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Kyle Lisk
Dr. Beard
English 212
7 April, 2015
Therapeutic Dogs
Owning a pet can be a life changing experience. Pets and their owners love each other
unconditionally. If you have a pet, you have a friend for life. They provide many different
benefits for people from many different walks of life. However, for some people, a pet can be
important than that. A pet can be important for their survival. Dogs, commonly known as Mans
Best Friend, is one such pet. Service dogs help people with disabilities perform daily activities.
These activities can be as simple as getting out of bed in the morning or getting you to exercise.
However, a service dog could also remind you to eat, remind you to take medicine, or even keep
track of your belongings. (Maeve) However, therapy dogs are very important for a person's
health and happiness.
Owning a pet can be very beneficial in general for a person. For one, they provide you
with a lifelong companion you will love you unconditionally. Dogs are also very cute and they
are a lot of fun. It's for this reason that dogs are pretty much impossible to love. They just seem
to make you happy and feel loved. Studies have found that they can even prevent depression.
(Robinson and Segal) For example, being with a dog can prevent you from thinking negative
thoughts and instead get you to focus on the positive. (Maeve) Dogs can also improve your
social life by helping you meet new people. (Foden and Anderson) People tend to view other
people who have dogs as more approachable and appealing. They can also annoy you in the
morning so you get out of bed. You can even use them as an excuse to get out of awkward

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situations by stating that you need to take them out to go to the bathroom. (Maeve) Even just
owning a dog, or even any other pet, provides many benefits for a person.
To become a service dog, dogs must learn some very specific habits and endure some
rigorous training. Before they begin their training they are required to be neutered or spayed.
They are required to have a minimum of one hundred and twenty hours of training, thirty of
which must be spent doing fieldwork. They must be unobtrusive, have good social skills, and
have good household skills. They must also be able to perform both on-leash and off-leash
obedience skills that are initiated by voice or hand signals. (Zawistowski) A service dog must
also be trained to avoid certain behaviors. These behaviors include urinating or defecating in
public, drag or pull their handler, wander, be anxious, and infringing on a persons personal
space. (Grace) If the dog can complete the training and master the correct behaviors, they can
become a service dog.
Therapy dogs can be very important for a person's health. For example, studies have
shown that pets can lower a person's blood pressure and reduce anxiety. Even an act as simple as
petting a dog can have this effect. (5 Benefits) Therapy dogs can also remind you to take your
medicine. They can even turn on lights for you. (Maeve) A dog can also help you exercise.
Giving your dog a walk or even playing with them is a great example of this. One study found
that just by walking an overweight dog, both the owner and the dog would lose weight.
According to Robinson and Segal, public housing residents who walked therapy dogs for up to
twenty minutes five days a week lost an average of 14.4 pounds in a year. This happened despite
the fact that the participants in the study did not change their diets at all. Studies have also
shown that dogs can increase a persons level of oxytocin. (5 Benefits) Dogs can be extremely
important when it comes to keeping a person healthy.

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Some dogs have even been trained to sense diseases in humans. Some can sense
impending seizures. They do this by detecting ketones in diabetics and by being able to smell a
metabolism imbalance in a person. They will then give their handler a behavioral cue to warn
them. (Rowland, Odle, and Davison) Others can sense an upcoming hypoglycemic event by
sensing drops in blood glucose levels. They're able to do this because they can smell the changes
in a person's odor when the drop occurs. (Pesterfield) there is even evidence that dogs may be
able to sense cancer before medical devices can.
Service dogs also provide benefits for people with disabilities. They can help a person
who is blind avoid obstacles and they can help them reach their destination. They can also pull a
wheel chair. If needed help a person balance if they are having trouble keeping their stability.
They can alert people who deaf to important sounds such as the doorbell, a crying baby, or an
alarm. They can also stimulate memory function and improve focus for Alzheimers patients.
They can even help physical therapy patients. For example, they can help a person with a wrist
or arm injury by having the patient throw them a ball to fetch. Finally, dogs can motivate the
mobility impaired to perform simple physical activities just by getting them to pet them.
(Zawistowski)
Service dogs can prove it be invaluable on the front lines of as battle, and in police
departments back home. In combat, dogs can be used to sniff for bombs that may potentially
killed soldiers and even civilians. (Zawistowski) Police dogs, on the other hand, can sniff for
any illegal drugs that a criminal may have in their possession. The dog then proceeds to alert the
officer by either using a passive alert, in which the dog just sits by the object in question, or an
aggressive alert, where the dog actually scratching or barking at the source of the odor they have

