What is a Service Dog?

What is a Service Dog?

According to the American  with Disabilities Act (ADA), “A service animal is defined as a dog that has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability. The task(s) performed by the dog must be directly related to the person’s disability.” If the dog does not match this definition then it is not a service dog. In short,  A service dog is a dog that helps a person with tasks that they might not be able to do themselves due to a certain disability.

You are probably wondering, why a dog? Why not a cat? Well, dogs and humans together go back ages. Dogs have been a part of human lives for an extremely long time. Dogs were the first pets to be domesticated, therefore, it makes them to be our first pet. No one quite knows when dogs exactly started to be “man's best friend”. Researchers agree that dogs did come from wolves, but no one knows when this happened. A study in 2016 stated that dogs originated from two individual wolf populations, one located in Europe, and the other in Asia. This shows that there were two separate times of domestication, both almost about 20,000 years ago. Then, a DNA study conducted in July 2017 proved something different. After they traced the rate of mutations in dogs genomes the results showed that dogs actually were separated from wolves about 40,000 years ago. Both of these studies prove that dogs are the first domesticated animals. Times changed and now there are at least 525 million dogs on the planet.

Still, our history with dogs doesn't answer the question, why dogs? Well, if you think about it, Service Dogs have many different jobs, some include seeing-eye dogs that help their blind handlers or Service Dogs that help their owners who are in wheelchairs. Dogs help their owners across busy streets or down an alley.Every dog has the potential to be a service dog, but certain breeds do better in different areas then others.