs, and the decision should be predicated on the dog’s training and behavior rather than health codes. Most health code laws are trumped by the ADA, so allowing dogs in a restaurant or grocery store isn’t strictly a hygiene issue. At any rate, my nonshedding Yorkie is less of a health hazard in stores than a little kid with a cold wiping his nose with his hands and then smearing it everywhere. He is also better behaved than most kids. I have fond memories of living in Germany, where people brought their dogs to restaurants all the time but didn’t generally bring their children, evidently because the dogs were better behaved than the children were. A side issue is that people are less likely to leave their dogs in hot cars (or cold ones during the winter) if they are allowed to bring them inside businesses.
Unfortunately, not all service dogs are trained equally, either. Richie is a therapy dog, not a service dog, and I am very careful never to represent him as a service dog, even though I could easily take advantage of the widespread confusion over different types of working dogs. We often visit the hospital on Fort Carson in Colorado, and we have encountered a couple of service dogs that setting who have reacted badly to Richie’s presence even though he was not doing anything to aggravate them (and actually seemed oblivious to their presence). One of them was across the pharmacy waiting room and started growling and lunging toward him from that distance, something that no well-trained service dog should ever do.
Tests have been developed to certify dogs as being well behaved in public, such as the Canine Good Citizen, including an updated Urban Canine Good Citizen test. I feel that if dogs can behave themselves in public, they should be allowed in any business that wants to admit them, including restaurants and grocery stores, and that health codes should be revised to reflect current reality. Basing access to businesses on the dog’s behavior would drastically reduce the bad experiences of all concerned and help to eliminate the problem of fake service dogs.
One considerable challenge for people with service dogs is the practice of fake service dogs, which casts a bad light on genuine service dogs and makes businesses less likely to want to admit them. Anyone can go online and buy an official-looking harness and even paperwork proclaiming their dog to be a service dog. Additionally, since there are a wide variety of service dogs, including diabetic alert and seizure alert dogs who may be smaller than what most people perceive as a service dog, it’s very difficult to be determine what is, indeed, a valid service dog. Added to this is the fact that the American Disabilities Act, which regulates service dog interactions in public, doesn’t allow businesses to ask very many questions or demand paperwork.
My take on this issue is that if more businesses were pet friendly, there would actually be less need for people to pretend their dogs are service dogs. I believe businesses, including those involving food service, should be allowed to decide for themselves if they will allow pet dogs, and the decision should be predicated on the dog’s training and behavior rather than health codes. Most health code laws are trumped by the ADA, so allowing dogs in a restaurant or grocery store isn’t strictly a hygiene issue. At any rate, my nonshedding Yorkie is less of a health hazard in stores than a little kid with a cold wiping his nose with his hands and then smearing it everywhere. He is also better behaved than most kids. I have fond memories of living in Germany, where people brought their dogs to restaurants all the time but didn’t generally bring their children, evidently because the dogs were better behaved than the children were. A side issue is that people are less likely to leave their dogs in hot cars (or cold ones during the winter) if they are allowed to bring them inside businesses.
Unfortunately, not all service dogs are trained equally, either. Richie is a therapy dog, not a service dog, and I am very careful never to represent him as a service dog, even though I could easily take advantage of the widespread confusion over different types of working dogs. We often visit the hospital on Fort Carson in Colorado, and we have encountered a couple of service dogs that setting who have reacted badly to Richie’s presence even though he was not doing anything to aggravate them (and actually seemed oblivious to their presence). One of them was across the pharmacy waiting room and started growling and lunging toward him from that distance, something that no well-trained service dog should ever do.
Tests have been developed to certify dogs as being well behaved in public, such as the Canine Good Citizen, including an updated Urban Canine Good Citizen test. I feel that if dogs can behave themselves in public, they should be allowed in any business that wants to admit them, including restaurants and grocery stores, and that health codes should be revised to reflect current reality. Basing access to businesses on the dog’s behavior would drastically reduce the bad experiences of all concerned and help to eliminate the problem of fake service dogs.
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