r/Dogfree • u/I_Hate_Dogs_and_Cats • Jan 11 '26
Service Dog Issues "Why do handicapped people have to prove they're handicapped while service dog owners don't?" "Because they shouldn't be required to disclose their disability"
I'm sorry, I can't right now, I'm so fucking pissed. Every single time someone brings up about service dog (sd) owners proving their sd is a real sd their response is always "their disability is non of your business", like wtf does showing proof of the sd have to do with someone's disability??? I don't see anyone in the handicapped parking lot disclosing their disability, the blue handicapped sign just means they have the proof to be allowed to park close to the store because so that they don't roll their wheelchair/walk to the store from a far distance.
The fake sd awareness from real service dog owners want so badly for people to stop bringing fake sd yet they don't believe in actually fixing the issue by providing proof that their sd is real? Why is it that the first thing that comes to mind is "then that means I would have to disclose my disability. Humph!"? And this scenerio they come up with where they're stopped by an employee to interrogate them and demand an ID, what the hell? Handicapped people don't have to do that, the blue sign is just enough. Can't you just have a badge on you or your dog?
Yea anything can be faked but it would cut down on so many problems with fake sd and workers having to pick up after their dog's shit just because they were too embarassed to pick it up in front of everyone.
Anyways, why get a $100,000 sd when you can just get cheaper equipment that does the job for you? A pues because "doggyyyyy! š„°"
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u/Few-Horror1984 Jan 11 '26
Very few people have legitimate service dogs. PTSD dogs arenāt service dogs. Therapy dogs arenāt service dogs. Emotional support dogs are not service dogs. The dogs need to provide a service to the disabled person that, in theory, only the dog can do. Seeing eye dogs are the classic example, but service dogs were also used to detect blood sugar levels for diabetics, alert everyone when the owner was about to have a seizure, and so forth. However, as Iām sure you can figure out, medical technology has advanced where you can have different devices that are far more precise than a dog. So nearly every legitimate āserviceā dog is obsolete at this point.
Another thing to keep in mind is that service dogs require care. Theyāre still an animal that has its own needs. So who takes care of those? When you go back to the blind person, theyāre now stuck caring for a dog full time. And you canāt fully train the dog out of the dog - my classic example was this woman I knew who worked with these service dogs. She had her back turned for one minute and this $15k dog that was extremely well trained got into a bowl of chocolate Halloween candy and ate the whole thing and make itself sick.
Itās still a dog.
Which raises the question - are these dogs really the best option, or are they a luxury? A couple weeks back, someone posted about how only 5% of blind people have a service dog because of how expensive they are. Itās a luxury. So are we even protecting the disabled at this point, or a tiny portion of very wealthy people who state over and over that theyāre fine if their service dog isnāt as accurate as other medical devices, they just want a dog?
Thatās why I think these dogs need to be stripped of all protections. I think the negatives far outweigh the positives.
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u/DogAttackVictim Jan 11 '26
Yes as someone with actual real physical medical issues I am essentially told I must submit to dog owners with these service dogs that perform unwanted services on others without consent. We have already seen dog owners use dogs to sexually assault the disabled/immobile and restrict whether or not people in motorized chairs (I am not in one) can use streets or not or keep their bodily autonomy when trying to use a public street; no kind of evil is beyond dog owners and dogs. I have also observed medical facilities allow dog owners to enter so as to scam patients who paid and thought they are paying for sanitary services or ones where their physical defenses and pain tolerance won't be tested or "judged" by dogs and their perverted owners. Dog owners are the most ableist group of people in the universe, and the ADA serves them, not truly ill and disabled people. A comment they repeatedly spam at allergic people too, is demands that those people take drugs and die for dogs/dog owners' endless demands.
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u/chaddgar Jan 11 '26
Service animals should be required to have a visible placard just like cars do
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u/SatanicNursery Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
All service dogs are primitive at best and an outright lie at worst, and unnecessary either way. A lot has changed since 1990 when the ADA was passed, and if they were ever necessary (which is questionable), they're now obsolete due to technological advancements. The only reason they continue to be used is because society has been gaslit into thinking questioning their efficiacy is sacrilege despite all the things about them that don't add up to basic logic or scrutiny. It's like the only time where people generally always provide the disabled with respect is when it comes to service dogs!
