There is a growing concern that able-bodied people are buying service dog vests and harnesses to pass their pets off as service dogs. It’s an easy way to bring your pet on public transit or into a business where normally they would have to wait outside.

“It makes me extremely distressed to hear of this,” said Sharon Ward Zeller. She suffers from vision loss, and has used guide dogs for the past 13 years.

“A guide dog has provided me with so much safety and mobility, and (when) I think of all the hard work that went into the guide dog schools and the users selecting, training, educating the public about access for guide dogs, it takes away from all of that as well,” Zeller said of the faux guide dogs.

“If they’re able-bodied and it’s a pet dog, it’s not a service dog.” said Danielle Forbes, executive director with National Service Dogs. Forbes said National Service Dogs often receives calls from people who want their pet certified.

“From the day they’re bred to the day they retire, they’re geared toward a service environment,” Forbes said of the service dogs.

“We’re looking for dogs with a certain temperament.” Forbes said.

National Service Dogs trains service dogs for people with autism or post-traumatic stress disorder. The dogs are bred and trained for two years specifically for service work. At any time they have between 12 and 16 dogs in training.

Forbes worries untrained dogs will undo years of hard work from the guide dog community, or cause problems for businesses.

“If you deny somebody access, regardless of what their dog is doing, how do you prove that?” she says of misbehaving dogs.

Forbes and Zeller would both like to see Ontario adopt similar legislation to what British Columbia recently introduced. It proposes that residents will have to prove they need a guide dog, and get a government issued license and identification for a trained dog. In Ontario, currently you only need a note from your doctor that you need a service dog to support your disability. There is no screening done on the dog.

Forbes is also concerned about putting untrained dogs into stressful situations, such as large crowds or public transit.

“A lot of owners are so focused on their needs (that) they don’t look at the animal in front of them,” Forbes said.

“The folks on the other end of the leash don’t realize that they’re actually hurting their dog by putting them in situations that they can’t handle.”