Support Animals Acting Out

So, picture this. You enter a busy waiting room at your doctor’s office.  Or you are  boarding your airplane about to go on a trip.  Or you are in line at the bank.  Suddenly, someone comes in with a  support dog.  You can tell because it has one of those vests you can buy anywhere.  The person does not seem to have control over the dog.   It’s jumping around, pulling on its leash, not behaving.  Now imagine you see someone who is blind with a service dog in those same locations.  You can tell it’s a service dog because the dog is calm.  It’s responding to its owner’s directions, and doing a job of guiding the person.   These are two very real scenarios.  

Recently, there have been horror stories of support animals gone wrong, such as the one described here, where an airline passenger ended up with twenty-eight stitches in his face from an uncontrolled emotional support dog (ESD).  Should the public be exposed to this kind of risk?  No, of course not, yet these kinds of encounters seem to come up often on flights.  Still, they aren't limited to air travel and they can happen anywhere.  Also, not every support dog is bad, so I don't think you can make a sweeping judgment about "all" support dogs in "all" situations. 

There are two very different perspectives of support vs. service dogs.    One scenario  is a person like  Savannah Bell,  a Brigham Young University college student, highlighted in the BYU newspaper The Daily Universe.  She  suffers from  depression and anxiety so she got permission to have her support dog, Leif, in the dorm.   Since then, she has found it easier to go about her life.  Does she have a legitimate need for a support dog?  I think so.  Leif gives her a sense of responsibility and purpose and she can manage her emotional issues.  Another perspective is Michaela Chase, profiled in the The Kansas City Star.   She has a service dog, Andy, because she is in a wheelchair.  She was in a waiting room recently, with Andy, and an untrained  support dog came into the room, the owner lost control of the dog and it attacked Andy.  Michaela wasn't sure Andy could be retrained after the attack because he was now fearful of other dogs, leaving her without his extremely valuable help in her daily life.  Should she have to risk the loss of her highly trained service dog just because someone decides their untrained dog is a "support" animal?  There is common ground, though.  Both these women share their need of a dog.  They find having a dog around useful in their everyday lives and find it a huge stress relief because it makes their lives more manageable.  However, these women differ because for Michaela her service dog, Andy, is her everything. She has worked with him to form a bond, he’s specially trained and, as a result, they work extremely well together to help her be independent.  Michaela's loss of the full use of Andy is a real blow to her.  In fact,  in a joint article in the Journal of Visual Impairment &  Blindness, authors Cheryl A. Godley, Ph.D., a psychologist, and Marc A. Gillard, a licensed guide dog instructor, cite studies showing that people with service dogs see the dogs as "an extension of themselves" and if their dogs are attacked, the attacks "impede their ability to live their lives freely."   (Godley, p. 602)  Savannah, on the other hand, has Leif for her anxiety and, though she loves Leif, I think almost any dog could fill that role because no special training is needed.  If she was truly disabled by her anxiety, she would need to go through the lengthy process of having a service dog trained that could tend to her exact needs.   But should Savannah be denied her dog?

I think the bigger issue here is that although Savannah might be a responsible dog owner, and Michaela may not object to someone like Savannah having a dog, what about other people with support animals who don’t really need them and who don’t control them?  What happens when people don’t act responsibly with their support animals?  What happens when the worst happens, and a support animal acts out and inconveniences, or worse yet injures, someone?  

Still, support animals do fulfill a purpose, as Savannah and Leif showed.  So, perhaps all support dogs shouldn’t be judged based on random, ill-equipped owners.  Maybe the question is, what is the appropriate way to control support animals when they are in public places to ensure the safety of the public and the animals?

Works Cited

Davis, Mark. “Is That Service Dog a Fake? Under Federal Law, You Can't Even Ask.”Kansascity, The Kansas City Star, www.kansascity.com/news/business/health-care/article182076846.html. 

Godley, Cheryl A, and Marc A Guillard. “Assisting Handlers Following Attacks on Dog Guides: 
            Implications for Dog Guide Teams.” Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 2011, pp.
            601–611.

universe.byu.edu/2018/01/31/byu-students-benefit-emotional-support-animals-apartments/.

www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article201164864.html.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2ltzmMP1G4.