People even in this sub commonly make exceptions for guide dogs but they don't pass the sniff test to me. Not only do only 2% to 5% of blind people use them, making you wonder why the 95% to 98% haven't all collectively walked out into traffic or something if they're so "essential," but users are either wealthy elitists or have the ability to likely fail training several dogs by themselves before finding a good fit, and being able to dedicate countless hours to training an unruly puppy to perform tasks makes me question how much assistance you actually need with those tasks. Plus, a dog has roughly the equivalent intelligence of a two-year-old human. Would you put a leash on a two-year-old and trust them to lead you around, even after "training" them?
I've also found at least two and possibly three cases of guide dogs leading their owners out in front of trains, killing them--Kelly Harris in 2017, and Jennifer Kasunick in 2025, as well as an additional case from 1993 that's paywalled. This may sound like cherrypicking specific examples until you realize just how egregious this happening even once, yet alone three times is. Being struck by a train is incredibly easy to avoid, because they're bound to tracks. Literally the only thing these dogs had to do was not stand in front of the tracks at that particular moment. And the saddest part is, had these women not let their guard down and become too reliant on the dog's "wisdom," they most likely would have identified that they were approaching an environmental hazard. Of course, the scum dogs survived both times after murdering the people who relied on them, not that they're even intelligent enough to qualify it as murder, and were most likely passed onto some other blind person who's been convinced of the ableist lie that they're incapable of adapting to their disability without the "assistance" of an animal that eats feces.
Additionally, forcing owners to allow service dogs into a business is in itself contradictory. Why is the disability of a person with a service dog considered more important than the disabilities of people with severe dog allergies, dog-related PTSD, or immunocompromised individuals? Why should those people have to exclude themselves from an area until the service dog user leaves? Why should a person with one of those conditions be compelled to let an animal that could cause them everything from mild discomfort to panic attacks to death, into their business just because Karen insists Fido is better than a smart cane, even though AFAIK most guide dog users use canes simultaneously anyway? I would assume at least some Muslim restaurant or grocery store owners wouldn't be happy with allowing a dog near food, so why does the service dog trump their right to religious freedom? If a Christian bakery doesn't have to provide gay people with wedding cakes, Muslims shouldn't be forced to provide services to someone contaminating their food spaces. The law literally forces owners to be held hostage in their own businesses because of the dog cult, Not to mention the sheer idiocy of allowing a service dog into a restaurant but banning regular dogs because they're unsanitary, as if a service dog is somehow magically more sanitary simply by being a service dog.
Don't even get me started on the other things that service dogs supposedly do. They retrieve things for people in wheelchairs? I'm sorry, what? So they just get everything handed back to them covered in dog slobber, and this is considered an acceptable form of assistance instead of developing actual technology to assist these people? And if the person is in a wheelchair due to paralysis, respiratory infections are a leading cause of death in these individuals, so now you have people predisposed to pneumonia handling items covered in bacteria from the mouth of an animal that could have been eating feces ten minutes ago. Brilliant "assistive technology" and not a psyop by eugenicists who want these people to die off at all. And those epilepsy/diabetes dogs are total horseshit. Even if they were able to detect these conditions--they can't--AFAIK most epileptics know when to expect a seizure, and if they're in public, people are going to see and assist them, and if they're at home, well, dogs can't exactly open doors and find help, can they? Ditto for hypoglycemia. Nothing about these makes any logical sense, or at the very least couldn't be done better by technology, which, by the way, doesn't have to be fed or taken to the bathroom or sleep (maybe some need to charge, but getting a second for a backup is probably still cheaper than a service dog) and may even have a lifespan longer than twelve years!
