25/08/2023
Assistance Dogs and UK Laws
In the UK, the law states that an assistance dog must be ‘highly trained’, however, there is no legal definition of what they class as ‘highly trained’. All (highly trained) assistance dogs have the same rights of access, whether they are a charity dog such as a guide dog or an owner trained assistance dog.
Assistance dogs ‘in training’ have no rights when it comes to public access. We rely upon the good will of public places to allow them access, to complete their training. They do have the right to refuse access.
Unfortunately, owner trained assistance dogs often do not get given the same access as Guide Dogs and this is often down to a lack of understanding of the law.
At Pawsable we provide a training program and qualification, which is based on the standards set out by Assistance Dogs UK. Any dog that has graduated through the Pawsable training academy, by providing us with video evidence of them carrying out the five disciplines and task work, followed by passing our Public Access test, we can confidently say is a ‘highly trained’ assistance dog and therefore, has right of public access by law. Please note that only dogs aged 18 months or older can take our public access test.
Pawsable will act on behalf of any graduated Pawsable assistance dog team in the event of an access refusal.
In respect of a dog that’s ‘in training’ we will look at each case of access refusal on an individual basis depending upon the dogs age, and what stage they are with their training. We cannot, however, guarantee to be able to overturn the refusal for dog 'in training', but are happy to try.
