Colorado Springs teen raises awareness of service animal laws
A teenager from Colorado Springs is bringing awareness to a disability law because she’s fed up with people disguising their pets as service animals.
Viviana Saenz, 14, claims her life has been put in danger by people disguising their pets as support dogs.
Viviana Saenz and Leo, her service dog in training, have been working as a team for the past few months.
“When he is not in his gear or service dog vest, he can be his normal self, [but] once I put his vest on or his harness on, he has to be focused on me and do all of this commands,” said Viviana.
Leo is a six-month-old Doberman that helps Viviana when she needs it most. She suffers from Syncope and anxiety, two hidden disabilities, which can cause her to faint without warning.
“Whenever [I have] an anxiety [attack], he’ll either alert to me with his paw or he’ll jump up on me,” she said.
During the interview, Leo was laying on Viviana’s feet to keep her calm, but in other situations, Viviana’s anxiety attacks have been triggered by fake service dogs.
“A dog growling, coming up to him, running up to him, barking all this commotion leaves him with a traumatic experience,” she said.
A traumatic moment that makes her disability all the more crippling.
“People just don’t take it into mind. They just buy a vest, put it on the dog, and go,” said Viviana.
Viviana has taken on the task in order to make a difference.
“Whenever I have an access issue [going to a place] or a person has a fake service dog, I need to educate them. I pass one of these along so that they can get educated,” said Viviana.
Viviana says that those who don’t know the law and use a fake service dog can put her life and others with disabilities at risk.
According to the American Disabilities Act, a service animal is a pet that is individually trained to perform tasks or do work for the benefit of a person with a physical or mental disability.
Editor’s Note: We haven’t been able to independently verify that Saenz’s dog, Leo, is officially in training as a service dog; there’s no official registration database for registering service animals.
