I was wondering if anybody had heard if having only 3 legs would bar a dog from becoming a service dog?  Munchkin is being trained to one day become my son's autism service dog.  I have been looking around the net and have not seen anything about them having to possess all 4 legs.  All everything states is that they have to perform a function to help out a disabled person.  Well, Munchkin is already taking on that role for Patrick and Patrick is respondingso well to him.

Lynn

Munchkin is going to be a service dog not therapy dog.  He is being trained to help with aspects of his Autism as well as helping him deal with his other disabitlities. 

I am glad to know that he will still be able to be a service dog.

Lynn

We are training our Tripawd Golden puppy Gracie to be a service dog for our daughter Ashley who has PDD-NOS. In order to be considered a service dog with public access rights, the dog must be trained to perform 3 tasks specific to the needs of the person with a disability. Beyond thesee 3 tasks, there is no actual certification required in the US for a Service Dog, and they can be owner trained.

There are many discussion groups online about training your own service dog, but be warned I was pretty much attacked on one list for mentioning I was training a Tripawd dog to be a service dog. There are many service dog agencies and individuals with disabilities that think it is cruel to use a dog who is not 100% fit as a service dog. I am serious some of the messages I receioved were so nasty I cried. My suggestion is if you join one of these groups and want them to help you, don't tell them the dog is a tripawd.

We do not plan to have Gracie go to school with Ashley, and we won't take her places with lots of steps or anyplace she would have trouble walkiong, so we consider her more of a part time service dog. She also does not need to do any physical work to assist Ashley. We are working with a trainer who has worked for NorthStar, so she has experience training an autism service dog. Gracie will be aservice dog when we are finished training her, but she will not be considered a Northstar dog as she did not come through their breeding program.

If you haven't ready anything about Northstar it is worth a look. Patty, the owner wrote a book about autism service doigs called The Golden Bridge: A Guide to Assistance Dogs for Children Challenged By Autism or Other Developmental Disabilities. The Northstar website is: http://www.nort…..rdogs.com/

If you want to read about my daughter and her dog Gracie, you can check out our website at http://www.meil…..esigns.net.

I hope this helped a little!

 Kim, Ashley and Gracie Tripawd SDIT

First off I want to clear up a misconception that I see in the above replies. A therapy dog and a service dog are not the same. A therapy dog goes into places they are invited to, to provide love support and temporary companionship to other people, they are trained to meet other people's needs and can go anywhere their owner is invited to go. A service dog may only be owned by a person who has a life limiting disability, a service dog is trained only to help their individual owner and can accompany their handler into most places where the public is allowed. Both dogs provide a service to someone but they are very different types of service.

Secondly I know this post is old but I want to extend support to the OP. I work with a tripawd service dog, and luckily I haven't run into too much trouble on forum boards or with the general public but I don't make it a priority to tell people about my dog's disability. I know it doesn't affect his ability to do the things he does so I don't need to bring it up.

That being said a tripawd service dog cannot do any type of service work and will have limitations on what kind of tasks they can do. They should not be expected do anything else that would abnormally stress their singular joint, shoulders, hips, or back. With the amount of time you will be putting into your service dog if you need them to do a task that would stress their abilities then pick another dog because it would be extremely unfair to expect your dog to shorten it's able life to serve you, it would also be impractical as you would have to retire this dog early as well. This means that any tasks that involve true guiding(pulling handler), mobility work, and advanced retrieval work(retrieving from high counters etc) is out for a tripawd service dog. But many handlers don't need any of those tasks. A tripawd can be a happy medical alert service dog, psychiatric service dog, wheelchair assistance dog, hearing alert dog, etc.

I know that my service dog will have a shorter working life because of his missing paw but he loves to work, and service dog work is highly mentally stimulating and low impact(lots of walking) so he gets a benefit out of it as well. I wouldn't trade our partnership for the world.

I'd like to get Liz into therapy work sometime soon. Right now my work schedule doesn't allow me to attend training classes, but someday!