We’re using the term assistance dog here for what in legal terms is called a service dog. Since police and military dogs have sometimes been called service dogs, assistance dog tends to be more readily understood for the working dog who assists a person with a disability. When researching the topic, you’ll want to keep both terms in mind to find information.
The first officially recognized assistance dogs for people with disabilities were guide dogs. You may have heard the term seeing-eye dogs, which is the name of one of the first guide-dog training programs.
World War I created blind veterans in Germany and dogs who had been trained for wartime service. These dogs, many of which were German Shepherds, became a resource to aid the veterans. The work continued in Switzerland, the United States and other countries. Thus the early guide dogs tended to be German Shepherds—also called Alsatians—though today other breeds, especially Labrador and Golden Retrievers, outnumber them in the work.
There are stories of assistance dogs much earlier in history and at least some of the stories are surely true. Humans and dogs have formed partnerships for many purposes because dogs are so willing to work in service of the people they love.
The experience, research, and hard work of assistance-dog training programs, first and foremost the guide dog schools, has brought today’s assistance dogs to a high level of reliability and safety. A disabled person needs a dog who can perform tasks to mitigate the person’s disability while not interfering with the rights of other people. Meeting the challenges involved is not easy, but the miracles that make it possible are an everyday occurrence in many lives.
Guide Dogs
Because their programs came first, guide dog schools and their students have set the standard that all other assistance dog teams need to meet. In the United States it is legal for a person to acquire an assistance dog from a private trainer or even to train the dog personally. Public access rights depend on the dog and handler meeting legal requirements and behaving appropriately in public, however.
In the case of dangerous or disruptive behavior, a proprietor has the right to require that the person remove the dog. That means good manners from the dog and good judgment from the person are necessary at all times for assistance dogs and the disabled people handling them. The assistance dog cannot function as a caretaker to a helpless person. The person is the dog’s handler. Together they are a team. They train together in order to be able to do this.
The dog’s training often starts in puppyhood. Though some dogs are accepted into programs later, guide dog schools tend to work with volunteer puppy raisers to foster the pups and make sure they have the early life experiences and training necessary for the best chance to become successful guides. Some states allow dogs in training public access rights, while in other states training access is handled on a permission basis.
Guide dogs tend to come from careful breeding programs because they must be healthy, even-tempered and trainable, all inherited traits. Much has been learned about breeding for such traits from guide dogs since they are followed so closely throughout life. The schools own some of the breeding dogs, while others belong to breeders who donate pups.
Pups are tested along the way and the foster puppy raisers get help from the program with any problems. When the time is right, the pups go back to the school for physical, emotional and mental evaluation to see if they are good prospects to continue in the program. If not, good homes await them.
Pups kept in the program are spayed and neutered unless chosen for breeding. They next undergo formal training, living at the school and going out daily with a professional trainer to work in the surrounding community. Their training must include a great deal of real-world experience, so training strictly on the school grounds would be too limited. They learn about automobile traffic, obstacles they need to steer people around and through, and much more. This phase of their lives lasts some months.
In most cases the next phase is for a group of blind students to come for weeks of residence at the school to train with their new canine partners. The length of the stay depends on the person’s prior experience, with successor dog training generally shorter than training the first time. Great care is taken to make the best matches between available trained dogs and students. Height is one consideration, as is the vigor and speed of person and dog. Some dogs are judged more suited to handlers being partnered with successor guide dogs rather than their first ones.
For the time in residence at the school, learning to handle the new guide dog will be a full time job for the blind person. The trainer who trained dogs now trains the people to properly handle them. The dog must make a transition from the trainer to the blind person. Much has been written about this relationship and all aspects of guide dog work.
The dog learns the dimensions of the new person to be able to guide that person smoothly through openings where the person will fit. This is just one of many incredible abilities guide dogs show; some are aided by training and some come naturally and are not fully understood.
Exact practices vary from one school to another, but a graduation ceremony is often held where the puppy raiser comes back to the school and formally passes the dog on to the blind person. This is an emotional but significant acknowledgement of the true gift it is to raise a dog for guide dog work. Sometimes the puppy raiser has already started with a new pup, or will take one home at this point to start the process again.
Raising a pup for a guide dog or other assistance dog program is a wonderful, self-sacrificing thing to do, and a terrific way to become a good dog trainer and handler. It can be the perfect dog commitment for a young person with life changes such as college ahead that might interfere with long-term dog ownership. There are other ways to get involved with assistance-dog work, too, such as helping with fund-raising drives. There are few causes more worthy than making it possible for a disabled person to participate more fully in life with less need to depend on the aid of other humans.
Other Assistance Dogs
The assistance-dog tasks that alert a hearing-impaired person to sounds may date back farther than guide dog work. Dogs constantly alert people to sounds even when the people have normal hearing, because dog hearing is so much keener than ours.
