Self-advocacy begins with understanding your own assistance animal partnership.

Before you can confidently explain your rights, respond to questions or challenge an access problem, you need to be able to describe what an assistance animal is, understand how an assistance animal differs from other animals in the community, and communicate the role of your own animal in a way that is accurate, confident and appropriate to the situation.

You do not need to tell everyone everything about yourself.

Effective self-advocacy includes knowing what information is relevant, what information you are comfortable sharing, and when you can maintain your privacy.

This module introduces the foundations you will use throughout the Assistance Animal Advocate credential.

 

1.1 What Is an Assistance Animal?

An assistance animal is much more than an animal who provides companionship, comfort or emotional support.

An assistance animal works with a person with disability and is trained to provide assistance that helps alleviate the effects of that person’s disability.

The assistance provided will vary enormously between partnerships.

An assistance animal might, for example:

• guide a person who is blind or has low vision;
• alert a Deaf or hard-of-hearing person to important sounds;
• retrieve dropped or inaccessible objects;
• open or close doors;
• assist with mobility-related activities;
• alert their handler to particular changes or events;
• interrupt or respond to disability-related behaviours or symptoms;
• seek assistance from another person;
• provide trained assistance during particular disability-related episodes; or
• perform other trained work or tasks that alleviate the effects of disability.

These examples are not exhaustive.

One of the first principles of effective assistance animal advocacy is therefore:

Do not assume you know what an assistance animal does simply by looking at the animal or its handler.

1.2 Disability, Functional Impact and Assistance

It can be useful to think about an assistance animal partnership as a relationship between three things:

DISABILITY → FUNCTIONAL IMPACT → ASSISTANCE

A diagnosis tells us relatively little about what a particular person experiences in everyday life.

Two people with the same diagnosis may experience very different functional impacts and require completely different forms of assistance.

Likewise, two assistance animals working with people who have different diagnoses may perform similar tasks because their handlers experience a similar functional difficulty.

For example, retrieving an item from the floor might assist one person who has difficulty bending, another who has limited balance and another for whom bending or standing creates a significant medical risk.

The important question is not simply:

“What diagnosis does the handler have?”

A more useful question is:

“What disability-related impact does the animal’s assistance help address?”

This distinction will become particularly important when we consider assistance animal law in Module 2.

1.3 Your Diagnosis Is Not Your Assistance Animal’s Job Description

People are often asked:

“What’s wrong with you?”

This can place handlers in the uncomfortable position of feeling that they must disclose private medical information simply to explain why their animal is present.

A diagnosis and an assistance animal’s role are not the same thing.

Consider the difference between:

Diagnosis-focused explanation

“I have [diagnosis], as well as [diagnosis], and because of that I experience…”

and:

Function-focused explanation

“My assistance animal is trained to assist me with disability-related tasks.”

There may be situations in which more detailed information is required or useful. There may also be situations where you voluntarily choose to share your diagnosis.

Self-advocacy does not mean refusing to disclose information under all circumstances.

It means developing the skills to make informed decisions about what you disclose, why you disclose it and to whom.

1.4 Visible, Invisible and Fluctuating Disability

Not every disability can be seen.

A person may have a significant disability without using a wheelchair, mobility aid or other visible equipment.

Disabilities may be:

• visible;
• non-visible;
• episodic;
• fluctuating;
• permanent;
• progressive; or
• a combination of these.

A person’s functional capacity can also change.

Someone may be able to undertake an activity independently on one day but require assistance on another. They may be able to walk but still experience substantial disability. They may communicate easily in one environment and find communication extremely difficult in another.

This is important because assistance animal handlers frequently encounter statements such as:

• “You don’t look disabled.”
• “You were fine yesterday.”
• “I’ve seen you do that yourself.”
• “You don’t need a dog.”
• “You can walk.”
• “You look healthy.”

None of these observations, by themselves, establish whether someone has a disability or requires assistance.

As a self-advocate, you do not have to prove the legitimacy of your entire life experience every time somebody makes an assumption about you.

Later modules will explore how to decide whether, when and how to respond.

1.5 Assistance Animals Are Not All the Same

There is no single assistance animal experience.

Assistance animals may support people with a wide range of disabilities and functional needs.

Animals may also have different training histories.

An assistance animal may have been:

• trained through a specialist organisation;
• supplied and trained through a program;
• trained with the assistance of an independent trainer;
• owner-trained;
• trained using a combination of professional and owner-led approaches; or
• trained through another appropriate pathway.

Different jurisdictions, programs and organisations may also use different terminology.

An assistance animal should therefore not be judged simply because it does or does not look like another assistance animal you have previously encountered.

1.6 Assistance Animal, Therapy Animal or Pet?

Understanding the terminology is essential for self-advocacy.

Assistance Animal

An assistance animal is associated with an individual person with disability and is trained to provide disability-related assistance.

The animal’s role centres on assisting its handler.

