charlietheherodog

[charlietheherodog]

hey! i was out with anubis yesterday and we got a lot more questions than usual. it occurred to me that most people don’t know how to interact with service teams, but do truly want to be respectful. here’s a quick guide for interacting with a service dog and their handler:

1. the dog is not there to entertain you. even if the dog is laying on the ground like anubis here, they’re still working. medical alert dogs like anubis are constantly watching and waiting to act, and their brains are always on. distracting them while they’re working can prove fatal for their handler.

2. this should go without saying, but don’t touch the service dog. don’t talk to, make faces at, or make eye contact with them either. don’t offer food or try to get the dog to sniff you. these are all incredibly distracting things! imagine if someone tried to touch you, call your name, or held food in front of your face while You were working. super distracting, right?

3. most handlers will not give out their dogs names while they’re working, for the reasons listed above. some handlers will even give a fake name for this reason. please don’t hound us about our service dog’s name.

4. unless you’re accommodating for the service team, just ignore the dog. accommodating may look like moving your chair so the dog can have space to lay at their handler’s feet, or stepping around them while they’re tasking, or helping the handler with rude management workers while they’re facing an access issue. if we need something, we’ll ask! but otherwise, just treat us like a normal person, and please don’t talk directly to the dog instead of their handler. it’s super patronizing and annoying.

5. legally, service dog handlers can only be asked two questions by EMPLOYEES of the ESTABLISHMENT they are entering. this does not extend to other customers. the two questions are, “is that a service dog?” and, “what tasks does your service dog perform?”. in my case, the answers would be “yes” and “medical alert, psychiatric, and mobility”. most handlers will Not go into more detail about their diagnosis. please do not ask why we need a service dog, because it’s incredibly invasive and most handlers aren’t willing to share why. medical history, because service dogs Are medical equipment, is a very private and oftentimes embarrassing thing.

thank you for reading this far! tl;dr: treat service dog handlers with respect and ignore their dogs unless you’re accomodating for the team. don’t distract the dog.

[charlietheherodog]

DO NOT BUY VESTS IF YOU DON’T NEED ONE!!! A P.S.A. with Watson.

Hi guys, just a reminder of a few reasons why buying any vest off of Amazon when your dog isn’t qualified for said vest is WRONG:

1. It hurts people with real service dogs. This is the most important one; when an unqualified dog misbehaves, which they will, we know no dog is perfect, or you can’t give a good explanation as to why you need them, (side not: medical alert dogs are VERY needed!) you give real service dogs a bad reputation. It also makes it harder for service dog handlers to smoothly bring their dog in public with them, as people would be rightfully dubious had they recently witnessed a fake service dog. Your dogs are amazing, but service dogs are very specialized and needed. You could even end up indirectly endangering a disabled person!

2. Being a therapy dog requires the least amount of qualifications of the Support-Service-Therapy trio, but my handler has already pulled several all-nighters and spent hours during the day researching new tasks for me, qualifications, and the Good Citizen requirements. It is hard work to train and handle a service, emotional support, and/or therapy dog! And while my handler and I love volunteering, it is very stressful. Yes, we are getting my training vest off Amazon. I need to get used to both the vest and the mindset that comes with it. No, my vest does not qualify me for public access. Yes, you are belittling my achievements when you just slap one on your dog! And that is a hundred times worse for service/emo support dog handlers.

3. You are taking vests from people who need them. Yes, this one isn’t that important, but if a dog needs a vest and they’re out of stock because you bought one that you didn’t need, it’s making public access harder for a disabled person. Good gear that you like can be hard to find and expensive, so if you find a bargain that works, feel free to recommend it to someone, but don’t buy it.

There are a lot of ways you can become involved with the service dog community, but just buying a vest isn’t one. Your dog could possibly train to be a therapy dog if you think they’d be good for it, but not all dogs are. There are also lots of pet-friendly public places you could take your dog to if you really wanted to. But know that you’re hurting people if you just click buy on an unnecessary vest.

[charlietheherodog]

[charlietheherodog]

Quarantine got us like

[charlietheherodog]

Hello I was scrolling through tumblr looking for people that have service dogs and I found you. Do you happen to have a post explaining why people bringing in completely untrained misbehaving dogs into stores by saying their service dogs are bad and harms actual service dog users? Because my mom doesn’t seem to understand and won’t listen to me.

