'She’s been attacked twice so far': Advocates call for more service dog safety in N.B.

If Joline Bernard is walking around Moncton, her seven-year-old Husky-mix Zoey can be found right beside her.

“I just don’t feel comfortable out and about without her at all, so she is really my lifeline,” said Bernard.

Technically, Zoey has two full time jobs since she is trained as both a PTSD service dog and as a seizure alert service dog in order to help keep Bernard safe.

“She alerts me. She picks up stuff for me. Most importantly is that she will go and get people for me, so if I’m in trouble she’ll go get help for me and then she does DPT work, which is deep pressure therapy,” said Bernard.

Zoey also brings Bernard her medication, calms her owner down on the bus or in big crowds and can detect when she is about to have a seizure so that Bernard can avoid falling and injuries.

While Bernard says she doesn’t feel comfortable in public without Zoey, lately, the duo hasn’t felt completely safe in public.

“We’re running into a lot of issues with people just bringing their dogs to places they’re not supposed to bring them and it’s making us very, very on-edge because she keeps being attacked by these dogs or she gets distracted by these dogs,” she said.

Bernard says Zoey isn’t trained to fight back, which leaves her extremely vulnerable to bites, and it could mean Zoey misses an important cue to help keep Bernard safe.

“At places where dogs are not supposed to be, she’s been attacked twice so far. So far… I shouldn’t even have to say that word,” she said.

Every incident has resulted in a vet visit, training and a re-evaluation to make sure Zoey can still do her job protecting Bernard out in public.

“I’m afraid at this point that one more attack is going to affect her to the point where I’ll have to retire her,” she said.

Those closely connected to the dog industry say people buying vests online to get their dogs into restricted places has been on the rise over the last couple of years.

Katie Sullivan has been a certified professional dog trainer for 13 years and currently owns and runs DOGMA Moncton.

She’s seen firsthand how common it is for people to say any dog is a service dog.

“I was just going out for dinner between classes and I had my dog with me and I was instructing her to do a sit and stay outside the establishment’s door. I was ordering my food right at the cash and somebody had mentioned that she should just get a vest and I should just bring her inside and it wouldn’t be such a big deal,” said Sullivan.

Currently, she has two pups who are well-trained, but she believes only trained service dogs should be allowed into restricted places.

She says it’s a way to protect dogs who are extensively trained to do a very specific and sometimes lifesaving job.

“This is somebody’s life on the line and it’s completely unfair,” she said. “I think there needs to be some sort of legislation and a verification process, like a certification process, where we do testing for dogs to be actually earning a true certificate that actually holds weight.”

Sullivan says there should be a board of trainers in New Brunswick to help verify service dogs across the provinces and consequences in place for people who don’t follow the legislation.

Currently New Brunswick doesn’t have legislation specifically catered to service dogs, according to Randy Dickinson, who is on the Accessibility Advisory Board and is a New Brunswick Human Rights Commission member.

“The reality is if it’s a legitimate service animal, there are specific tasks that they are trained to perform to help that person, but also more importantly, they are also trained to be in public spaces,” he said.

While he can’t discuss specifics due to privacy, he says the Human Rights Commission has had a number of cases where individuals have had difficulties being allowed into certain spaces because they don’t have a way to identify their service dogs.

“There has to be some standards, I think, to ensure that people who really need these animals should be able to easily and readily get into public spaces and not be harassed, but also people who are not properly assessed and animals who are not properly trained should not be identified and wearing these phony vests,” he said. “The problem is nobody is monitoring the distribution of these identifications and all it takes is one business owner seeing somebody who is obviously not legitimate and then they tar all the other legitimate owners and refuse to allow them into the same premises and it’s easier if we have standards and everybody knows what the expectations are.”

He says the Human Rights Commission has come up with a set of guidelines, but what the province really needs is specific legislative parameters like other jurisdictions in Canada.

“After the election there’s going to be a little more assertive efforts to try to push for the necessary legislation,” said Dickinson. “We feel that once the election is over then it’ll be a time to get back to the business of government and this is an issue that needs to be addressed.”

As for Bernard, she wants to see more awareness across the province as well as more guidelines put into place, but most importantly, she wants to take care of Zoey the same way that Zoey takes care of her.

“You depend on your cane to walk, your glasses to see; she’s my glasses, she’s my cane, she’s my wheelchair. That’s what she is to me. I wouldn’t be functional without her,” she said. 

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