How can you tell the fakes from the real working dogs?
1. If the dog is confined or has restricted body movement due to being in a carrier, stroller or shopping cart, it is unable to physically preform tasks in order to aid their disabled handler.
2. If the dog exhibits poor behavior and the handler isn’t trying to correct it or isn’t removing the dog.
3. If the dog is entirely focused on interacting with its environment, it cannot be focused on aiding it’s handler.
Certification, ID tags and vests don’t make a service dog. A dog is considered a service dog when it is trained to physically do something (performs a task or work) in relation to the handlers disability. The dog must be doing something for you, that you cannot do for yourself.
(The law does NOT recognize ‘emotional support’ or ‘comforting’ to be trained tasks)
Credit: Assistance Dogs of the Carolinas
Ok I’ve seen the anti-faker movement cause a lot more problems than it aims to solve, so I’m going to try to do some educating here.
Federal ADA law states that a dog need only be task trained to mitigate a handler’s disability, potty trained, and not aggressive. ANYTHING ELSE (including bad manners) does not mean the dog isn’t a service dog in the eyes of the law.
Many dogs can perform tasks while being held or confined (toy diabetic alert dogs can still work while being carried or in a purse, for example). Some tasks actually look like bad manners. Mobility/forward momentum tasks can look like bad walking manners, for example. For that matter, dogs are not robots. You may see a dog that looks like it is completely distracted, when it’s really just having an off moment.
If you don’t know the handler, you likely don’t know the nature of their disability and how the dog has been trained. “Outing” someone who happens to look like a faker (at least based on posts like this) can be hugely triggering. I’m tired of hearing about friends being attacked for this sort of thing, when their dogs actually do fantastic work. You can’t tell just by looking at a SD team what their whole situation is.
To be clear, I don’t condone faking AT ALL. It’s gross behavior. I don’t condone skipping public access training (unless you’re an at-home team), even though it’s not required. Taking a sloppy service dog out in public reflects poorly upon all SD teams. But we don’t need a witch hunt based on posts like this.
Lastly, it is not federally against the law to fake. Some states have laws about it, but I’ve spoken to the Department of Justice on this and they confirmed that it is not a federal crime.My seizure alert dog is trained to have her eyes on me at all times. When I leave the room without her or she’s taken away from me when we go to the vet, she gets frantic. Not because of separation anxiety but because that’s what she was TRAINED TO DO. When she makes low barely audible growls she’s alerting me that something is wrong. She’s not a biting dog and is trained to vocalize instead of any kind of attack, she’s not vicious, she is trained to alert me. When I go into places that have food, I put her in a carrying bag. She is a very small dog, a ten pound westie. For this reason people assume she’s not performing a task and hassle me about it. Some people have gone as far as hurting my dog and threatening me. I don’t like the stares. I don’t like the questions. I just want to be able to go places safely. Not all service dogs are big labs or shepherds- my tiny white dog is highly trained for specialized tasks and knows over 200 commands. Don’t assume.
Yes it’s bad when people fake having a service dog but it’s worse when assholes assume a dog isn’t needed because of the reasons the op is trying to say. Just don’t assume. Don’t approach us.