Service/Assistance or Emotional Support Animal Question

[Sideways]

My dog will bark. But it’s not where he starts, it’s what he escalates to.

In safety/threat situations, like at the park, he’ll move his body sideways between me and the perceived threat, front them if they continue at me, and then let off a bark if that still hasn’t stopped them (and I haven’t cottoned on that he’s telling me it’s time to go).

It’s usually just a single bark, but yeah, he’s still a dog, and if someone is menacing us (which would happen regularly at my last place) he’ll bark at them continuously until they or I leave. And I reckon you’d be hard pressed to find someone who would complain about that, given its always a situation where the person is openly aggressive towards me.

There are other situations where a bark is his first level of alert. I know that if I’m asleep and there’s a safety threat (person approaching), he goes straight to a bark.

In other situations, he uses other alerts. For example, if I’m asleep and he needs to pee and I haven’t put out his potty? He starts by just sitting there and staring at me (which is actually a bit creepy!), and will escalate that to actually tapping his foot on the mattress, which I usually hear regerberating through my pillow. Failing that? He’ll resort to crying, which always wakes me. I rekcon he’d bark at least once if that failed.

There’s a whole heap of ways that dogs alert, either naturally or with training. With my dog, his natural ways of alerting me work just fine, so I haven’t needed to modify his behaviour, just learn his body language.

For a lot of people, in an array of situations, it may be appropriate for a dog to alert by barking.

But if you have a dog who is just barking a lot? They probably need more work before becoming a SD. Dogs don’t tend to bark for no reason, yeah? So if a dog is barking a lot, are they distressed? Anxious? Bored? Frightened? Over-stimulated? All of those things are going to prevent a dog from doing their job properly.

It’s certainly not the case here in Australia that if an a Assistance Dog happens to bark, that’s automatically an issue. It depends on the individual situation.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

It’s certainly not the case here in Australia that if an a Assistance Dog happens to bark, that’s automatically an issue. It depends on the individual situation.

I think it does here too. It's certianly not in the law anywhere. "Misbehaving" and "out of control" and barking? Depends on the situation. The law says that an out of control dog can be asked to leave. A controled bark? Not out of control. Hense, controled bark.

But, that said, it can escalate a public access issue super fast. Or cause one. Do you want to deal with public access issues all the time? I don't.

So, I made the decison early in that this would be at home only controled barks. But, I also learned what I needed to snap me out of disocciation and used a bark and then used a jump up alert and jump up alert worked a hell of a lot better then a bark. But, for others? It's all in what you need really.

Balancing with being as out of the way and invisable in public as possible with what you need. Personally anyway.