absolutely baffled by people who think that service work is "forcing" a dog to work in an "unnatural" way and that it's "cruel".
First of all, I almost exclusively watch service dog videos instead of regular pet videos because service dogs are on average astronomically better cared for than pet dogs. I have yet to see an excessively stressed, fat, or unexercised real service dog. Second of all, it's literally the same as any other trick work. If people with service dogs are abusing them so is everyone who has taught their dog how to sit and roll over. Service dogs get tons of treats, exercise, quality time, and pretty much anything a dog could want, and all they have to do in return is tasks that very much play into their natural skills. A lot of work I see from service dogs is guiding (plays into herding and protection instincts), forward momentum pulling (pretty much every dog pulls at their leash at some point), sensing (plays into their natural sense of smell in some cases or their desire to protect their packmates in others), DPT (basically snuggles), item retrieving (plays into prey retrieval instinct) and other very normal dog activities. People get service dogs because a dog is the best possible worker for the task because of the dog's specific strengths.
I think a lot of the hatred towards SDs is 1) derived from the ableist belief that any help a disabled person gets must inherently burden someone else or 2) leftover from a time when dogs were trained using negative methods like pinching or hitting and SDs were actually abused. That type of training isn't used anymore in pretty much anywhere where SDs are common as far as I know, certainly not in the U.S. Not only is it cruel, it also creates a dog who's very nervous and reactive, which is basically the opposite of what you want in an SD. Positive training like treats and attention and play creates a much happier and more stable dog.
repeating what was said in the tags which is that police dogs are trained using the abusive methods outlined in the last paragraph and if you want to throw a fit about working dogs you should be targeting cops with your complaints not disabled people