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detected. (K9) Overall, dogs are very beneficial for the military and police as they can help
police officers do their job and they can save lives on the frontlines.
Service dogs can also provide many benefits for war veterans who are suffering from
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some dogs do this by waking their owner from a nightmare that
might be caused by their PTSD. They can also physically interrupt a panic attack. If needed,
they can even call 911 and bark to alert law enforcement. If a veteran is having issues with their
memory, a service dog can help them. The dog can find lost objects and remind their owners of
tasks they need to perform. If a veteran has trouble getting up from sitting or lying down, their
dog can help them up. (Tasks) Service dogs benefit veterans greatly, both emotionally and
physically.
Dogs can also help children and especially children that are mentally impaired. For
example, both children and mentally challenged children may feel more comfortable opening up
to a dog as opposed to opening up to a person. (Zawistowski) This is because a child may be shy.
Meanwhile, a child who is, for example, autistic may rely on nonverbal cues for to communicate,
which is similar to how dogs communicate. This in turn can help autistic children learn how to
form bonds and social attachments. (Foden and Anderson) Studies have shown that children who
grow up with a pet are less likely to have allergies or suffer from asthma. A dog can also teach a
child responsibility, compassion, and empathy. (Robinson and Segak) Dogs can also promote a
feeling of security and comfort. (Zawistowski). Service dogs can also prevent children from
wandering off. This is important because if the child is autistic, wandering off from a safe place
can lead to catastrophic results. In essence, the dog is providing the parents with an extra set of
eyes that can help keep track of their children. (Foden and Anderson) Dogs and service dogs
especially, can help children and the mentally immensely.

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Even though service dogs clearly benefit the people who need them, there are still
arguments against them. Some people will argue that having a service dog will draw unwanted
attention to a persons disability. However, in reality it can be extremely important that people
know about a persons disability in the event of an emergency. Others argue that dogs may
publicly embarrass you. This however, is just the reality of owning a dog. Any dog owner will
tell you that a dog will embarrass you in public eventually. Its not a question of if but when.
Another argument against service dogs is that some establishments may want to prevent you
from bringing your service dog onto the premises. (Maeve) Fortunately, by law, they are
required to allow you to bring your service dog even if you dont have the necessary papers on
hand. However, if your service dog is misbehaving, the owner of the establishment has the right
to ask you to leave. (Grace) Yet another argument is that people will pay more attention to the
dog than you. However its wrong of them to do this, and they shouldnt even attempt to pet the
dog without asking for the dog's handler's permission. A final argument against service dogs is
that they may prevent a veteran from overcoming their Post-traumatic Stress disorder. They
argue that veterans will think that they cant do things on their own without the dog. They also
argue that the service dog will prevent veterans from overcoming certain behaviors such as a fear
of strangers or mentally clearing a building of threats before it is entered. However, as long as
the veteran does not become too dependent on their dog, this instances should not be an issue.
(Dogs and PTSD) Others argue that some people will try to say trick people into thinking that
their pet as a service animal. They should not do this because it makes it more difficult for
people who really do have service dogs because people may not believe them. It can even create
an unsafe environment for a real service dog. (Targeting) There are many arguments against

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service dogs, despite their benefits, however none of these arguments really seem to be factual
when faced with logic and reason.
Dogs, especially therapy dogs, can be very important to the health and happiness of their
owners. Theyre just good for you in general. If you have a dog, that dog will be your friend for
life. They will love you unconditionally. Dogs can also be very important to their owners
health. Getting their owner to exercise and even getting them to take their medicine insures that
their owner is healthy. Some dogs can even sense diseases. For example, studies have shown
that some dogs can even sense cancer before modern medical equipment does. Studies have
even shown that dogs make their owners happier by increasing their levels of oxytocin. To
become a service dog, a dog must go through some intense training. They must undergo one
hundred and twenty hours of training, thirty hours of which should be fieldwork. They must also
master many different behaviors during their training. Service dogs are extremely important to
people who have disabilities. For examples, dogs can lead the blind, help the deaf hear important
noises, and even improve focus and memory function for people who suffer from Alzheimers.
Dogs can even help the police do their jobs by finding illegal drugs and they even save military
lives by detecting bombs before they go off. Dogs can also have a massive impact on the lives of
war veterans who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress disorder. They do this by comforting
veterans emotionally and by physically helping them when it is needed. Even although the
benefits of service dogs are obvious, there are still arguments against them. However, the
majority of these arguments are either wrong, such as drawing unwanted attention to a persons
disability, or exaggerated, such as the dog embarrassing a person in public. All of the cons of
having a service dog can be overcome. This all shows that service dogs are extremely beneficial.
Overall, owning a dog provides a boost in happiness and health.

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Works Cited
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Foden, Teresa, and Connie Anderson. "Dogs, Horses and ASD: What Are Animal-Assisted
Therapies?" Iancommunity.com. Interactive Autism Network, 8 Mar. 2011. Web. 7 Apr.
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Grace, Kea. "Things Service Dogs in Public Should and Should Not Do."
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Maeve. "Pros and Cons of Dogs for People with Psychiatric Disabilities." Servicepoodle.com.
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