Idaho State University

Service animals are animals that are individually trained to perform tasks for people with disabilities such as guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling wheelchairs, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, or performing other special tasks. Service animals are working animals, not pets.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), businesses and organizations that serve the public must allow people with disabilities to bring their service animals into all areas of the facility where customers are normally allowed to go. This federal law applies to all businesses open to the public, including restaurants, hotels, taxis and shuttles, grocery and department stores, hospitals and medical offices, theaters, health clubs, parks, and zoos.

In the United States and some other countries, people with disabilities are afforded civil rights under national laws. In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act covers the rights of persons with disabilities who use service animals. A good overview of the regulations can be found in the document ADA Business BRIEF: Service Animals. A person with a disability may be asked what tasks the service animal performs but may not be asked for special certification or ID cards for the animal and may not be asked about his or her disability. A person with a disability may not be charged an additional fee to be accompanied by a service animal. A person with a disability accompanied by a service animal must be admitted and may not be isolated, segregated or treated less favorably than other persons.

The web has a great deal of information about service animals. Click here for a link that guides you to many different types of assistance animal sites.

Many people are not quite sure what to do around a service animal. In general, if you keep in mind that it is the person that you need to address, you will do well. Paying attention to the animal, and then noticing the person can make the person with a disability feel uncomfortable. The Delta Society has a handout on Service Dog Manners. Guide Dogs of America also has a good article on meeting humans and their guide dog partners, When You Meet A Guide Dog Team.

If you are interested in owner training your dog, The Teamwork books/videos can be helpful. You can also purchase them from most online booksellers. The organization that publishes Teamwork, is the non-profit group Top Dog, which has additional information on their site.

The International Association of Assistance Dog Partners is an organization for dogs and their partners, along with supporting friends. One of the cool things it does is to partner with veterinarians and other businesses to provide free or discounted health services for assistance animals.

Assistance Dogs International is a professional society for dog training programs. It also have a nice description of the different types of dogs, the public access test (which varies somewhat but this is one of the common ones) and ADI's guide to assistance dog laws.

Another resource is the non-profit International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants, a membership and certifying organization for animal behavior. They have a service dog division and you can find links to specialists and information there.

As a person with a disability, I am partnered with a service dog, Sophie Callen, who assists me with my daily tasks and in particular with travel.

At the Idaho State University Institute of Rural Health, we have a growing interest in service and assistance animals. In Spring 2006, we will begin teaching two assistance animal courses.

Companion and Assistance Dogs for People with Disabilities

In this class for students and their companion dogs, we will work on improving relationships with owners and their pets and explore the concept of people with disabilities training their own assistance dogs. We will use the Top Dog curriculum (http://www.topdogusa.org/), which mixes standard obedience and service dog training for owner-trained service dogs. In this introductory course, we will present the idea of using animals to mitigate disabilities. This is not a class in which you will train your dog to be a service dog. It is intended to help develop you and your dog’s interactive skills and your abilities to work as a team. The class will also allow pet owners to begin thinking about whether they and their companion dog would like to, or have the ability to, train as a service dog team. Standard obedience and information about service dogs will be taught. All but the first class will include the dogs and their human companions. The first class will be for humans alone.  

Companion and Assistance Dogs for People with Disabilities for Health Professionals

This one-hour block course is designed for health professionals, health professionals in training, and others who have an interest in assistance animals such as guide dogs and service dogs. Health professionals and other helpers in the health care field spend a lifetime learning new things in their professional field; however, they are not given an opportunity to learn how to respond in the field to an assistance animal and their handler. As the use of service animals continues to grow, learning how to respectfully and appropriately interact with a service animal and their companion is becoming increasingly important. This course will focus on assistance animal etiquette, legal rights, and national and international policy. Participants in the course can expect to learn about the special assistance animal aspects of working with a person with a disability who is part of a human-animal team. In addition, students will explore when it might be appropriate to suggest the option of an assistance animal for mitigating the disability of a person with whom they work.