You have a dog you trained and you slapped a service dog vest on. Is your service dog real or fake?
This is the great controversy that should have regulation surrounding it. If you have a “trained” dog that goes one way when you go another, cowers in fear when you go out into the world, stands along the counter to sniff produce or grocery products, you have to pull the leash in the direction you are walking, wants to walk up to strangers to say hello, or worse gets aggressive towards people walking by you, your dog is not a service dog. Of course this is not a comprehensive list of expectations for service dogs.
In this case, your dog is a pet that had a vest slapped on for your own comfort and you should be asked to leave at every store you walk into. People need reliable service dogs. There is a real need in this world today. However, service dogs should be obedient trained to perform at a high level and provide at least one service because they are now interacting with the public world wherever you go.
If your dog is not highly trained, you are risking the welfare of everyone else around you. The question we get a lot is, “What if I can’t afford your services?”. Our response is to not give up in self training. Many treat trainers say spend 10 minutes a day, but that is not realistic. You want to spend double the amount of time a treat training dog trainer spent training their own dog so you can rely on improved results for the service you need. Just remember they are full time dog trainers so they spend a lot of time on their own dog because that is their full time job. They just don’t market it that way. The other thing we recommend is to shop around for a dog trainer who is more cost friendly. We very much understand that everyone has different budgets in this world.
We appreciate you wanting us as your first choice but as a business we also have cost and overhead to cover for the extensive work we do. If we win the lottery one day, we would consider providing a lower cost for service dog work alone because we know people need help. Until then, we still need to cover the extensive work and time we put into each dog.
Your service dog is to serve you. You are not meant to serve your service dog. Train them up. Consider our lower cost packages. Those packages still give you great performance and a huge edge over needing much more. Love your dog but remember your dog is to serve you and should always be ready to work once that service vest goes on. Please don’t give up if you need to self train.
You have to work harder than everyone else but We Believe in You.
