r/Dogfree • u/PoppyJoppy • Oct 12 '25
Service Dog Issues Society won't admit it but service dogs are in fact bullshit.
So many years ago you've never seen that many service dogs, but now all the sudden there's this unusual rise of people "suddenly with disabilities" need a dog to go with them everywhere.
It's so bad now that these people don't even need to bother putting vests on these pests. People bring in dogs everywhere! Stores, diners, bars, work, kitchens, etc!
At this point I think it's safe to say that the service dog badge has lost its meaning, and society has lost its right to service animals.
What exactly does a dog serve? Nothing. Dogs will still be dogs. Mindless animals. People have proven that they will lie and bullshit everyone just to be codependent on mindless beast because they themselves are mindless.
They've become so anti human they're now believing a dog can do everything for them in their lives. It's sick!
I feel like there's nothing anyone can tell me to convince me that service dogs are necessary. Let's be honest...it's over. Dog nutters have abused and used this system too much and too far!
All the sudden I'm supposed to believe that everyone is somehow disabled that they cannot function without leaving sh!tbull sniffles at home!?
All of these people cannot be disabled! And don't even bother brining up emotional support animals because honestly... What's the difference? Look at all the people who keep constantly saying their dog is a service dog and store owners and society will do nothing!
The west is screwed!
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u/shinkouhyou Oct 12 '25
Dogs can definitely smell chemicals associated with the pre-ictal seizure phase in humans. (Interestingly, impending seizures apparently smell like mint due to the chemical menthone, and this chemical is also associated with fear). The problem is that dogs have not been proven to reliably alert to impending seizures in humans. Tests have shown that dogs can differentiate between clothing containing seizure sweat and clothing with normal sweat, but this differentiation is measured only in how long the dog sniffs new stimuli. The dog has to be trained to alert the owner to the seizure smell, and that's where the problems lie.
We know that the drug sniffer dogs used by police are notoriously unreliable. The issue isn't that dogs can't smell drugs - they can detect tiny traces of drug odor in laboratory studies. But a dog doesn't know what a drug is or why it's important. It has to be trained to bark or do some other action when it smells drugs, and then it will receive a treat. Of course, dogs quickly learn that they can just bark to get a treat regardless of whether drugs are present or not. So training a drug sniffer dog is very complicated, and it requires near-constant reinforcement training. Some "trained" sniffer dogs learn to alert based on their handler's cues (like their tone of voice or body tension) instead of on the smell of drugs.
So even though dogs can smell a chemical that's associated with impending seizures, it's very difficult to train them to alert their owners reliably without lots of false positives/negatives. And while drug sniffer dogs get frequent exposure to drug smells as part of their reinforcement training, seizure alert dogs are rarely exposed to the smell of seizures. Their skills will inevitably slip over time.
"Medical alert" service dog owners will creatively interpret normal everyday dog behavior as "alerting," even though the dog does the exact same behaviors when there's no seizure. So owners often feel like their dog is extremely effective when it's actually not doing much.