PTSD recovery made easier with help of service dog, says one veteran
Anthony Certa is a military veteran living with PTSD. He says his black English Labrador service dog helps his mental health in more ways than one.
Service dogs can be 4-legged lifesavers, alerting to dangerous allergens, assisting with travel and making people with a wide range of disabilities safer.
But fake service dogs are taking a bite out of real service dogs’ credibility, exacerbating the challenges that people with disabilities who rely on service animals already face, advocates say. Fake service dogs are poorly trained or untrained animals falsely passed off by individuals trying to access restricted places or benefits.
Thousands of grocers and shop owners now prohibit any animals, including legitimate service dogs, from entering their stores. That’s because of incidents where fraudulent service animals have “urinated on expensive furnishings, contaminated food, bitten staff, and driven away paying customers,” according to Canine Companions for Independence, a nonprofit service dog organization headquartered in Santa Rosa, California.
About two-thirds of service dog users say the poorly trained or untrained dogs have negatively impacted their independence and quality of life, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the organization.
“Service dog fraud and poorly trained service dogs pose a widespread and serious problem regardless of location and have a powerful negative impact on legitimate service dog teams,” Canine Companions for Independence said in a white paper.
Service dogs aren’t required to complete a specific, national certification, according to the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. People may also struggle to acquire the animals: They can come at significant expense and aren’t necessarily covered by insurance.
The ADA National Network defines service dogs as those specially trained to perform tasks for people with physical, intellectual or mental disabilities. Such dogs are “more than just a vest,” according to Assistance Dogs International, explaining on its website that such dogs offer “expert training, crucial socialization and years of task-based independence to people with disabilities.”
Fake service dogs undermine freedom and safety, advocates say
Nearly 93% of respondents to the Canine Companions survey said they had encountered “fake, questionable or uncontrolled service dogs,” while 79% reported uncontrolled dogs snapping at, biting or interfering with their service dogs.
The survey was distributed to 60 organizations accredited by Assistance Dogs International throughout North America, Europe and Oceania. More than 1,500 service-dog users responded, making the study of assistance-dog fraud the organization’s largest to date.
Even if a person with a disability hasn’t encountered one of the untrained or poorly trained animals in day-to-day life, it can still have a ripple effect. Skepticism about service dogs among business owners and others makes legitimate users less inclined to take service dogs out in public, the group said in its report.
“If a service dog user feels they will be denied access or that there are more poorly trained service dogs in public, they may opt to avoid public places with their service dog,” the organization said. “This ostensibly has an impact on the service dog user’s independence and quality of life if doors are being shut, figuratively, before service dog teams even leave their homes.”
According to NEADS World Class Service Dogs, based in Princeton, Massachusetts, properly trained service dogs can offer clients “life-changing emotional support and enable them to navigate the world more safely and confidently.”
NEADS, formerly known as National Education for Assistance Dog Services, agreed that fraudulent service dogs are a growing problem in the U.S. The Canine Companions survey, the group said in a 2023 statement, shows not only the frequency of fake service dog encounters but also demonstrates “how significantly they are undermining feelings of independence, quality of life and potentially even the safety of clients with legitimate service dogs.”
According to Canine Companions, loopholes in the Americans with Disabilities Act have enabled scammers to exploit the system. The group last year said it hopes to persuade lawmakers to add definitive language to the act that addresses service dog representation, making it “crystal-clear that misrepresentation of a disability for personal gain – including the use of a service dog – is against the law.”
The group sought to gather 2,500 public signatures on an online petition calling for an end to service dog scams. As of April 13, 2025, a little more than 2,600 people had signed the document.
Not just advocates
One of the latest local efforts on legitimate service dogs comes from Massachusetts state Rep. Kimberly Ferguson. She proposed legislation on April 1 that would create a 17-member commission to explore tougher regulation of service animals in the state.
If created, the commission would have until April 2026 to file a report assessing the prevalence of fraudulent service dogs statewide and whether prohibition or penalization of such fraud is necessary. It would also examine the feasibility of requiring service animals to be certified, registered or licensed.
Massachusetts is one of 16 states without a “true ban” on fraudulent representation of pets as service animals, according to the Animal Legal and Historical Center at Michigan State University in East Lansing. A handful of those states still specifically prohibit misrepresentation of service animals in housing situations.
Contributing: Phaedra Trethan, USA TODAY
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