Of course, if you can hear the doorbell, it’s downright silly to encourage your dog to bark when it rings! But if you can’t hear the doorbell, having your dog come and tell you about it quickly enough that you can get to the door in time has obvious value. Hearing dogs need to be alert and quick, yet composed around the public in order to be safe for others.
Since the disabled handler cannot hear, it would be more disruptive than helpful for a hearing-assistance dog to bark, so signaling the person by touch and then moving toward the sound is a typical alert. The dogs learn to alert to sounds important to their individual handlers. Typical sounds the dog learns might be a baby, a smoke alarm, a cooking timer, a doorbell, an alarm clock, a telephone, and the sound of someone calling the person’s name.
Hearing-assistance dogs can be small. For some people this is preferred.
Another category of assistance dog that is sometimes small is the dog who performs an alert function. Some of these abilities are not completely defined yet, as more is being learned all the time about what dogs can detect and alert their handlers to, keeping the person safe.
Seizure alert is the best known. Some of these dogs are trained in seizure response—what to do to aid the person after the seizure occurs—and either before or after that training, the dogs somehow pick up on their own the ability to tell the person a seizure is coming. Research is trying to figure out how to teach a dog to do this.
Other alert functions include alerting impending heart attacks and diabetic blood sugar crises. In other settings, dogs have detected cancers and alerted humans to all kinds of problems. A dog doesn’t have to be an assistance dog to save a human life. Companion dogs in the home do it frequently. It’s wise to pay attention to dogs!
Mobility assistance dogs are often large. They perform a variety of functions for people with mobility disabilities. Most of them retrieve dropped items, things the person asks the dog to bring, and things the dog knows the person will need. Dogs learn routines, such as helping the person get dressed or undressed, do laundry and other tasks. The dog may wear a pack containing things the person needs.
Mobility dogs aid balance in many cases, both specifically by bracing for the person to hold to, and by moving with the person. If the person uses a wheelchair, the dog may learn to pull it in emergencies or to add some power going up inclines. Pulling the chair all the time is not a typical assistance-dog task, with electric wheelchairs being quite heavy. Whatever tasks the mobility assistance dog performs need to be determined by the dog’s size and physical ability as well as the person’s.
How to Behave Around an Assistance-Dog Team
When you encounter an assistance dog and handler working together, you can help greatly by knowing and doing certain things. Above all, be careful not to distract the dog from focus on the handler.
It may not be obvious at that moment what the dog is doing or is about to do to aid the person, but the dog’s attention to duty is often critical to the person’s safety. Assistance dogs learn to do these things unobtrusively and to blend into the situation, so it’s not surprising the dog may seem to “not be doing anything.” The better trained a dog is, the less obvious the dog is working.
If the handler is speaking with you and doesn’t seem to be busy, it may be appropriate to ask if you may pet the dog. Don’t get your feelings hurt if the handler asks you not to. There are all kinds of reasons it might be a problem at that exact moment. If it is acceptable to the handler for you to pet the dog, wait for the handler to cue the dog to turn attention to you. This is important for maintaining the dog’s training as a safe assistance dog.
If a blind person asks you to lead them someplace when they are accompanied by a guide dog, offer your arm for the person to take. Grabbing a person by any part of their body and attempting to pull them along can cause injury. This is equally true for a person with any disability.
Sadly, it’s necessary to say that it is illegal to pretend to be disabled and take your dog into places normally off-limits to dogs. It’s not cute, it’s not funny, and it’s not okay. This crime harms disabled people who legitimately need access with their dogs because it plants seeds of distrust with the public.
There are four legal components (at least!) to exercising public access rights with an assistance dog. The first is that the rights reside in the person with a disability. No matter how well trained the dog, if the person is not disabled, the dog is not working as an assistance dog and federal public access rights do not apply.
Second, the dog must be trained to perform tasks that mitigate the person’s disability. The courts and the federal regulators continue to define this as well as other aspects of what is required, but good conscience as well as the law dictate that the dog be there because the dog is trained to provide needed assistance.
Third, the dog must be trained to behave safely in public. Some people want a dog “for protection,” but that is not the function of an assistance dog. The dog’s behavior must clearly be no threat to the safety of others. If this is not the case, the proprietor of the place has the legal right to require the person to remove the dog.
Lastly, the dog’s behavior must not be disruptive to the business or other function of the place. For example, a dog continuously barking in a theater can be required to be removed. Obviously it behooves the disabled handler to maintain training with the dog for the best possible manners.
Everyday Life Lessons
Assistance dog work is a high calling for a dog. Knowledge gained from this work continues to raise the standard of training and care for all dogs. It inspires us to teach the smart, eager, and loving dogs at our sides to help us day-to-day, as a lifestyle. Dogs love jobs, and helping out around the house can give them great pleasure as well as self esteem.
The more you work with your dog, the more likely the day will come when the dog saves property or life with a timely alert or retrieve. You’ll be ready, because you’ve learned to partner with your dog for more mundane tasks such as doing the laundry or picking up the living room. Your dog will be a high-functioning member of the family.