To ask what you'd do if a service dog without an owner approched you what would you do?

[NaughtToThreeSadOnions]

I know this is an american example but it got me thinking how many people would know why a service dog wanted your attention or what to do? I found it on twitter
(twitter.com/lissalet/status/1008087816604127234?s=09)

I know most people think of services dogs as guide dogs or prehaps hearing dogs but theres an increasing amount of epilepsy, autism or dusablity assistance dogs. I just wonder if this applies in the uk (i suspect it does) and what you'd do.

I don't think random members of the public have any responsbility to go and help tbh.

WTF, selfish much?

Healthcare costs and poverty in the US mean that “service dogs” are family pets “trained” to perform tasks that have no scientific medical evidence.

They are so far away from the years-long formal training that, say, Guide Dogs for the Blind provide free of charge to service users. Every guide dog in Britain and Ireland has been bred specifically and carefully by handlers with years of experience.

In the US, desperate teenagers train their puppies to run away when they fall over.

This isn’t what “service animals” are about. The whole thing is so messed up.

Please read the Twitter link above.

Real service animals are not trained to leave their owners.

“There really is nothing more annoying than the thought that hundreds of thousands of people have seen and read this rubbish.”

I don’t know - I mean maybe it might make people think, oh wonder why there’s a dog alone rather than ignoring a dog?

Any dog I mean...

Because I’d assumed it was common sense to look for an owner if you were approached by a dog alone, dogs shouldn’t be just wandering... there’s somewhere they’re missing from if they are.

I'd probably have started off by looking around for the owner and then followed the dog when it showed me that's what it wanted. I'd probably also look around for other people who would be able to help out, store staff, security workers etc and try to involve them.

I'm not a great dog lover in general but I have a soft spot for service dogs and would understand that the uniform meant it was working and, therefore, the owner must be in need of help.

Even without the uniform, if a non aggressive dog was persistently approaching me, I'd figure it was in trouble or lost and would look for a tag to phone the owner so hopefully the person would get helped that way.

I would assume that either the owner was dead/in serious trouble or that the dog had somehow got lost and therefore the owner was without service dog and in trouble. I would probably just call 101 for advice while looking around for the owner. They must have a protocol for this kind of thing.

I would not be happy about any dog without an owner being near me and would feel very threatened.

I didn't know that assistance dogs were trained to find help on their own but, now that i do, I would call someone else to help.

As PPs have noted, the proliferation of "owner-trained" service dogs in the US is a serious issue. The ADA means that they've not to be registered at all, too - people are using their family pet, or adopting a random dog from a shelter, "training" it, claiming their dog can alert to highly unusual or they're training it for impossible things; & using it for mobility work when they shouldn't be (dog under age of 2 &/or owner:dog weight ratio incorrect). Poorly-trained service dogs are a menace.

Service dogs do sometimes need to be trained to complete tasks differently in order to meet the specific needs of their owner. But you don't then try to tell everyone that's the norm, which is what the author of the Tumblr post did. (Also, her response to the Twitter thread... didn't really strengthen her position.)

It would be helpful if the dogs' hi vis vests said 'if I'm alone follow me, my owner is in distress' or something. I don't think everyone would automatically know this!

I would of course help someone who needed help, but I think in the US almost anything can be a service dog and they aren't actually always well trained.

I came into contact with an American lady in Germany where I live now who was fighting to get her banned (here) bull breed "service dogs" allowed into the country. They were autism support dogs but she simply relied on their moral support, they weren't actually trained to "do" anything special. So by most people's definitions they were pets, not support dogs at all!

Of course she may have been a maverick and atypical of a lesser known type of support dog owner.

If it wasn't a guide dog I wouldn't assume a random dog in a high visibility vest was alerting me to an owner having a seizure at all, because it's totally outside my experience. It depends just how the dog was behaving I suppose.

Also quite aside from being terrified, allergic or indeed equally in difficulty yourself, not everyone can drop everything and follow random dogs on the off chance it isn't just a runaway or unattended dog and is summoning help for its owner. If it's not clear then people are going to struggle to leave or drag along small children, dependent adults in their care, or cut short a business phone call or abandon their errands or be late to work to follow a dog.

If the dog was very highly trained and wearing a clearly marked jacket saying (if I am alone please follow me, my owner is epileptic and needs help" people might be more likely to, but then the urban myths about criminal gangs using service dogs to lure people into dangerous situations would spring up...

Perhaps dogs aren't the solution.

catinasplashofsunshine
It sounds as if that woman's dogs might have been Emotional Support Animals rather than Service Dogs. They don't have the same access rights as Service Dogs do; & literally any animal can be designated an ESA - like Daniel the Emotional Support Duck. Or how about a kangeroo, squirrel, pig, or turkey?

zebra that sounds like a better description, but she herself definitely referred to them as service dogs.

If DIY service dogs are common in the US it's not that surprising they aren't treated with quite the reverence a properly trained and instantly recognisable guide dog for the blind in uniform almost universally is in the UK.

catinasplashofsunshine
Oh, sorry, I missed a bit in my post! I meant to say that people with Emotional Support Dogs sometimes try to claim they're Service Dogs to be able to get them into more places - sneaking round the access rights thing: I didn't mean to sound like I was doubting/trying to correct you, my suspicion was that the owner was trying to pull a fast one, but as I was editing things got Lost & Muddled: apologies.

It's such a shame things have gone the way they have with Service Dogs in the US - they are such amazing creatures with incredible (sometimes lifesaving) skills & you've now got totally unsuitable dogs being part-trained & then dragged about in some quite ridiculous get-ups (there's an insane market for SD "gear" over there, including custom patches). Lots of them don't get anywhere near enough time off, either. Ach. Poor pups. They're definitely seen as a kind of accessory in some sections of the "Spoonie" (Chronic Illness/Disability) Community - the unhealthy-unhelpful sections where Competitive Illness is a thing & people try to collect "props" (e.g. wheelchair/feeding tube/picc line - oh & yes - in the US more so than the UK - it's possible to get those things without really needing them) that make their Illness as visible as possible.