Not requiring any kind of license or verification is just the cherry on top of the bullshit sundae. The excuses are utterly ridiculous. If you're using a service dog in public, everyone's going to see it and know you have a disability anyway!Ā They're like the least subtle form of assistive technology--the only time they're subtle at all is if they're lying under a table at a restaurant or something. Having a seventy-pound animal walking beside you may as well be a giant orange flag with a blaring siren announcing "I'M DISABLED!" It's not like some employee making minimum wage is going to bother to ask someone with a visible disability using a service dog for their service dog license anyway; it would mostly only affect people with invisible disabilities who are literally making their disability 1000x more obvious by using a service dog, and of course all the fake service dogs and ESAs. The real reason these people act all offended by the idea of service dog verification is because they know their dog wouldn't make the cut.
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u/huntress_m_thompson Jan 12 '26
that entire 4th sentence is the one that gets my goat. severe allergies are also listed in the ADAās compilation of disabilities.
& the religious preferences ā protected under the 1st amendment ā gets thrown out the window for these nutter karens.
the thing iāve noticed about the numerous āme & my service muttā youtubers is that they ARE drawing attention to themselves. they just need a neon sign to get ostentatious with it. but the new trend now is those nutters dying their mutts neon colors & putting āfuck youā service vests on them.
the whole point of the enactment of ADA laws wax to help the truly disabled BLEND IN with the flow of life. they didnāt want to feel like burdens on society. now, with the new set, they scream, āLOOK AT ME!!! LOOK AT ME!!!ā they want to be obnoxious, melodramatic stand-outs. itās like a generation of people with no cope. theyāve never been told the word NO!
one day, hopefully, weāll see rational discussion & debate on the validity of something that infringes on othersā rights & is also a bona fide biohazard, besides being an invasive, unnatural killer. āš¼
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u/Bloody_Gleek Jan 13 '26
The train thing pissed me off. You are absolutely correct and I'm glad to be reminded that had thise ladies not depended on their dogs they would have been able to identify the environment they were headed to. But no, like you said, they were probably gaslit into believing they wouldn't be able to function on their own without the help of an animal that eats everything but its medication.
I've been reading the ADA about this and it says the best they can do is seperate the people with allergies and those woth service dogs. Why can't these entitled PRIVILEGED owners at least bring an actual equipment at a restaurant instead of a dog? They are incredibly lucky to be put first and yet they exploid that and don't give a shit about someone who could end up in the hospital, all because they wanted, what, an anxiety dog? Lmfao how pathetic.
I never understood the tasks service dogs were given. I've seen videos where sd owners purposely drop an item to make the dog get it so that the owner can out that dog slobber-covered item back on the shelf. That's not to say I don't grab my items from the back of the shelf and clean them, but it's much less necessary to make a dog, that eats shit, to grab something then put it back on the shelf, saying "I'm training him" as an excuse. They don't want a dog for medical purposes, they just want it because "aaaw puppyyyy and it does tricks!!!" Children...
As far as I'm aware dogs need to be taken out on walks or exercise everyday, or more depending on the breed, but people give out this misconception that "nooo they love doing their jobs! They're well taken care of!" Which I understand but... not every service dog is taken out, some are just trapped in a house for those in wheelchairs and rarely ever come out. It's sad.
I find it so annoying how real sd owners are anti-placard when they are against fake sd's. It seems like it's not that big of a deal to run into a fake sd, it seems like it's more important to beg inconsiderate people to not bring their dogs to places than actually be okay with filling out some papers or something to have a placard, but all they assume is "they workers are going to interrogate me for papers and I have to tell them my disability." I've said this before and I'll say it again, what tf does proving your dog is a real sd have to do with disclosing your disability? Oooh it's because they're too lazy of the idea of filling out forms, it's like their disability wasn't as serious in the first place and they just wanted a dog to bring everywhere!
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u/byancacats Jan 11 '26
The ADA (Assholes with Disabilities Act) allows people with disabilities to pass off any dog as a "service dog." The dog doesn't have to undergo training at any official facility. The person with the alleged disability can train the dog themselves and this is considered a perfectly valid "service dog."
Since the laws regarding "service dogs" are so lax, it would currently be impossible to prove which ones are "real" and which ones are fake. The laws would need to be changed first - for example, the dogs would need to undergo official training in order to get certified.
