A woman once came to my place of work with a dog wearing an obviously fake service dog vest and patch. I know this for two reasons. One, the dog was completely out of control and yipping and scampering around all over the place and jumping on everybody, which is generally not service dog behavior. And two, once she learned the owner of our company had a dog she immediately launched into her sales pitch pushing him to buy her fake service dog patches, which she flat out admitted are for getting your dog into places it otherwise wouldn't be allowed. I think this might have also had some kind of pyramid scheme aspect.

"Did you know??? Businesses are not allowed to discriminate against you or your dog if it says it's a service animal! It's Federal law!!!"

I threw her out. This made her very incensed.

I told her in no uncertain terms that the only thing she's accomplishing is training people -- not dogs -- that they can ignore legitimate service animals because they might be dipshit Karens like herself are going around with fake service dogs causing problems everywhere they go. I am positive she lacked the empathy or self-awareness to understand the harm that this could cause to someone with a real service dog who was in need of actual help.

But she's still banned. Too bad, not sad.

I just like dogs. If one walked up to me and clearly wanted me to follow it I probably would.

I could have been abducted so easily as a kid if pedos in my area had known that one simple trick haha

Follow, don’t pet. Got it. Can I pet after?

Just imagine a service dog with a lil sigh that says, "Help! I need an adult!"

Like, me too, bud. Me too.

Had no idea this was a thing, and I knew what a service dog was. Glad I learned something new today, thank you for sharing!

They should mention this on TV/Cable/other like they used to do in the old days when they used to broadcast PSAs.

~This~ ~comment~ ~is~ ~licensed~ ~under~ ~CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0~

I follow any dog that approaches me without an obvious owner. They are usually escaped/lost.

In America we are just supposed to attach a note to the dog that says "thoughts and prayers"

well my first instinct would be to pet the dog, hope the dog has more sense than me and can refuse the free pets

Good psa. I didn’t know this as well

But what if I don't have a vest?

I've known this fact in the past, but I'm not sure I'd remember it in the moment.

!youshouldknow@lemmy.world

🫡

I mean the dogs aren't actually that dumb, even when the people are.

Like they know how to attract attention by barking and trying to draw you towards the person by not letting you get to them if you try to pet them and going further towards the person.

But yeah, it's a good "psa".

We had a Portuguese sheepdog, and it was very well trained, and I always kept him off the leash while outside. If there was a group of two or more, he would "herd", going from far in the front to far in the back and just constantly keeping watch and if there was a larger group and someone was left behind, he'd stand in between the person (who was probably staying a bit behind while the others walked because they were taking a piss because beer) and the group and as the distance grew, he'd grow clearly more anxious. He wasn't one to bark (because of the mistreatment from the former owner), but if he had, he'd have barked at that point.