youngnoblewoman:

servicedoodle:

lumpatronics:

SERVICE DOG PSA

So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)

I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up

If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help

Don’t get scared, don’t get annoyed, follow the dog! If it had been an emergency situation, I could have vomited and choked, I could have hit my head, I could have had so many things happen to me. We’re going to update his training so if the first person doesn’t cooperate, he moves on, but seriously guys. If what’s-his-face could understand that lassie wanted him to go to the well, you can figure out that a dog in a vest proclaiming it a service dog wants you to follow him

I know of one person who has a card attached to the vest the dog can reach around and grab. He then takes the card that says follow me, they need help etc. to someone so they know the situation.

Maybe something like that could be possible?

Or even a patch that says If I’m alone, follow me. Something like that.

Sadly not everyone knows or understands how service dogs work, so maybe something to help the general public get it would be helpful

I think lack of education is a big issue, since I had been taught *never* to interact with service dogs, if I was approached by a lone service dog when I was young, I’d probably have done my very best to ignore the dog under the mistaken belief that paying attention to it would be interfering with its job of helping its human. I genuinely didn’t learn that service dogs sometimes were actually *supposed* to interact with other people until I was in my 20′s and at an event where I roomed with someone with a medical alert dog and she explained to me that in an emergency he’d probably get me.