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Two original studies explored relationships between visual attention of children with ASD (candidates for receiving a service dog) and their behaviors during their first interaction with a service dog. The first study consisted in video behavioural analyses of 16 children with ASD interacting with a service dog. During the interaction with a service dog, the time children with ASD spent looking towards social items vs objects was associated with how they interacted with the service dog. The second study was exploratory (i.e. 6 children), using the same behavioural approach but coupled with eye-tracking data. The more children with ASD looked at both their parent and the evaluator, as opposed to inanimate items, the more they interacted with the service dog.

The therapeutic application of human-animal interaction has gained interest recently. One form this interest takes is the use of service dogs as complementary treatment for veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Many reports on the positive effect of PTSD Service Dogs (PSDs) on veterans exist, though most are indirect, anecdotal, or based on self-perceived welfare by veterans. They therefore only give a partial insight into PSD effect. To gain a more complete understanding of whether PSDs can be considered an effective complementary treatment for PTSD, a scoping literature review was performed on available studies of PSDs. The key search words were 'dog', 'canine', 'veteran', and 'PTSD'. This yielded 126 articles, of which 19 matched the inclusion criteria (six empirical studies). Recurrent themes in included articles were identified for discussion of methodology and/or results. It was found that results from most included studies were either applicable to human-animal interaction in general or other types of service animals. They therefore did not represent PSDs specifically. Studies which did discuss PSDs specifically only studied welfare experience in veterans, but used different methodologies. This lead us to conclude there is currently no undisputed empirical evidence that PSDs are an effective complementary treatment for veterans with PTSD other than reports on positive welfare experience. Additionally, the lack of development standardization and knowledge regarding welfare of PSDs creates risks for both human and animal welfare. It is therefore recommended that a study on the effect of PSDs be expanded to include evaluation methods besides self-perceived welfare of assisted humans. Future studies could include evaluations regarding human stress response and functioning, ideally conducted according to validated scientific methodologies using objective measurement techniques to identify the added value and mechanisms of using PSDs to assist treatment of PTSD in humans.

The use of animals in various assistive, therapeutic, and emotional support roles has contributed to the uncoordinated expansion of labels used to distinguish these animals. To address the inconsistent vocabulary and confusion, this article proposes a concise taxonomy for classifying assistance animals. Several factors were identified to differentiate categories, including (1) whether the animal performs work or tasks related to an individual's disability; (2) the typical level of skill required by the animal performing the work or task; (3) whether the animal is used by public service, military, or healthcare professionals; (4) whether training certifications or standards are available; and (5) the existence of legal public access protections for the animal and handler. Acknowledging that some category labels have already been widely accepted or codified, six functional categories were identified: (1) service animal; (2) public service animal; (3) therapy animal; (4) visitation animal; (5) sporting, recreational, or agricultural animal; and (6) support animal. This taxonomy provides a clear vocabulary for use by consumers, professionals working in the field, researchers, policy makers, and regulatory agencies.

The prevalence of mental health disorders, driven by current global crises, is notably high. During the past decades, the popularity of dogs assisting humans with a wide spectrum of mental health disorders has significantly increased. Notwithstanding these dogs’ doubtless value, research on their legal status, certification processes, training and management practices, as well as their welfare status, has been scarce. This scoping review highlights that in contrast to other assistance dogs such as guide dogs, there exists no consistent terminology to mark dogs that assist humans with impaired mental health. Legal authorities monitoring the accreditation process, training and tracking of mental health supporting dogs are broadly lacking, with only few exceptions. This review emphasizes the need to address several topics in the promotion of progress in legal and welfare issues related to assistance dogs as well as emotional support dogs for humans with a mental health disorder. The current body of knowledge was assessed in three different areas of focus: (1) the legal dimension including definitions and certification processes; (2) the dimension of performed tasks; and (3) the dog welfare dimension including aspects of the relationship with the handler and risks associated with children recipients. Considering the challenges associated with a mental health diagnosis, collaborations of dog provider organizations and health care professionals would be desirable to continuously assess the efficiency of the human-dog dyad regarding their overall compatibility, general satisfaction and mutual well-being.

This research aimed to explore the experiences of handlers and trainers of disability assistance dogs in terms of the types of interactions they had with members of the Aotearoa NZ (NZ) public and how these interactions were perceived, interpreted, and managed. A qualitative method, guided by an interpretive approach and social constructionism, was utilised to collect data via semi-structured interviews with six handlers and six trainers of assistance dogs. Data were analysed using thematic analysis with the social model of disability as the theoretical base. Findings indicated that participants regularly faced a complex range of unique interactions due to various factors such as the public’s lack of knowledge and understanding of the dog’s role and right of access to public places. While participants encountered brief friendly comments about the dog and its role, other encounters involved long conversations, invasive personal questions, interference with their dogs, and denied access to businesses, cafés, restaurants, and public transport. These findings underpin the need to provide more education to the public on the etiquette of engaging with handlers and their assistance dogs and more support for businesses to understand the legal rights of handlers. Through education and support to change societal attitudes and remove structural barriers, disabled people using assistance dogs may be able to independently participate in community life and be fully included without hindrance.

