H.R. 4378

From Service Dog Training

Granting Rights to Certified Service Animal Trainers

Recently, Rep. Larry Kissell proposed House Resolution 4378, which supports an amendment to the ADA that would grant certified service animal trainers public access with service animals in training. The full text of the bill can be found here.

I have two main problems with this legislation, one philosophical, the other more practical.

Philosophically, I have a problem with anything besides civil rights protection for people with disabilities included in the ADA. The disability community fought very hard for this legislation to protect the rights of people with disabilities to have equal access to public places, transportation services, and competitive employment. Adding protections for non-disabled service providers weakens the impact of the ADA and opens the door for other amendments that would further weaken the ADA. If service dog trainers are covered in the ADA, what is there to prevent laws regarding people who repair wheelchairs, or provide personal care services? While these things may in fact require laws and regulation, the civil rights legislation that protects people with disabilities is not the place to put it.

Practically, I feel the fact that this resolution limits trainer access to trainers certified by accredited schools not only unfairly limits public access to a small group of trainers who are not substantively superior to other trainers, it may be the beginning of a slippery slope towards restricting who can train service animals in the United States. Currently, access rights for trainers are determined by state or local law, some states protect all trainers, including owner-trainers, others protect school-affiliated trainers, and some (though increasingly few) don’t have legislation on the issue at all. If a person is training a service animal and they are not covered for public access under their state law, that person is responsible for working with public places to find suitable areas where the dog can practice in public. Speaking as both a service dog user and trainer, I can say that I have never once had a public accommodation tell me I couldn’t enter with a dog in training. In addition, I am not aware of any substantial and widespread issues with service animals training in public. This legislation seems to have come largely out of nowhere.

The certification and accreditation statements in this resolution bother me. This seems to be establishing a hierarchy for service dogs, at least in the training stage, where dogs being trained by certified trainers from accredited schools are considered more worthy of training in public than dogs being trained by owner trainers or non-accredited schools. This could be a problem, especially given how few schools would meet these criteria. The reality is that there is really only one organization 'accrediting' non-guide service dog schools, and that is Assistance Dogs International. ADI also accredits guide dog schools, and many guide dog schools are also accredited by the International Guide Dog Federation. If we look at how many service dog schools exist, only a very small percentage of these schools are accredited by any organization. As far as certification of trainers, only California currently certifies trainers at all, and they only certify guide dog trainers. Accredited schools who 'certify' their own trainers do so on their own judgment, there is no standardized methodology for determining if someone is qualified to be a service dog trainer. Further, the assumption that because a school is accredited by someone, it must be better dog, is just that, a baseless assumption. While my views about ADI are a topic for a later post, it is safe to say that the dogs produced from these programs are no better than dogs coming from non-accredited schools or owner trainers, and in many cases they are worse. If public accommodations think that dogs being trained by accredited schools will be better behaved in public, they will be very disappointed.

In addition, if such a hierarchy is established for dogs in training, it doesn’t seem to be much of a leap to see this hierarchy eventually extended to other protections for service dog users, including the most basic right of public access. I think at this point it is best that access for dogs in training be left for states to determine and individual schools and trainers to negotiate with public accommodations.

--Tiffany Huggard-Lee 09:27, 2 January 2010 (CST)