Enforced Charity

From Service Dog Training

Most service dog schools have one thing in common…they are supported by the charitable contributions of people without disabilities. In some cases contributions are made directly to the school, and in others the contributions are made to the individual who will be receiving the service dog and then sent on to the school.

The current trend in the disability community is a concerted effort to portray people with disabilities as independent and thus employable. The employment rates of people with disabilities are abysmal, not in small part due to the general public’s perception of people with disabilities as being recipients of charity, not as employees or coworkers. This skewed perception is fostered by the fundraising efforts of disability service organizations, including service dog schools, which ask for funding based on the idea that people with disabilities cannot have independence without service dogs, and cannot have service dogs without donations from the able-bodied public.

This places people with disabilities in the unfortunate position of being forced to be recipients of charity when they may not actually need it. If, instead, service dog schools would ask the recipients of their dogs to provide a substantial portion of the funding for their dogs, the recipient would be held to a much higher standard of responsibility that would reflect well on the individual’s ability to provide for themselves and to function as an independent adult. Service dogs are expensive though, and this would require programs to make some changes to the way they run their programs. The first would be to establish a payment program. Very few people can afford to pay outright the amount of money that service dog schools claim their dogs cost to train. The school would need to work with each handler to determine what they can afford and work out an appropriate payment schedule. Schools should not encourage their handlers to beg for money or request donations, but rather learn to budget their own money effectively. Financial aid could be offered to those who need it, in the amount they need. This would allow those who need financial assistance to get the help they need without assuming that all service dog handlers need to have their dogs paid for with charitable donations.

The other change would be in how service dog schools solicit donations. It is unreasonable at this point to assume that most schools could survive based only on the payments of the recipients of the dogs. However, advertising campaigns that seek donations should focus on the autonomy and choice of the service dog user and not on giving poor cripples a chance at a semi-normal life by giving them a dog.

While changing the ways service dog schools interact with their clients would not change the public’s perception of people with disabilities by itself, it would be a step in the right direction and certainly better than simply accepting the status quo.

--Tiffany Huggard-Lee 20:02, 8 August 2009 (CDT)