;;; anon I am SO SORRY for taking forever to answer this, I was busy when I got it and then I completely forgot that I had it because the notification goes away once you’ve clicked your inbox 

I don’t have any posts myself, so I’ll just make one here. there are two primary reasons why it’s bad that I think of immediately--the reputation of actual service dogs and the safety of actual service dogs. 

when an untrained misbehaving dog enters a store with a service dog vest on, it can confuse people on the actual status of service dogs. on one hand, they could think that service dogs are exempt from all policies and that they cannot remove a misbehaving dog from an establishment because the dog is labeled as a service dog. OR, they may kick the misbehaving dog out (legal), but then believe that they have the right to not allow ANY service dogs into the establishment because of that experience (illegal). sometimes, people who put a vest on their dog that is not actually a service dog will bring fake registration paperwork (there is no service dog registry) which in turn causes establishments to request paperwork when a real service dog comes in, then turn them away when they don’t. in general, most people are not actually well-versed in ADA guidelines for service dogs. untrained, misbehaving dogs cause more confusion. 

untrained, misbehaving dogs also pose a safety risk to trained service dogs. on the less frightening end, it could be distracting--service dogs are trained to not be distracted easily, but they aren’t robots, and many times, untrained dogs wearing vests bark at and try to get at the trained service dog without the handler even attempting to control them. on the more frightening end, these untrained dogs can be aggressive, and could injure or even kill a real service dog, which robs the disabled handler of their primary support and, for many, the only way they can leave the house without assistance. I’ve had a close call with that situation before, and if I didn’t have Rosemary walk on my left side and she was instead on my right, she would’ve gotten hurt or even killed. when I immediately called campus public safety over the issue, I was told that the dog was still in training--please remember, a service dog in training is still held to the same public access standards as a fully trained service dog. they cannot be aggressive.

but also, with that all said, remember that misbehaving a little bit doesn’t mean that a service dog is inherently fake. service dogs are not robots. if a dog is barking or aggressively pulling the owner around (outside of a task), that’s obviously never okay and a pretty big indicator that they are not a service dog. but real service dogs can make mistakes, they can get distracted, they can have bad days. some could also be in training still--being in training doesn’t ever excuse barking and aggression, but it does excuse small mistakes while they’re still learning. be cautious when calling out fake service dogs. SD handlers already deal with a lot. 

[charlietheherodog]

I don’t know why this needs to be said all the damn time but DON’T BRING YOUR UNTRAINED DOG OUT IN PUBLIC TO STORES MASQUERADING AS A SERVICE DOG THAT THEN TRIES TO PLAY WITH MY HIGHLY TRAINED REAL SERVICE/MEDICAL ALERT DOG AND THEN GET MAD AT ME WHEN I’M JUST TRYING TO GET SOME GROCERIES AND WON’T LET MY DOG PLAY WITH YOURS.

NEWSFLASH! NOBODIES REAL SERVICE DOG IS GOING TO PLAY, LET ALONE REACT, TO YOUR DAMN DOG.

[charlietheherodog]

[charlietheherodog]

Please don’t take pictures of people or their medical equipment without permission. It’s rude. Being disabled doesn’t make someone a sideshow attraction. This has been a PSA.

[charlietheherodog]

love the body language on this pup. he’s so wiggly! i’ve been watching “desensitization” videos all day and saw a lot of, how do you say, dogs pushed way over their threshold whose owners called the push ‘desensitizing’ even though it brought their dog’s fear up instead of down, but also this boy. another video i liked was this one, where the owner is clearly, continuously attentive to her dog’s body language and narrates clearly in the video what stress signals she’s seeing and how she’s responding to them, with focused shots on the dog’s face. ‘lips still tight, but curious.’ it’s good.

[charlietheherodog]

sumn positive on ur dashboard 😭❤️

[charlietheherodog]

Hershey got another patch in the mail today! This one someone had custom made for their SD so it is gently used but it is perfect for Hershey and fits my style so well!

[charlietheherodog]

[charlietheherodog]

[charlietheherodog]

I gotcha, Ma.

[charlietheherodog]

[charlietheherodog]

[charlietheherodog]