Breaking news: a Service Dog is coming to San Luis Obispo High School. Medical and psychological service dog Dylan is a Black Labrador who will be coming to SLOHS to help her student out at the end of April.

  A Service Dog is defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act as a dog trained to do tasks (jobs) to lesson the effect of their human’s disability. Their disability could be physical, mental, sensory, etc. are all valid to get a service dog if that disability impacts their life on a daily basis.

  “They are super necessary because without them so many people wouldn’t be getting the help they need. For example people with anxiety really benefit from having service dogs because they can help them calm down if they start to have a panic attack and even get someone to help their owner,” said junior Carmen Silver.

  Service Dogs not only perform life saving tasks like seizure alerts and being a guide to the blind. They are highly trained animals either from training programs or sometimes are owner trained. 

  There are around five hundred-thousand service dogs in the United States under the ADA in 2016.

  They combat their humans emotional and physical fatigue by being by their humans side twenty-four-seven. By being there their human has someone to take care of other than themselves. Which motivates the human to be functional and take care of themselves as well.

  A service dog can not only be life altering in the way they perform the trained tasks but also by performing the untrained tasks.