History of Service Dogs (original) (raw)

On October 31, 2016, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools, a case that grew out of a Michigan school district’s refusal to allow a girl with cerebral palsy to attend grade school with a service dog named Wonder. The question presented to the Supreme Court was whether the family had failed to exhaust administrative remedies that might have resulted in the school system changing its position. The family felt this administrative route would not be successful, and instead filed a claim with the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, where they obtained a favorable ruling. They then sought money damages from the school system in federal district court, and on appeal in the Sixth Circuit, but were denied relief in both courts. In the Sixth Circuit, however, a dissent by Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey looked through the procedural issue and discussed the girl’s need for the service dog. When the U.S. Supreme Court accepted jurisdiction in the matter, the parties to the dispute and most of the amicus briefs focused on the procedural exhaustion issue on which the two lower courts had based their rulings. My clients, four organizations involved in the training of and advocacy for service dogs, wanted to be sure that the Supreme Court could, if any of the Justices became so inclined, delve into the service dog aspects of the matter as Judge Daughtrey had done in the Sixth Circuit. They, and I, thought it possible that a dissent or concurrence might consider whether the girl’s need for the dog could be a separate basis for resolving the dispute in the family’s favor. This did not happen, perhaps in part because the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Sixth Circuit, allowing the family to go forward with a suit for damages. I post the brief I submitted on behalf of Psychiatric Service Dog Partners and three other organizations here because it may be of interest to researchers investigating the psychological and social benefits of service dogs so that they can see how their studies have significance in a legal context. There are related areas of research that I could not go into, and many relevant papers that I could not cite, because a brief of this sort is constricted by Supreme Court rules to 9,000 words of text and I was only a few words shy of the maximum. (Failure to stay under the word count means the brief will not be filed and the Justices will not read it.) This brief and the others filed in the case, the three decisions and other documents relevant to the history of the dispute, can be found on the Supreme Court’s blog site, Scotusblog, at http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/fry-v-napoleon-community-schools/. Although the Supreme Court did not consider the service dog aspects of Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools, there are a great many more service dogs in the country now than there were nine years ago when I began working and writing in this area. There are also more legal disputes involving these specially trained dogs and in time one of these disputes is likely to work its way up to the Supreme Court. When that happens, those who have service dogs, and those of us who work with such people and their dogs one way or another, must hope that the Court will recognize the importance these animals are coming to have in American life.

Abstract Introduction As interest in Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) grows, there is increasing need to differentiate informal activities from formal and professionally directed therapies, including mental health focussed Canine-Assisted Psychotherapy (CAP). There have been no reviews focusing exclusively on CAP and the distinct developmental period of adolescence. The aims of this study were to identify the characteristics of CAP interventions, their impacts and their acceptability, tolerability and feasibility for adolescents with mental health disorders. Method A systematic review identified studies incorporating canines into mental health treatments for adolescents aged 10–19 years. Studies reporting qualitative or quantitative psychological or psychosocial outcomes were included. Results Seven studies were scrutinised. Intervention characteristics varied, including a range of formats, settings, locations, doses, and facilitators. Information on the role of the canines in sessions was sparse. CAP had a positive impact on primary diagnoses and symptomatology, conferring additional benefits to standard treatments for internalising disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, and equivalent effects for anxiety, anger and externalising disorders. CAP was associated with positive impacts on secondary factors including increased engagement and socialisation behaviours, and reductions in disruptive behaviours within treatment sessions. Global functioning also improved. There was insufficient evidence that CAP improved factors associated with self-esteem, subjective wellbeing, or coping. Good attendance and retention rates indicated high levels of acceptability. Moderate to high tolerability was also indicated. Feasibility may be limited by additional training and logistical requirements. Recommendations We recommend the development of theoretically informed, standardised (manualised) intervention protocols that may subsequently form the basis of efficacy and effectiveness testing. Such protocols should clearly describe canine-participant-facilitator interactions via a formalised nomenclature; spontaneous (animal-led), adjunctive (facilitator-led), and experiential (participant-led). Conclusions There is emerging evidence to suggest that CAP improves the efficacy of mental health treatments in self-selected adolescent populations via reductions in primary symptomatology, and via secondary factors that improve therapeutic processes and quality, such as engagement and retention.

