Why Your Fake Service Dog Sucks

I’m going to preface this with some facts about actual, working, trained service dogs.

-Service Dogs can be any breed. This doesn’t mean all breeds are up for the job. Labs and Retrievers are the most popular for a reason.

-Businesses can only ask two questions, stared by the ADA. “Is this a service dog?” And “What tasks is this dog trained to perform?”

-Service dogs are not required to register with any organization nor do they require any identification, i.e. vest, ID card, or anything that says they’re a service dog.

So, now that that’s covered, let’s get down and dirty. We all would obviously love to take our dogs with us everywhere; it would be great! But we can’t. And do you know why? Because they’re a distraction. They get dirty. They can be aggressive. They’re not perfect obedient robots. It’s nearly the equivalent of toting around a two-year-old who can’t speak English with you everywhere you go. It might be fun at first but you’d grow to dislike it.

So, why can service dog handlers take their dogs but you can’t? Because their dogs are trained. No, not just your basic training, but upwards of two years of training. These dogs are the best of the best and they even have off-days.

These dogs also provide important medical assistance to those who have them. By ADA definition, a service dog, in fact, is defined by its ability to do tasks which help mitigate a person’s disability. From a legal standpoint, they’re not even pets. They are medical equipment.

So why does your fake service dog suck? Well, I’ve got quite a few reasons.

Let me guess, you bought good ol’ Fido a vest online? Or maybe you got him a little ID card you bring with you everywhere. Well, do you know what happens to the next person to come after you that has an actual service dog? They get turned away because they don’t have that fancy (fake) ID. Or maybe they didn’t vest their dog today because it was too hot out and they don’t have to. But the staff of whatever business you took your pet to is now demanding they “prove” that their dog is a service dog.

Not to mention the fact that if you’re in public with your pet and it sees a service dog it may not be trained to not be distracted by others dogs. So suddenly you have a pet excitedly lunging at a working animal that needs to focus on its person, but your dog is making that difficult.

Or even worse, your dog gets off-leash and attacks that service dog. Now that person has to go without their life-saving medical equipment until their dog can work again or until they can get a new one.

So yes, your fake service dog sucks and you’re making life harder for everyone else because you wanted to bring Fido to the mall.