Assistance dog

An assistance dog is a dog that receives specialized training to aid an individual with a disability in navigating everyday life. Many assistance dogs receive training from a handler (who is often aided by a professional trainer) or from an assistance dog organization.

'Assistance dog' is the internationally established term for a dog that provides assistance to a disabled person and is task-trained to help mitigate the handler's disability. In the United States, assistance dogs are also commonly referred to as 'service dogs'.

Assistance dogs are to not be confused with emotional support animals, which are generally not protected by the same laws and typically have little to no training compared to an assistance or service dog.

Distinctive features
For a dog to be considered an assistance dog, they must meet the following criteria:

Individual countries and regions will have specific laws and regulations, with these international criteria having broad recognition across the globe.
 * 1) The dog's handler must meet the legal definition of disability in a specific country or region.
 * 2) The dog must be specifically trained to mitigate the handler's disability in some way: e.g. opening doors, detecting high blood sugar or allergens and notifying of such, alerting to a ringing phone, and assisting those who are visually or mobility impaired.
 * 3) The dog must be docile and well-behaved, as well as clean and healthy.

Training process
Assistance dogs have traditionally been trained by charities and other organizations, who then partner a disabled person with a trained dog when the dog has completed its training program. Increasingly, more disabled people are self-training their assistance dogs, whereby the disabled person selects their dog (often referred to as a 'prospect'). There is great variability in the training that any future assistance dog receives, but all assistance dog candidates go through certain stages.

Dog selection
Assistance dog candidates are generally selected with care for appropriate health, temperament, and characteristics. Large established organizations such as The Guide Dogs for the Blind select and maintain their breeding stock to ensure healthy pups with desirable traits.

The first period of a prospect's life as a puppy is normally spent in socialization rather than formal training. Some organizations often use puppy foster parents during the pups' first year, so the prospect grows up in a normal family environment surrounded by the sights, sounds, and smells they will later work in to make them more effective.

Task training
Once a puppy is old enough, they will commence their specialist training, which will include training in work and/or tasks. The tasks that an assistance dog prospect will learn all depend on the disabilities that their current or future handler has, and there is therefore almost no limit on the types of tasks a dog can be trained to. These may vary from picking up dropped items and taking laundry out of a washing machine to interrupting self-harming behaviors to providing deep-pressure therapy for an autistic person. At the same time as learning their unique tasks to support their handler, an assistance dog candidate needs to learn how to be well-behaved, and polite and to present acceptably in public. Many owner-trainer support groups recommend following established dog obedience schemes such as the Kennel Club Bronze, Silver, and Gold obedience training programs to gain a high and dependable recognized standard of obedience and behavior followed by the Public Access Test, which evaluates a dog's ability to behave appropriately in public, and in places not normally deemed pet friendly where a person may enter with an assistance dog, such as a supermarket or restaurant.

Types
In the United States, assistance dogs fall into two broad categories: service dogs and facility dogs. State and local governments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations that serve the public generally must allow service animals to accompany people with disabilities in all areas of the facility where the public is normally allowed to go. Facility dogs are used by working professionals to aid multiple people. Therapy dogs, a subset of facility dogs, are specifically trained to provide emotional support, affection, and comfort to individuals in various settings, such as hospitals, nursing homes, schools, and disaster relief areas. These dogs play a crucial role in improving mental health, reducing stress, and creating a sense of well-being among the people they interact with.

Common examples of assistance dogs include: Common examples of facility dogs include:
 * Guide dogs assist the blind and the visually impaired. They are often called by the name of the training charity, often either guide dogs or seeing-eye dogs.
 * Hearing dogs, or signal dogs, help the deaf and hard of hearing.
 * Mental health assistance dogs respond to mental health crises and distress often using pressure or distraction, or in some cases (usually PTSD) by keeping other people away.
 * Mobility assistance dogs
 * Medical response dogs
 * Seizure response dogs
 * Psychiatric service dogs
 * Autism Assistance dogs
 * Courthouse facility dogs are typically handled by professionals working in the legal system. They are often used to assist crime victims, witnesses, and others during legal proceedings.
 * Facility dogs in educational settings are usually handled by special education teachers to facilitate interaction with the students.
 * Facility dogs in healthcare environments are typically handled by physical therapists, psychologists, and other healthcare professionals to facilitate recovery and symptom management for patients.

Similarities and differences between facility dogs and therapy dogs
Since both may aid people in similar settings such as healthcare environments, facility dogs are often mistakenly called therapy dogs; however, there are several important distinctions between them. Facility dogs are trained by accredited assistance dog organizations and therapy dogs are trained by their owners. Facility dogs may be handled by a wide variety of working professionals, while therapy dogs must be handled by their owners.

Facility dogs are trained by canine professionals or by their owner for a period of 18 to 24 months and must pass very rigorous tests before graduating from an assistance dog organization. In contrast, registration for therapy dogs by a therapy dog organization does not require enrollment in obedience classes or therapy dog classes, meaning that therapy dogs often undergo a much less rigorous training process. Furthermore, the tests that therapy dogs must pass are less complicated and challenging than those taken by facility dogs.

A person with either a therapy dog or a facility dog must have permission from the facilities they visit before they can enter with their animal. They do not have the right to demand access to places where pets are not generally permitted or to have fees associated with their pets waived.

Under the Americans with Disability Act, there is no formal certification, or registration required for a dog to become an Assistance Dog.