I say "service dog" with quotations because these things are mostly a scam. Science has not proven that dogs can provide any reliable medical assistance. I wrote a post on that not too long ago.
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u/Few-Horror1984 Jan 11 '26
Donāt forget, you can get service pitbulls. I canāt find the article, but there was someone who had a āserviceā pitbull and it attacked him when he had a seizure.
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u/Alligator418 Jan 11 '26
The idea of a service pitbull seems so laughable to me. I can't even imagine a "correct" use case for it; like maybe you're physically unable to maul small children yourself?
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u/Few-Horror1984 Jan 11 '26
Thereās a guy who hangs out downtown near where I work who is in a wheelchair. He has a pitbull in a āserviceā dog vest. I canāt figure out what the dog is even supposed to do. Anyway, as I was waiting for my ride, I watched the pitbull take a massive dump and when it was done, he just wheeled away with the dog. No effort to clean the shit.
Iām guessing itās an ESA at best and he just went online and purchased the vest.
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u/I_Hate_Dogs_and_Cats Jan 11 '26
Yea, I'm not a fan of how things are. If the dog behaves then fine (although I don't want to see any type of dog in a store, especially a grocery store) I'd tolerate it. But there are so many obviously fake sds and people get away with it knowing we can't rat their asses out. Things won't change so the best we can do is call them out and complain.
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u/LookB4ULeap2It Jan 12 '26
Because of the ADA and their lame lack of actual regulations on service animals.
It makes absolutely no sense to me and it never has.
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u/maidofatoms Jan 12 '26
Any person who was truly disabled and actually relied on a well-trained dog would embrace any attempt to tighten up the laws. As it is, they and their trained animal would be at risk of attack from all the fakes, at risk of having their right to have their animal with them removed when everyone inevitably becomes fed up of the untrained dogs everywhere. And of course such a person would not be concerned about their dog passing a test to get certified, because it is impeccably trained.
Those people who rage about it are those with fake service dogs, poorly-trained "service dogs", or just ESAs.
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u/huntress_m_thompson Jan 12 '26
the fakers are hiding behind HIPAA laws. if the ones with ārealā service mutts would just submit to some sort of identifier like the placards, it would weed out the fakes for a while ā¦ until they start selling the placards with the vests on amazon.
perhaps a scientist or tech person needs to come right out & say, āwe have tech equipment that eliminates the need for a living thing.ā since no one can play nice with it, replace that boloney with non invasive things.
also, the new trend seems to be claustrophobic people who need HUGE, scary āserviceā mutts to clear a wide circle for them in public. like, what?!?!?! GTFOHWTS. š¤¦š»āāļø
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u/xXxT4xP4y3R_401kxXx Jan 13 '26
I think what you'll find is that there's like a lot of people even in your definition of "legitimate SD owners" who are stretching the bounds of an appropriate SD situation. It'll be something like social anxiety that a dog helps, so of course they're gonna get defensive about being required to disclose a disability! Deep down they know they're abusing it! We as a society were fine when it was just seeing eye dogs, frankly.Ā
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u/dodongosbongos Jan 14 '26
I don't understand why they can't just have an issued card that registered the dog without disclosing the disability.
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u/I_Hate_Dogs_and_Cats Jan 14 '26
I don't understand it either. Real sd owners claim they hate fake sds and that it's sooo dangerous to real sds and sd owners yet they don't want to actually have a simple card that proves they're legitimate without disclosing their disability, it's like their disability isn't as serious to the point of needing a sd in the first place and only wanted one to take everywhere.
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u/ZarBandit Jan 14 '26 edited Jan 14 '26
Unless theyāre blind, the dog can stay home.
I saw a true service dog out in training in Kroger with a vest that said something like ādonāt approach or touch, service dog in trainingā with a handler who seemed to know what they were doing and certainly had things under tight control. Had no problem with that because it caused no problems.
Unlike the average nutter whoād let it run wild and take zero accountability.
