Is there official documentation for assistance dogs?

[Legalitiesaround]

Obviously guide dogs are very obvious but do owners of dogs for diabetes/epilepsy alert dogs carry some kind of document ?

I want to make sure I’m doing things properly and not discriminating at all when reverting back to an assurance dog only policy but have had huge issues with ‘support’ dogs which I don’t think are legally assistance dogs ? How do I go about finding out so that I don’t make a terrible mistake but at the same time I know only what genuine assistance dogs and no others at all in my cafe when we reopen

assistance not assurance !!!

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/assistance-dogs-a-guide-for-all-businesses.pdf

Unfortunately there is no legal way of recognising them.

I suspect that's why lots of cafes are now generally dog friendly.

Are the dogs behaving? I know pubs and bars will bar individual dogs if they don't behave, and while assistance dogs should be the best behaved they aren't always.

We had real problems with this in my last job.

There are no papers or anything official, and we weren't allowed to ask anyway, and even if we could there are cards and vests and things you can buy online.

We had an unruly 'assistance' dog bite someone at one point.

We’ve had very few assistance dogs in general but the ones we did were guide dogs and not one problem with them at all. The issues seems to be support dogs (they have vests on sometimes identifying this) but I’ve since learnt you can buy these anywhere ! These are the ones we’ve had problems with as well as a few other occasions with regular dogs. We are temporarily closed for refurbishment and I won’t lie the rate at which things declined and needed replacement and redecorating massively increased since the start of us being dog friendly . We’ve had a few mess incidents , multiple issues with people tripping over someone else’s dog or lead , spills, arguments , the cafe didn’t smell ‘nice’ anymore it just hasn’t worked out for us at all. I’m just very mindful of doing things properly but I think there’s some abuse of the assistance dog label as people were saying support dogs for anxiety etc etc and I only want to allow recognised assistance dogs but I needed to know how they are officially registered / recognised (is there a certain sign on anything eg that I can just see rather than questioning someone as I don’t want to make anyone’s life harder or make them feel they have to justify themselves) but at the same time protect the business

We had real issues with this in a previous job - so many ‘emotional support’ animals coming in that in the end we lost a lot of regular customers and it became like a zoo. The owners closed the restaurant in the end.

This sounds so familiar. We had one person trying to take a dog into the toilet saying ‘he can’t be left anywhere he thinks he’s a human’ another saying that their dog was a support worker , multiple families with puppies that had hi viz type dog jackets telling us they were a ‘medical dog in training’

Can you just put a sign on the door saying guide dogs only or would that break some sort of discrimination rule?

This is what I’m worried about as I know there are assistance dogs for diabetes and epilepsy and probably other conditions. Genuine assistance dogs are welcome I want to educate myself to be able to identify them so I don’t subject anyone to unnecessary questioning but equally I can’t have these unregulated Amazon ‘Support dog’ vest wearing pets that are badly behaved !

I would put a sign saying ‘registered assistance dogs only’. You can also make the stipulation that all dogs must sit on the floor as assistance dogs are trained to. If the dog is a puppy, it messes on the floor or it bites, it will not be an assistance dog.

Done a quick google and from the way I read it I assume when a person gets the dog from a registered assistance dog trainer they get an an assistance dog ID book

So you could put a sign up saying guide dogs welcome. All other assistance dogs require a an assistance ID book.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/guidance/assistance-dogs-guide-all-businesses#:~:text=Most%20assistance%20dogs%20are%20likely,floor%20next%20to%20their%20owner

This is worth reading. It explains how you can tell an assistance dog.

there is no assistance dog register in the uk, as long as the dog mitigates the handlers disability, or in the case of a child the adult with them would be the handler.

there is legal requirement for an assistance dog to have an id book, like the ones you get from an aduk organisation. Owner trained assistance dogs are perfectly legal. There is also no legal requirement to have a vest/banada/harness or similar so the dog is easily recognised as an assistance dog.

so it would be illegal and disability discrimination to do some of the things other posters have suggested, such as a sign saying guide dogs and registered assistance dogs only.

there is no such thing as a registered assistance dog in the uk. There are aduk organisations that provide dogs to disabled people, but owner trained ads is also very much allowed. The aduk charities have a lot of requirements for there dogs (so many don’t fit the requirements despite being disabled etc), they have a limited amount of funds and dogs, and there’s not actually many aduk organisations. So this means many people do train their own assistance dogs, whether that be with a trainer, or a organisation that is not aduk, or just on their own.

the equality and human rights commission, states an assistance dog should not wander round the premises freely and should lie or sit quietly on the floor next to the handler.

if the dog is not doing this, ie bothering people, barking (unless the alert is a bark), generally misbehaving that sort of thing, you are well within your rights to ask them to leave. Obviously ads are not perfect so there may be little moments, so if it’s anymore than a little thing then you can ask them to leave.

service dogs in the uk are police dogs or similar. Emotional support animals are not a legal thing in the uk. The term assistance dog is the only legal term for a disability support dog in the uk. So if they are labelled anything other than assistance dog, then they may not be an assistance dog. Therapy dogs are a thing but they do not have legal rights of access in the uk if they are only a therapy dog.

the guide for businesses linked by @Reugny i was gonna post.

Also dogs for autism an aduk charity has this information https://dogsforautism.org.uk/ad-hi-information-page/#AD

if you suspect a dog is not an assistance dog you can ask the handler. But they are not required to tell you their disability, so I would stick to asking about the training of the dog, ie if it’s misbehaving question that rather than the fact it may or may not be an assistance dog. An assistance dog should be highly trained, over and above that of even a well trained pet dog. Though they are not infallible so I would bear that in mind too.

@123dogdog.

EasyJet only takes dogs that have been trained by an organisation that is affiliated to one of two organisations. You would think they would be mindful of breaking the law.

That is currently a big issue in the assistance dog community at the moment. I believe it is a relatively new issue, not that it wasn’t an issue before but there were different rules on some airlines, but now it seems to be only aduk or adi registered dogs. I believe it’s a defra policy or rule change or whatever you call it. I think it was end of last year or beginning of this year it altered. Whereas as before you just had to provide proof of training to some of the airlines. I have read supposedly some airlines have had issues with some (supposed possibly) owner trained assistance dogs. I don’t know how true that is but I have read it in comments on posts about this issue. There’s some people trying to fight it at the moment, as it is disability discrimination but I’m not clued up enough on the airline issue to comment further.

This may help