In this chapter, I explore mainstream culture's ambivalent relationship to our dependence on animals, particularly the animals in our homes, by turning to discussions at the intersection of disability studies and animal studies. Critically revisiting the debate between some from disability studies (Eva Kittay and Licia Carlson) and some from animal studies (Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan), over the comparative moral status of animals with higher IQs and some severely mentally disabled people, points to problems with the very framework of the debate. Furthermore, comparisons between supposedly non-rational human beings and non-rational animals—so called " marginal cases " —continue to vex both utilitarian (Singer and McMahan) and Kantian (Cheshire Calhoun and Christine Korsgaard) approaches to animal ethics, as well as disability studies. Here, spelling out some of the problems with both of these mainstream approaches to questions of animal ethics, I propose the need for an alternative approach to questions of both animals and disabled persons. Drawing on postmodernist resources, including Jacques Derrida's writings on the human/animal opposition, Cary Wolfe's Derridean-inspired analysis of posthumanism, a critical engagement with Julia Kristeva's work on disability, and my own past work on animal ethics , I suggest some ways forward through the thickets of moral status when it comes to living beings considered " non-rational, " particularly those with whom we share intimate domestic space. I begin with the nonhuman animals literally at the intersection of disability and animal studies: service dogs. 10_Castricano_Oliver.indd 269 16-07-22 11:26 AM

This essay explores research in anthrozoology, which is the study of human-animal interactions. This is a modern interdisciplinary field which was created by an overlap of several other disciplines, including anthropology, ethology, psychology, veterinary medicine, and zoology. A major focus of anthrozoologic research is the quantification of the positive effects of human-animal relationships on either party and the study of the reality of these interactions. Research has revealed that dairy cows in England produce more milk when they are given names rather than numbers (Bertenshaw & Rowlinson, 2009); canine scent detection can identify explosives, drugs, cadavers and termites (Gazit & Terkel, 2003; Adams & Johnson, 1994; Fenton, 1992; Culliney & Grace, 2000), and therapy animals measurably reduce stress responses of patients (Friedmann, Thomas, Cook, Tsai & Picot, 2007). This essay reviews current research regarding animal consciousness, cognition, empathy, benefits of the human-animal bond, animal assisted activities, equine therapy, and human-animal communication.

In October 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States will review the case of Florida v. Jardines, which revolves around the constitutionality of police canine Franky’s sniff outside a private residence. Essentially, the Court will need to decide whether or not the sniff constitutes a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes. This Article presents a review of the often-contradictory case law that exists on this question to suggest that underlying the various cases is the Courts’ assumption of a juxtaposed relationship between nature and technology. Where dog sniffs are perceived as a technology, the courts have been inclined to also define them as “searches,” thereby triggering Fourth Amendment protections. Conversely, when perceived as extensions of the officer’s natural sense of smell, dogs, like nature, are viewed with “superstitious awe” and spared constitutional scrutiny. Rather than use the dominant judicial classification of police dogs as either “natural entities” or “advancing technologies” — each of which triggering its own, usually opposite, chain of legal events — I rely on the scholarship of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to suggest treating police dogs as “biotechnologies”: co-produced human-animal hybrids. I argue that although a dog seems to have limited development capacity in comparison to a nonorganic machine, the police dog’s various breeding, improved training, increased application, and machine augmentation render it both a biological entity and an advancing technology. I also argue that despite the common use of dogs as pets, a work dog — and a police detection dog in particular — is clearly not “in public use.” Specifically, the high cost of breeding, training, and maintaining K-9s, the professional training required, the unique human-animal relationship that develops in the highly volatile police setting, and the status of K-9s as full members of the police force — all demonstrate that K-9 Franky is not, and will probably never be, Spot or Rover. Finally, I claim that such novel categorization of police dogs as both a “bio” and a “technology” should at least trigger the same constitutional protections as an infrared device. Under no circumstances should any technology go a-priori unprotected by the Fourth Amendment, even when such technology is an eight-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever named Franky.