Service dogs should be allowed to be trained in public in Wyoming, but that privilege shouldn’t extend to “emotional support” pets, legislators said Wednesday.
Senate File 147 would apply only to training for dogs working toward becoming certified service animals, said Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, who is sponsoring the bill.
“Not the little fluffy dog that you put on your lap, and you say they are the comfort dog or your emotional support dog,” she told fellow members of the Wyoming Senate Labor, Health and Social Services Committee.
“This emotional support dog has to alleviate one or more identified symptoms or effects of a person’s disability,” she added.
Committee member Sen. Gary Crum, R-Laramie agreed that people shouldn’t be allowed to cheat the system by calling just any dog a service dog-in-training.
“How do we ensure, and I’m going to use that word again, ‘fluffy dogs’, from becoming a part of this?” he said.
The committee voted to move the SF 147 to the Senate Floor. The measure also calls for more severe penalties for people whose pet dogs attack service dogs.
Real-World Training
Training service dogs starts when they are just 9-week-old puppies, Michelle Woerner, co-founder and CEO of K9s 4 Mobility, told the committee.
Learning how to behave properly in public spaces is a vital part of the training. Wyoming, Hawaii and Washington are the only states that don’t include service dogs-in-training in their service animal access statutes, Woerner said.
Only dogs that are already fully trained and certified count for public service animal access in those states.
And that can make it difficult to put dogs through training in public places in Wyoming, she said.
“We have to ask (for access). If someone doesn’t want us in there, they can kick us out, and we have to be OK with that,” she said.
K9s 4 Mobility is the only Assistance Dogs International-accredited organization in Wyoming, she said. It was founded in 2012 and has trained 57 dogs, many of which went to clients in Wyoming.
Some of the public training sessions had to be conducted in Colorado and Nebraska, she said.
Testifying via zoom, Adrienne Unertl, who lives with multiple sclerosis, said she is training her own service dog. So she hopes that access for dogs-in-training would apply to people who train their own animals.
What Does ‘Emotional Support’ Mean?
Woerner said K9s 4 Mobility trains service dogs for people with physical disabilities.
Other trainers and organizations can train dogs to become psychiatric service animals, she said.
But that’s still a level above emotional support pets that give their owners comfort, she said.
“Psychiatric service dogs still have to perform physical skill tasks for people with mental disabilities,” she said.
So, SF 147 would allow public access for psychiatric service dogs-in-training, but not for emotional support pets, she said.
The committee briefly considered changing the bill’s wording from “emotional” support animal to “psychiatric,” but decided to leave the wording as it is.
‘Multiple Attacks’
SF 147 also increases the penalty for pet owners whose dogs attack service dogs or service dogs-in-training, resulting in the injury or death of the service dog.
That’s currently a low misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and/or a $750 fine. SF 147 would make it a high misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year and jail and/or a $1,000 fine.
Sen. Charles Scott, R-Casper, asked whether service dogs being attacked has been a problem in Wyoming.
“Do we have any experience in Wyoming with anybody low enough to do that sort of thing?” he asked Woerner.
She said that it has been a prevailing problem.
“We have had multiple of our clients who have had their service dog attacked or almost attacked. That it has caused the person to fall, that person to be guided into something that was very dangerous for them. Thankfully no one’s been hit be a car or things like that,” she said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.