Ethical Dog Owners - Do You Google "Are Dogs Allowed in...?"

Source: Kevin Bennett/Chocolate Lab

For those of us who struggle with the guilt of not being able to bring our dogs everywhere, this story is frustrating on a number of levels. My 6-year-old chocolate lab is adorable, clean, healthy, and well-trained. However, he is not officially licensed as a service dog or therapy dog. As such, he cannot go with us when we go out to restaurants, shops, movies, or the mall. Millions of caring and responsible dog owners are in the same situation.

Recently, 19 states have enacted legislation cracking down on people who try to disguise their pets as service animals. The movement has been picking up steam in these states partly from biting incidents involving counterfeit human helpers.

Anyone can purchase an inexpensive faux “service animal” vest online. Although it may seem cute and harmless, it works, in the long run, to give legitimate service dogs a bad name. The American Humane Association reports 20,000 service dogs working in the U.S. These animals are granted access to businesses, hotels, and restaurants because they are trained to perform critical tasks for persons with disabilities. These amazing four-legged assistants help people who have problems with vision, hearing, wheelchairs, mobility, seizures, autism, mental illness, and more.

Costumes and Personas

Halloween is the perfect Jungian holiday. Even if you are unimpressed by the scientific merit of Carl Jung’s theory, there is something intriguing about the notion of persona and the darker side of personality.

Jung and his followers embraced a brand of personality based on the idea that we all wear dual purpose masks. A mask can serve to make a carefully designed and specific impression upon others. “This is what I want you to see.” On the other hand, we use masks to conceal the true nature of the individual. “My true self is under here and it may not be all that pretty—this is what I will allow you to see.” Halloween offers a social and cultural excuse to let our dark side out for an evening; to let the rest of the world see the side of ourselves we normally go to great lengths to conceal.

Apparently, the dark side of persona extends into the realm of pet costumes for some of us—and not just on Halloween. Putting a “Service Dog at Work” vest on your untrained pet is really exploiting what is best about people; you are taking advantage of people’s tendency to express empathy to those in need.

Source: Mike Levin/Flickr

Licensing and Training

A big part of the issue stems from the fact that we have no way of telling a normal dog from a real service animal. Business owners, as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), can only ask two questions: is the dog required because of a disability and what tasks is the animal trained to perform? Demanding documentation for the dog is illegal, as is asking about the type of disability the owner has.

Free-Riding Dog Owners

The problem of imitation service dogs is another version of free-riding, a classic social psychology principle defined as "enjoying the benefits of a good without paying for it." Placing a spurious handicap sticker on your car is another example. Most of us have a strong desire to be good citizens and human beings; false labeling takes advantage of those ideals. Training a service dog takes a great deal of money, time, and energy—all valuable resources that can be saved by the free-rider who spends $12 on a forged pet coat.

On a broader level, free-riding reflects the behavioral tendency to sidestep responsibility, especially when the negative effects of doing so do not have an immediate and direct impact.