Service Dogs For Children:
Easing The Strain  

Service dogs provide very real and practical services. They guide the blind and assist people in wheelchairs with tasks such as retrieving fallen objects or maneuvering their chairs. The dogs also perform a different role, as important as the work described but more difficult to evaluate. The role can be somewhat awkwardly labeled as assisting in social acknowledgment.

Three researchers who developed a study of the social experiences of disabled children note that a major problem faced by individuals with disabilities is the ostracism they feel from others who display awkwardness, aversion, or even guilt in their presence. The sight of a person in a wheelchair is often enough to send an able-bodied person off in the opposite direction. The study by bonnie Mader and Lynette A. Hart of the University of California at Davis and Bonita Bergin of Canine Companions for Independence in Santa Rosa, California, compared the responses to a group of disabled children in wheelchairs accompanied by service dogs with the responses experienced by children in wheelchairs who had no dogs. After close observations of how able-bodied individuals approached, smiled at, talked with, or touched either the children or the dogs, the researchers concluded that the presence of service dogs enabled the individuals to break through their awkwardness, unease, or embarrassment. The dogs actually helped the disabled children to overcome the social ostracism of which they were the real, though unintended, victims.

Among the findings the researchers report is that the child-dog teams attracted more direct looks from passersby, were engaged in direct conversation more often, and were touched more frequently than the children without dogs. The increase in responses was higher for the child-dog combination than the solitary wheelchair-bound child regardless of whether the individual making the approach was a stranger or someone known to the child with the disability. One of the most interesting comments on how the presence of a dog changes people’s attitudes is found in the researchers’ description of the child-dog team in a shopping mall. Although passersby almost never smile when approaching a solitary disabled child, one out of four do smile when a dog is present with the child. “If a smile conveys acceptance, friendliness, or social availability,” they say, “children with dogs receive very different message from contacts with strangers than do unaccompanied children.”

Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Health Newsletter, Volume 11 Number 5, July 1993.