To believe a bitey puppy in a children's group is not an emotional support animal

[Thegreengreenleavesofmay]

Someone has brought a bitey puppy to a children's group and said that because they are training it to be an emotional support animal for a SEN child, they cannot legally be asked to keep it at home.

İs this true?

They rocked up with dog

the organisers failed in their duty to stop entry

No they were swearing, shouting and attacking other children.

Are you joking here?

Yeah that makes sense. I don't think we will be going back.

She's chancing her arm

She needs telling that it needs to stay away

What starts as a nip, could then more serious

Not at all. Child with ASD. That's what makes it more annoying, that the child was allowed to cause upset each week, and then this dog comes along and starts biting everyone. But like someone said, it's probably on the person organising the group to safeguard properly.

A friend trains guide dogs for the blind, so fully certified assistance dogs. She is absolutely clear that a guide dog in training has no right of access in the way a trained one does - she does actually have an arrangement with the local Morrisons manager, and is able to take trainees in there, but not at the point when they're biting everything in sight.

I know people who train guide dogs. They may very well take a puppy into a variety of situations as part of its socialisation. They wouldn’t just leave it with random bunch of kids though.

How did you have pleasant interactions with them Op when sounds like they had their hands full from start to finish!

did you go with a friend and their child or on your own?

They shouldn't be doing it.

It can't be good for a young puppy. They can get overexcited and overtired.

The owner/non-trainer is bullshitting about not being told to keep it at home.

Its property which must be kept in control.
And the law gives no exception to it being a pup because its the owner who has the duty to make sure that the pup is not causing harm not the pup itself.

And that would apply to assistance dogs too as the dogs right of access is because its looked as as being like a wheelchair and the discrimination is against the person not the dog. (So a trained "seeing eye" dog and trained an "emotional support" dog could both qualify)

https://www.gov.uk/control-dog-public

A little OTT but you could have called the police and have them remove the owner and the pup.

The non-trainer is teaching the pup bad habbits if its allowing it to pull on clothing and jump all over the children.

Puppies are like babies who use their mouths/hands to explore their environment.
And just like a human child has to be taught that biting hurts so dumping it in a group of children to " play" unsupervised is a bad idea.

Plus the pup can be hurt as children who are not around small animals can be a little too rough.

I very much doubt "the law is on their side"
They were just chancing it and are entitled CF

I'd want to ask what specific law it is that says they have to be allowed entry. I would bet they can't say. In any case they'd be wrong going by the posts here (IANAL)

This is the problem. People are frightened to confront someone who has brought a dog to an inappropriate place. I have seen it in our local Aldi where the staff are all quite young and nervous about saying something.

Emotional support animal = cheeky fucker who can't be arsed to train their animal to be left unattended, wants to bring it to all sorts of places it shouldn't be, and has bought a jacket for it from Amazon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61596623

This owner is being an absolute dick. She is very obviously not training the puppy if she was sitting away from it and someone had to tell her it was trying to bite other children.

I don't know if the group leader is happy about it but the owner keeps saying they legally have to be allowed in with puppy. That's why I was asking for clarification.

This is what these CFs bank on. They confidently assert that it's a SUPPORT animals or an ASSISTANCE animal, secure in the knowledge that people are not going to pull them up on it or challenge them on it for fear of getting it wrong and breaching some sort of disability legislation, or the entitled owner going apeshit and thumping them.

'Emotional support animals' aren't recognised by law so the group can absolutely tell her not to bring it with her again, if that's what she's claiming it is.

Assistance dogs are recognised by law, but a young puppy that is mouthing and is being 'trained' by the child's parent is not an assistance dogs. Assistance dogs are trained by professional handlers when they're puppies, and then they're allocated to a disabled owner once the dog is a fully trained and tested adult. Plenty of puppies prove unsuitable as assistance dogs, so they aren't allocated as working dogs until they've got through all the training and are adults. There's also usually a process where the disabled owner also undergoes training with the dog, in order to bond with it, make sure it's the right dog for them, and to learn how to work with it.

Therefore a puppy that's still at the mouthing stage and isn't yet trained is absolutely not an assistance dog. It's a pet.

What kind of group is it?

Sounds like the person running the group needs to take more responsibility for ensuring a child-safe environment.

The organiser should look into the law pretty quickly or they won’t have a group left to organise. I wouldn’t go back somewhere if I had to make sure a dog wasn’t biting my child the whole time.

Apparently the law where no one can ask for official documentation to show it's been trained officially and that as it's accompanying a disabled child, they have every right to bring it in.

Well to be fair as soon as someone said it's biting the children, they put it in its buggy secured away, but my worry is if they come back and get it out for five minutes petting time and I have to tell my child they either can't pet it whilst the other children are and cause upset, or risk them getting bitten.

I don't think I'll go back. İt was a home ed group.

I'd probably mention that they'd be in a spot of legal bother if there were an insurance claim against the group leader because of the dog biting someone.

Ah dog didn't stop them. Maybe parents or carers might intervene.

How old is your child?

OP, dodge this group. Organisers sound pathetic