Many of us may think a “service dog” as a “seeing eye dog” that assists a person with blindness. There are many animals beside dogs that help people with many different types of disabilities. The following is a glossary from the Disability Law Resource Project.

Dog Guide, or Seeing Eye® Dog is a carefully trained dog that serves as a travel tool for persons with severe visual impairments or who are blind. There is a trend to train miniature horses for this assistance task because of their long life span (20+ years in some cases).

Hearing, or Signal Dog is a dog that has been trained to alert a person with significant hearing loss or who is deaf when a sound, e.g., knocks on the door, occurs.

Service Dog/Animal is a dog, or other animal, that has been trained to assist a person who has a mobility or health impairment. Types of duties the dog may perform include carrying, fetching, opening doors, ringing doorbells, activating elevator buttons, steadying a person while walking, helping a person up after the person falls, etc. Service animals are sometimes generically called assistance animals. Recently, Capuchin monkeys and miniature pot-bellied pigs have been trained to fulfill a variety of highly skilled service animal tasks.

SsigDog is a dog trained to assist a person with autism. The dog alerts the partner to distracting repetitive movements common among those with autism, allowing the person to stop the movement (e.g., hand flapping). A person with autism may have problems with sensory input and need the same support services that a dog might provide to a person who is blind or deaf.

Seizure Response Dog is a dog trained to assist a person with a seizure disorder. How the dog serves the person depends on the person's needs. The dog may stand guard over the person during a seizure, or the dog may go for help. A few dogs have somehow learned to predict a seizure and warn the person in advance.

Therapy Animals are not legally defined by federal law, but some states have laws defining therapy animals. These animals provide people with therapeutic contact, but are not limited to working with people who have disabilities. They are usually the personal pets of their handlers (who may be therapists, physicians, rehabilitation professionals) and work with their handlers to provide services to others. Federal laws have no provisions for people to be accompanied by therapy animals in places of public accommodation that have "no pets" policies. Therapy animals usually are not service animals.

Companion/Emotional Support Animals assist people with mental or emotional disabilities, who use the assistance of this type of animal to function independently. This type of assistance animal has the most tenuous legal status, and as a concept it is hard, if not impossible, to differentiate them from the role of pet.

From the Disability Law Resource Project, a program of ILRU (Independent Living Research Utilization), at TIRR in Houston, Texas. Please see full text at www.dlrp.org/html/publications/ebulletins/legal/jan2001.html.

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