Assistance dogs are dogs trained to assist a disabled person by mitigating their disability. Assistance dogs can be trained by anyone, and are not required to be certified, registered, or accredited.
Assistance dogs should be highly trained, healthy, not aggressive and not disruptive. The EHRC has produced a guide on assistance dogs that may be useful. It can be found here.
You may have heard of guide dogs, who help partially sighted and blind people, or hearing dogs who help D/deaf people and people with hearing loss. These are two of the types of assistance dogs that work in the UK. Some of the others include:
*Mental Health Conditions must be considered a disability to have an assistance dog. Please check with your medical professional whether this is the case for you. This Mind page may be able to help.
When they are with their disabled handler, assistance dogs are protected by law through the Equality Act 2010 and Disability Discrimination Act 1995. When a disabled person wants to access a business or service, the business or service provider must provide reasonable adjustments where necessary to allow disabled people to access their services. For assistance dog handlers, this would mean waiving any no-dog policy that may be in place if reasonable to do so. Different laws may apply to taxis and private hire vehicles, and international travel.
Assistance dogs, unlike pet dogs, are protected from dog attacks through the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2014.
Did you know? The definition of assistance dog found in S173 doesn’t apply to the rest of the Equality Act 2010. This means there is no explicit definition of assistance dog for the rest of the act.
