We keep seeing Service Dogs everywhere and it seems that more and more people are having Service Dogs. What are their roles as what is the difference between a Service Dog and a Comfort Animal?
A lot of the reasons that you are seeing more in the past few years is because in September of 2010 the Justice Department tweaked regulations in the ADA. The amendments limit the definition of Service Animals to dogs although they did leave the door open to miniature horses. To qualify as a service animal, dogs must be trained to do work or perform tasks. Dogs DO NOT have to be formally trained by an approved school. Such a requirement might limit access to service animals for individuals with limited financial resources the department said.
I did go on line and read what great info I found on Wikipedia and I was not greatly impressed. First I am not at all certain that the information is entirely correct and I am just not certain about a lot of the information in general. There are a lot of organizations that deal with Service Dogs and providing Service Dogs to individuals. These groups are usually non-profits who work with the dogs for quite a while, approximately two years as well as working with the individual who comes to the facility for maybe two weeks or more to learn how to interact with the dog.
There are many types of Dogs. For instance a national organization with more or less local roots has four types of dogs. They have Service Dogs, Skilled Companion Dogs, Facility Dogs, and Hearing Dogs. They do not work with dogs trained for diabetes, seizures, and such. I will discuss these further in my discussion.
Service Dogs are to help individuals with physical disabilities to assist with daily tasks so that they don’t have to depend upon others, reducing reliance on others in the home. They may be taught some 40 commands to assist with picking up things, opening and closing doors, opening the refrigerator, push buttons for automatic doors and other things. They not only assist with physical tasks but also provide social support. If the person is an amputee for instance the dog may help with balance or provide the support when they need to rise from the floor. Some disabilities who might need a Service Dog are Spinal Cord injury, MS, arthritis, Cerebral Palsy, amputees and more.
Skilled Companion Dogs are for people who might have trouble reaching a light switch, opening a door, picking things up. These dogs work with a facilitator who is typically a parent, spouse or caregiver who cares for the dog. These dogs are bred to be calm, reliable, affectionate and reduces the reliance on others to complete everyday tasks. These dogs are for people with Cerebral Palsy, MS, autism and Downs Syndrome. They can also serve as a social bridge to people who are not used to relating with a person with a disability. These dogs not only make lives easier they make them feel better about themselves because they are performing normal tasks for themselves.
Facility Dogs are for working professionals who are committed to long term employment where they directly serve clients with special needs a minimum of 20 hours per week. Someone who might have a Facility Dog is a Special Education Teacher who works with kids with Autism or just a regular Special Ed class in a normal state school. While researching this I read that the coach of the Paralympics Coach who I used to work with at the US Sailing Team has recently acquired a dog called Morrow because she works with people with disabilities all of the time. She saw that people had their own Service Dogs and they relieved stress when they sailed. She asked if she could get a “Team Dog” to help with the stress on the US Team and in 2007 she added Morrow to the Team.
Hearing Dogs are another important dog used as a service type dog. These dogs can actually be any type of dog from Lab to Golden Retrievers to Italian Greyhounds. When I worked in DC one of my co-workers had a small Italian Greyhound that he used to tell him about sounds but I know a woman here, Rebecca who had a brain injury that caused her to lose her hearing and she also has issues with balance. For this reason she had to get a larger dog that could help her provide stability and helps her with balance. She has a Lab and Golden mix. This dog was trained at a facility specifically for her needs. These dogs are usually trained for the specific environment that they will be needed. I was working with a friend in Indiana trying to get her to get a new dog and asking her to just adopt a dog and train it for herself with a good dog trainer. That is what she has chosen to do.
I said that I would discuss seizure dogs and dogs that work with diabetes. There are children and some adults who cannot tell when their blood sugars are going too low or even too high but the lows are where the real dangers lie. The “Diabetes Dogs” are trained to sense the low blood sugars of a child before they become too low and pass out from a low blood sugar. These dogs are usually professionally trained however I do know a woman in Orlando who is training her own dog with her son. You swab his mouth and let the dog smell the breath of the child when the blood sugar is low. The dog smells this and is taught to alert everyone of this scent. It is not difficult to teach the dog but time consuming and scent dogs are better for this task but professionals use all kinds of dogs even really small dogs, anything will work.
Seizure dogs are fantastic and probably the most amazing because they not only alert the person that they are about to have a seizure but they have found that the person who has the seizures has actually lowered the number of seizures and gotten better. What happens is the dog alerts the person. The person takes medication to stop the seizure. If the person were to have the seizure, that seizure actually makes more areas in the brain for seizures to come and more often but by stopping the seizures these areas are stopped and the seizures don’t happen as frequently.
All of these people are allowed to live a more normal life by having dogs. Providing animals provides independence for people.