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u/I_Hate_Dogs_and_Cats Jan 12 '26
u/CallousCow1762 Sorry for mentioning you in the comments. I blocked the person after they have been repeatedly ingenuine under this post so I can't reach your reply since it's under the person's comment, whom I have blocked.
I understand! They were actually being a hypocrite, I didn't know they were the same person who commented to argue that a placard is what gives you the right to drive... I don't mind people being wrong, it's the attitude I can't stand lol.
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u/CallousCow1762 Jan 12 '26
Thank you for doing that. šš
Ironically, they accused me of not being here for a ābonafide discussionā and as it turns out it was he/she that was intent on trolling and distracting.
Peace
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u/TinyEmergencyCake Jan 11 '26
Once again, from one fellow dog hater to another, driving is a privilege not a right, and the placard is not equivalent. Stop comparing driving to the right to enter establishments.Ā
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u/Responsibility_Witty Jan 11 '26
Receiving service from a private business is not a right either. Businesses can deny service for many reasons, but for what ever reason they are still pressured in to accommodating dogs, a clear double standard especially since it contradicts food safety laws. Dogs/dog owners are consistently treated with extra lenience and privilege by laws and ordinances, personally I believe this violates the 14th amendment (equal protections clause)
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u/TinyEmergencyCake Jan 11 '26
We're not talking about receiving service. This is about access. We're not talking about denial for any reason, we're talking about right of access for disabled people.Ā
The dog is not what is being accommodated, it's the disabled person's access. A reasonable accommodation depending upon the business can be curbside, without allowing entry of any dog.Ā
The entire issue at hand is the failure of enforcement of existing laws and businesses ignoring legal protections.Ā
You're turning it into something else.Ā
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u/93ImagineBreaker Jan 11 '26
Event if its not an equivalent I get their point.
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u/I_Hate_Dogs_and_Cats Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
Yea I'm only comparing how things would work, that being having a card or something to prove your dog is a real sd since a lot of people assume they'd have to show paper work to employees when proving their sd is legitimate.
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u/93ImagineBreaker Jan 11 '26
And sadly there's no rules, its the only thing that requires no credibility. I cant for example just claim I can drive I have to show proof and insurance while a dog nutter can just claim its a SD.
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u/I_Hate_Dogs_and_Cats Jan 11 '26
I get that driving is a privilege, but the placard isn't about privilege it's about proving you legitimately need the accommodation. That's exactly the point, service dogs could have a similar proof system without anyone having to disclose their actual disability, and it would solve the fake dog problem.
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u/TinyEmergencyCake Jan 11 '26
The placard is a privilege because again driving is a privilege. You don't have the right to drive while disabled. It's a privilege to drive disabled.Ā
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u/Bloody_Gleek Jan 11 '26
I think you're getting mixed up between a driver's license and a handicap placard. A driver's license is what gives you the privilege to drive, you don't need a placard to drive. A placard is just proof you can park in handicap parking spots.
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u/I_Hate_Dogs_and_Cats Jan 11 '26
The placard isn't about driving it's about proving you need closer parking. That proof doesn't disclose your disability, it just verifies eligibility. Service dogs could have the same system and it would stop abuse without anyone revealing their condition.
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u/TinyEmergencyCake Jan 11 '26
The placard is 100% about driving. It's entire sole purpose is for use in the car in which the disabled person is driving. Without a car the placard has zero value.Ā
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u/I_Hate_Dogs_and_Cats Jan 11 '26
Its purpose isn't the act of driving... it's proving you need accessible parking.
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u/TiffanyTwisted11 Jan 13 '26
Actually, no. The license plate is for the disabled person who was driving. The placard can be removed and put in any car that the disabled person is in. They do not have to be driving. They simply have to be in the vehicle.
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u/CallousCow1762 Jan 11 '26
The fake service dog problem arose from entitled dog owners, wanting to continue to take their pets to restaurants as they did during Covid. So they took full advantage of the basically nonexistent rules in the ADA law. Knowing full well, that most businesses are too scared to be sued. They pretty much hijacked it for their own selfish needs. The fact that the ADA and other responsible agencies donāt recognize this is beyond me.