SERVICE DOG PSA
So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)
I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up
If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help
Don’t get scared, don’t get annoyed, follow the dog! If it had been an emergency situation, I could have vomited and choked, I could have hit my head, I could have had so many things happen to me. We’re going to update his training so if the first person doesn’t cooperate, he moves on, but seriously guys. If what’s-his-face could understand that lassie wanted him to go to the well, you can figure out that a dog in a vest proclaiming it a service dog wants you to follow him
This is a meme image satirizing a scenario in which a disabled person is especially vulnerable, implying the obvious response to someone in such a position is to take advantage of them, as opposed to helping them.
Beyond its value for humor’s sake alone, it being a particularly funny meme helps spread awareness that a service dog on its own is an emergency that requires attention.
He is talking about the “oh, you” format
Oh okay. Then in that case I’ll explain here so as not to double-inbox them and split the thread:
Thats a popular meme in which a dog is accidentally making a very human-like expression from a humorous posture, which in combination looks like a shameful but frolicking admission of guilt. Someone placed a person making a reciprocal gesture in the sightline of that dog, appearing to gaze back while making a similarly lighthearted expression of judgement. Underlining the point is the caption, “Oh, you!” an idiom often uttered in similar scenarios between people in sitcoms.
No service animal, but I was in the “down town” area of a college town, and donated plasma cause I was broke broke.
I’m epileptic, I don’t think the plasma donation contributed, but as I was walking back to my car, and waiting to cross a street… well, seizure.
No one helped me, but someone took my phone, wallet, and some meds I needed to keep on me at the time, probably other stuff I don’t recall.
The meds had no recreational value. They were seizure meds, and no, nothing like ativan that has any sort of redeeming quality outside of treating epilepsy.
Some people just suck.
True. I think it’s very much a Trolley Problem where this might lead to the pickpocketing (or worse) of a disabled person and simultaneously lead to saved lives.