Yes, Small Dogs Can be Service Dogs Too

Photo by Alvan Nee on Unsplash

Heading back to the store today I saw a Yorkie in a (lopsided) service dog harness. Which reminded me of an issue that sometimes comes up.

The issue of “fake service dogs” is one of those things that gets somewhat overblown. It’s not “transgender people peeking in bathrooms” because some people do pretend their dog is a service dog when it isn’t.

And this, of course, causes issues for service dog handlers.

A lot of the time, issues are worse for people with small service dogs.

Our Image of a Service Dog

I will lay bets that most people have an image of a service dog that’s similar to my brain’s primary go-to.

A golden retriever or a labrador in a seeing eye dog harness. Especially if you’re older, that’s pretty much what you were told as a child a service dog is.

Seeing eye dogs are matched in height to their handler, and have to be a decent size. Golden retrievers, labradors, and German Shepherds are popular, but you sometimes see a standard poodle.

So do mobility assistance dogs, some of which are huge because they are trained to pull their handler in a wheel chair. Others might be smaller, providing services such as picking things up that their handler dropped or carrying their…