Assistance or service dogs are increasingly present in our society. They are dogs specially trained to carry out a job or a task for the benefit of a person with a disability, be it physical, mental, sensory or psychiatric. Its mission is to accompany people with certain disorders or disabilities, in order to make their day-to-day life easier.
These dogs use their keen senses and intelligence to help their companions perform certain actions that they cannot perform on their own, providing them with security, confidence and independence, thus improving their quality of life. For example, we find guide dogs that accompany people with visual disabilities, or also hearing signal dogs, for people with hearing disabilities.
On the other hand, there are psychiatric service dogs, which help people with psychiatric, mental and cognitive disabilities. Among their functions, they can remind the person to take their medication, avoid self-harm, avoid dangers in disoriented people, detect and alleviate panic attacks, etc. Others accompany people with autism so that they have more confidence and security and can better relate to the world around them. There are even assistance dogs capable of anticipating seizures in people with epileptic disorders.
To begin with, you must know how to recognize an assistance or service dog. Generally, they wear a harness or a vest where it can be clearly read that it is an assistance or service dog. These harnesses are easily found in any pet store and it is common for people to put them on their pets without knowing what it really means. Therefore, it is best not to put this type of accessory on your dog if it is not an assistance or service dog, as this could create confusing situations.
When an assistance or service dog wears this identification harness or vest, it means that it is working in its task of helping and accompanying a person. Therefore, we should never interact with the dog, because this way we could distract it from its mission or alter the well-being of the person they are assisting.
That is, if you find a service dog on the street or in an establishment, you should not caress it, or talk to it, or offer it a trinket, or look at it insistently so as not to distract it. Similarly, you should also prevent your dog from interacting with the assistance dog. The same happens with children, to whom you must explain the work of that animal and teach them that they should not caress it because it is working and should not receive stimuli that distract or interrupt it.
This does not mean that service dogs do not have moments of leisure. In fact, it is necessary for their well-being and the proper performance of their duties. But those moments of walk and free play have to be separated from the moments in which he is carrying out his assistance work.
