New B.C. law to sniff out fraudulent service dogs

Province targets pet owners who dress Fido in a fake vest

Dogs have long been recognized as man’s best friend, but a new law set to take effect in British Columbia later this year is hoping to ferret out the fraudsters in their midst.

The province’s newly revised Guide Dog and Service Dog Act is widely thought to be among the first in Canada to tackle the subject of service-animal impersonation, an issue experts say has escalated sharply in recent years.

While there are no available numbers documenting the problem, service dog trainers and owners alike say their circles are increasingly abuzz with anecdotes of people putting official-looking paraphernalia on pet dogs in the hopes that they could then enjoy the same broad access rights as certified service animals.

They say they’ve heard motives ranging from a reluctance to be separated from their four-legged friends during air travel to a desire to cash in on discounts most veterinarians offer clients with working dogs.

This new breed of impersonation schemes goes hand in hand with a growing diversity in the types of service dogs on Canada’s streets, they said, adding updated laws such as the one being finalized in B.C. are needed to help bring the issue to heel.

Laura Watamanuk, executive director of the Pacific Assistance Dogs Society, says public perceptions of service animals are often limited to guide dogs donning conspicuous harnesses to lead their visually impaired handlers. The dogs emerging from her school, she said, have skill sets that address a host of other, less visible disabilities. These include alerting deaf people to the sounds around them, warning diabetes patients of potentially dangerous changes in their blood sugar levels and providing therapy for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“There is a variety of working dogs which perform physical tasks for somebody,” Watamanuk said in a telephone interview. “With a lot of disabilities not being visual, there’s become a problem with the general public impersonating untrained dogs as assistance dogs. That really undermines our work in the industry for the past 30 years.”

Since there are no federal regulations around service animal registration, the B.C. law proposes to tackle the problem by issuing all legitimate teams with provincial identity cards. Such IDs are available for certain pairs in provinces such as Quebec and Ontario, but the B.C. legislation has built-in regulations to cater to the changing population.