SERVICE DOG PSA
So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)
I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up
If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help
Don’t get scared, don’t get annoyed, follow the dog! If it had been an emergency situation, I could have vomited and choked, I could have hit my head, I could have had so many things happen to me. We’re going to update his training so if the first person doesn’t cooperate, he moves on, but seriously guys. If what’s-his-face could understand that lassie wanted him to go to the well, you can figure out that a dog in a vest proclaiming it a service dog wants you to follow him
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.