law covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
I learned a little about service dogs when I cowrote The Angel by My Side (www.angelbymyside.com) with Mike Lingenfelter in 2002 (see chapter 15). It was the wonderful story of Mike and his heroic service dog, Dakota. We were proud that the book won two awards from the Dog Writers Association of America that year, but prouder still of being able to tell the story.
Mike is my “go-to guy” for issues having to do with service dogs. Dakota alerted on Mike when Mike was about to have a heart attack (unstable angina). Dakota could sense Mike’s oncoming attacks before Mike could, and that gave Mike the chance to take his medication a little earlier and head off the worst of it.
Mike looked pretty normal (still does), so he spent a lot of time fighting accessibility battles with restaurants and other places when he came in with Dakota. Relating those stories in our book taught me about the challenges that people with service dogs have to face every day, and I found myself a firsthand observer of some of them.
Mike is one of those people with a service dog who also uses his dog as a therapy dog to help others. This happened because Dakota came to him as a therapy dog and by chance eventually also became his service dog. This can be difficult for the dog, because a service dog needs to be totally devoted to taking care of his human and to ignore the people around them, while in therapy dog work, a dog needs to interact with people other than his handler/human partner. It takes a special dog to be able to do both jobs well.
However, therapy dogs are usually not service dogs and, as I mentioned, do not have the same rights of access as service dogs. Therapy dogs are part of a human/ dog team and are used primarily in health care facilities to promote human health and well-being.
Unfortunately, the laws guaranteeing accessibility for service dogs are abused by dog owners who want their dogs to come with them everywhere for various reasons (including travel). These people are easy to recognize. I saw someone in Denver International Airport with a lovely Golden Retriever. The dog did not have a vest (remember, service dogs do not need one) and, admittedly, could very well have been a service dog. I watched the dog’s owner drag the dog onto an escalator, something that frightened (and endangered) the dog, in spite of the fact that there was an elevator within eyesight of this escalator. The “scam alert” bell went off in my mind. Whether you have a service dog, a therapy dog, or a pet, you do not take a dog onto an escalator unless you are holding him in your arms. I knew that if the owner didn’t already know this, he didn’t take his dog very many places, which made me think that perhaps this wasn’t a service dog who should be going everywhere with his human.
Another red flag was that this poor dog was frightened of the escalator, understandably enough, but his clueless handler put the dog in danger anyway. A trained service dog is unflappable.
Therapy dogs do wonderful things for people in need, but people who use the status of therapy dog certification to abuse accessibility issues are jeopardizing the rights of legitimate service dogs, and, more critically, they are making the lives of the human partners of service dogs much more difficult than they already are. I know a lot of people who depend on their service dogs every waking moment. They already have to fight battles every day over accessibility for their life-saving, four-legged partners.
People who abuse therapy dog certification in this manner had better hope that they don’t run into me. Or Mike. But I digress.
My original point when I began is that not all therapy dog organizations are alike. There are some, unfortunately, that may as well just ask you to send in three dog-food labels and a few bucks in exchange for your therapy dog registration. There are a few organizations out there that exist only on a website and will be happy to send you a certificate in exchange for something (usually money). You need to know that it is not that simple.
If a therapy dog organization that you are researching does not make you work at your certification, does not require your dog to be checked by a veterinarian, does not evaluate and reevaluate you and your dog, and does not provide some type of continuing contact, then avoid that organization. You won’t be properly prepared, and neither will your dog, and someone could end up getting hurt. Your dog could get hurt.
If a working therapy dog causes a problem in a health care facility because the dog or handler is improperly trained, unprepared, or unhealthy, or if the dog is not properly insured or not appropriate for visiting, then all of us involved in therapy work are going to pay for it, no matter what with which organization we are registered.
If you want to become part of a therapy dog team, please do something for me, for the facilities that our teams visit, for the people who volunteer, for the people who benefit from our visits, and for the medical professionals who believe in us and support our work—do us all a favor. And do yourself a favor. Maintain and protect the integrity of the work by dealing with therapy dog organizations that do it right, as described above.
For Angel On A Leash facilities, we ask that our teams be registered through Delta Society. That way, we know how they have been trained and evaluated, that they are being provided with $1,000,000 in liability insurance coverage by their registering organization, that their health status is continuously monitored, and that they are subject to timely reevaluations. Recognizing that you may face geographic challenges in finding an organization, you should know that there may be other registering bodies that do this, too, but keep these key points in mind as you move forward with your dog.
While the American Kennel Club does not certify therapy dogs, it now works with over fifty-five organizations that register therapy dogs, including Bright and Beautiful Therapy Dogs, Delta Society Pet Partners Program, Love on a Leash, Therapy Dogs Incorporated (TD Inc.), and Therapy Dogs International (TDI), to recognize the great work that dogs do in this area. In addition to the AKC’s recognition of one outstanding therapy dog as part of its annual AKC Humane Fund Awards for Canine Excellence (ACE), in 2011 the club began offering the AKC Therapy Dog title (THD). The criteria for the title require that a registered therapy dog be either registered or listed with the AKC (this includes purebred and mixed-breed dogs) and perform no fewer than fifty community service visits. For more information, visit www.akc.org/akctherapydog.
Just Whistle if You Need Me
When I first moved to New York, my friend Karen LeFrak suggested that I bring my dogs to join her and her Standard Poodles, Jewel and Diamond, in visiting at Mount Sinai Medical Center, and we jumped right in. When I first started there, we could only visit patients in the recreational therapy room; no in-room visits were allowed. The physical therapists would bring the patients to us, and that could create some special moments.
One night, Teigh and I had just completed a quiet visit with a patient. I looked across the room and saw two boys, maybe in their late teens, sitting in high-backed wheelchairs. In front of them were a man and a woman, each of them feeding one of the boys. I guessed that the boys were brothers and that the man and woman were their parents. They seemed a little grim, so I also surmised that the boys were quadriplegic. I had no way of knowing, but perhaps the best guess was that they had been in some kind of an auto accident.
Teigh looked over at them and apparently caught the eye of one of the boys. The boy whistled. Teigh’s ears went up, and he stood and started to wag his tail. The mother looked at me and smiled. I asked, “Can we come over and visit?” Mom looked to Dad, and I surmised a little more—that they and may not speak English. She said something
