Those of you familiar with Saint Francis Service Dogs know that service dogs are a type of assistance dog. Assistance dogs are dogs that are professionally trained to help people with disabilities. They are trained to perform specific tasks that directly mitigate someone’s disability, thereby making the world a safer and easier place to navigate.
Assistance dogs are permitted to go with their partners anywhere the public is allowed to go. Traditionally, this category includes service dogs, guide dogs, and hearing dogs. Now this classification has expanded to include seizure response dogs, diabetic alert dogs, psychiatric service dogs, and autism service dogs, among others.
At Saint Francis, we provide service dogs to people with a variety of physical and developmental disabilities, including autism, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, rheumatoid arthritis, brain injuries, amputations, paralysis, and many other conditions.
Facility Dogs are professionally trained dogs that assist professionals in hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, schools, and courthouses. At Saint Francis, our facility dogs learn all of the same skills as our service dogs, and they use these skills to serve many people at their places of work.
These dogs work as staff members, and use their training and skills to advance the goals of the institutions they serve. This may mean working with patients in physical therapy, helping patients to walk or build strength or recover fine motor skills. It may mean providing therapeutic pressure or interrupting stemming behaviors in a school for children with autism. It may mean standing motionless with their head in the lap of a victim testifying in court, providing steadfast comfort without disrupting the proceedings in any way.
Unlike service dogs, facility dogs do not have legal right to any public space outside of the facility in which they work.
Emotional Support Dogs and other animals have experienced an explosion in popularity. These calm, well-mannered companion animals are prescribed by a mental health professional for a patient with a diagnosed psychological disorder, like anxiety disorder, panic attacks or major depression.
They may or may not be professionally trained. Emotional Support Dogs do not have any legal right to access in public spaces, although they may be exempt from prohibitions against pets in apartments.
Therapy Dogs are well-mannered companion dogs that are often used to provide comfort to people in hospitals, nursing homes, schools, and disaster areas. These dogs help multiple people throughout their workday; they do not solely provide comfort to their handlers.
They may be certified by a therapy dog organization, but they do not have any legal right to access in public spaces, and they go into the places they visit by invitation only. They are usually not trained to perform any specific tasks, but must have a calm, loving disposition.
The list continues to grow in the professions that dogs have available to them. In addition to the types of working dogs we have talked about here, there are also:
- Detection Dogs
- Guard Dogs
- Military Working Dogs
- Police Dogs
- Sled Dogs
- Search and Rescue Dogs
- Herding Dogs
– to name a few! As we learn more about the capacity of dogs to do amazing things, like anticipate seizures, sniff out cancer – and even COVID – we can expect to see dogs filling more roles in our lives. It will be exciting to watch as dogs reaffirm once again their claim to the title of man’s best friend.