Guide dogs have been held in high regard since the 1930s and since the 1980s, assistance dogs have rapidly expanded to fill new roles, particularly in the U.S. (1). Bray et al. show how dogs' performance can be assessed and predicted at a programmatic level to improve the success of assistance dog training and placement. Lloyd et al. demonstrate the important roles of psychiatric service dogs for people with mental health disorders and LaFollette et al. examine the effects of different training methods with service dogs assisting veterans with PTSD.

Persons with disabilities, who own service dogs, develop strong relationships with them. Since the COVID-19 pandemic decreased the possibility of social contact and modified human relationships, we hypothesized that the COVID-19 lockdown would influence people with disabilities—service dog relationships. An online survey was conducted during the first COVID-19 lockdown in France and included information (e.g., MONASH score) both in the general context prior to and during the COVID-19 lockdown. Seventy owners participated. Compared to the general context, scores for the Perceived Emotional Closeness and Perceived Costs subscales were significantly higher during the COVID-19 lockdown, while scores for the Dog–Owner Interaction subscale were significantly lower during the COVID-19 lockdown. Our study confirmed that service dogs, like other pets, were a source of emotional support for their owners during the COVID-19 lockdown. However, people with disabilities found their relationship with their service dog costlier (e.g., my dog makes too much mess). Our study highlights that, in extreme situations, characteristics of a human–animal relationship can be exacerbated in both positive and negative ways.

Assistance dogs are beneficial; however, accessing one can be challenging due to the time, cost, and high failure rates associated with training. A major factor contributing to a high failure rate appears to be the competency of volunteer puppy raisers (PRs), with returning PRs typically more effective than first-time PRs. However, there remains a gap in the literature dedicated to examining PRs’ experiences and how they are affected by the raising programs. This study analysed two groups of PRs (N = 16) from the same university-based program in different Australian regions (i.e., one regional and one suburban). Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed both inductively and deductively. The inductive approach identified four major themes that helped to understand the PRs experiences throughout the program: expectations as a PR, organisational and environmental support and suitability, the intensity of PR workload, and practical support. The deductive analysis identified four functions of volunteerism relevant to PRs’ motivations: altruism (values), egoism (enhancement), interacting with others (social), and learning new skills (understanding). Overall, the results obtained from the two groups were consistent with past findings suggesting the benefits of organisational and practical support. These findings further develop our understanding of how to enhance puppy-raising experiences.

Many assistance dog providers use volunteer raisers to manage each puppy’s learning and daily experiences, which partly determines the puppy’s behavioural development. Therefore, it is important that raisers engage in recommended practices. Three common recommendations from the literature include frequent socialisation and consistent training for the puppies, and effective training for the raisers. However, what facilitates or hinders raisers’ engagement in these practices remains unclear. To understand this, we interviewed eight raisers (three men and five women) every month during their year-long puppy raising program, and pseudo-randomly selected 16 from 48 interviews for data analysis. Thematic analyses revealed several facilitating and/or hindering factors corresponding to each of the three recommended practices. Frequent socialisation was influenced by the raisers’ availability, sharing of puppy raising responsibility with others, support from their workplace, and the puppy’s behaviours (e.g., soiling indoors, jumping). Consistent training was challenged by the presence of everyday distractors, accessibility to timely advice, perceived judgement from others, and the puppy’s undesirable behaviours. Effective learning was facilitated by having information available in raisers’ preferred learning modality, opportunities for peer-learning, and willingness to seek help. Future research should examine these factors quantitatively, which will enable more robust evaluation of programs aimed at supporting puppy raisers.

The aim of this proof-of-concept study was to evaluate if trained dogs could discriminate between sweat samples from symptomatic COVID-19 positive individuals (SARS-CoV-2 PCR positive) and those from asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals. The study was conducted at 2 sites (Paris, France, and Beirut, Lebanon), followed the same training and testing protocols, and involved six detection dogs (three explosive detection dogs, one search and rescue dog, and two colon cancer detection dogs). A total of 177 individuals were recruited for the study (95 symptomatic COVID-19 positive and 82 asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals) from five hospitals, and one underarm sweat sample per individual was collected. The dog training sessions lasted between one and three weeks. Once trained, the dog had to mark the COVID-19 positive sample randomly placed behind one of three or four olfactory cones (the other cones contained at least one COVID-19 negative sample and between zero and two mocks). During the testing session, a COVID-19 positive sample could be used up to a maximum of three times for one dog. The dog and its handler were both blinded to the COVID-positive sample location. The success rate per dog (i.e., the number of correct indications divided by the number of trials) ranged from 76% to 100%. The lower bound of the 95% confidence interval of the estimated success rate was most of the time higher than the success rate obtained by chance after removing the number of mocks from calculations. These results provide some evidence that detection dogs may be able to discriminate between sweat samples from symptomatic COVID-19 individuals and those from asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals. However, due to the limitations of this proof-of-concept study (including using some COVID-19 samples more than once and potential confounding biases), these results must be confirmed in validation studies.