Therapy Animal

A therapy animal participates in structured activities or interventions intended to benefit people other than, or in addition to, its handler.

For example, a suitably trained dog may participate with its handler in visits to a school, hospital, aged-care facility or therapeutic service.

A therapy animal is not automatically an assistance animal.

The fact that an animal is calm, highly trained, certified by a therapy organisation or permitted to enter a particular facility does not itself give that animal the same legal status or general public-access rights as an assistance animal.

Companion Animal or Pet

A companion animal provides companionship and may be extraordinarily important to a person’s wellbeing.

Pets can provide affection, routine, motivation, social connection, emotional comfort and many other benefits.

Those benefits should not be dismissed.

However, benefiting from an animal is not, by itself, the same as having an assistance animal.

Personal Support or Emotional Support Animal

Terms such as emotional support animal, support animal and personal support animal may be used in different ways in different countries, programs or communities.

An animal may provide substantial emotional or psychological benefit without necessarily meeting the requirements applicable to an assistance animal.

This is particularly important when information from overseas—especially the United States—is shared online as though it automatically applies in Australia.

1.7 Assistance Is More Than Comfort

Many animals make their people feel better.

A beloved pet may reduce loneliness, encourage someone to get out of bed, provide routine or offer comfort during distress.

These benefits can be profound.

The distinction is not that assistance animals are important while pets are not.

Instead, an assistance animal has a specific disability-assistance role.

For self-advocacy purposes, it is useful to be able to explain the difference between:

“My animal makes me feel better.”

and:

“My animal is trained to provide assistance that alleviates the effects of my disability.”

The first may be completely true while not adequately describing an assistance animal partnership.

1.8 What Does Your Assistance Animal Do?

Self-advocacy becomes much easier when you have already thought about how to explain your partnership.

Start by considering three questions:

What difficulty or functional impact do I experience?

You do not necessarily need to identify your diagnosis.

Think instead about what becomes difficult, unsafe or inaccessible.

What does my animal do?

Identify the trained behaviour, work or assistance.

Be as concrete as you can.

How does that help?

Consider how the animal’s action alleviates the effect of your disability or increases your independence, safety, participation or access.

This gives us a simple framework:

I experience ________.
My assistance animal is trained to ________.
This assists me by ________.

You may never need to say those exact sentences to another person.

The exercise is about helping you understand and articulate your own partnership.

1.9 Privacy and Disclosure

Having an assistance animal can make disability unusually public.

A person who might otherwise choose not to disclose their disability may suddenly encounter questions from strangers, staff, businesses, transport providers and other members of the community.

Some questions may be legitimate.

Others may be curiosity.

Some may be inappropriate or intrusive.

Part of becoming an effective self-advocate is learning that these are not all the same thing.

Before disclosing personal information, consider:

Who is asking?

Why are they asking?

What are they trying to establish?

Is this information relevant to that purpose?

Am I required to provide it?

Could I provide the necessary information without disclosing more than is needed?

Am I choosing to share additional information because I want to?

You are always free to tell your story when you choose to.

The important word is choose.

1.10 Curiosity Is Not the Same as Need to Know

Assistance animals attract attention.

People may ask:

• “What’s wrong with you?”
• “Why do you need the dog?”
• “What happened to you?”
• “What does your dog do?”
• “Is that for anxiety?”
• “Are you blind?”
• “Can you walk without them?”
• “What’s your diagnosis?”

Sometimes these questions are well-intentioned.

Good intentions, however, do not automatically create an entitlement to personal information.

You might choose to:

• answer;
• provide a limited answer;
• redirect the question;
• explain assistance animals generally;
• say that the information is private; or
• end the conversation.

Different situations call for different responses.

Self-advocacy is not about having one perfect script.

It is about having options.

1.11 Developing Your Explanations

One explanation will not work in every situation.

During this credential, you will develop several ways of explaining your assistance animal partnership.

The Very Short Version

Useful for brief everyday interactions.

Aim for approximately one sentence.

“This is my assistance animal and they are trained to assist me with my disability.”

The Functional Version

Useful where some additional explanation is appropriate.

This focuses on what the animal does and how it assists, rather than providing your complete medical history.

The Detailed Version

There may be situations where greater detail is genuinely relevant or where you choose to provide it.

This version can explain the relationship between your disability-related needs, the animal’s training and the assistance provided.

Having these versions prepared can be particularly helpful for people who:

• become anxious during confrontation;
• experience communication difficulties;
• use AAC;
• experience cognitive fatigue;
• have difficulty finding words under pressure;
• become overwhelmed by unexpected questioning; or
• simply prefer to think before responding.

They can be spoken, written, stored on a phone or communicated using another method that works for you.

1.12 Common Assistance Animal Myths

Throughout this course we will examine common misconceptions in greater detail.

For now, become familiar with the fact that you may encounter beliefs such as:

• only guide dogs are assistance animals;
• all assistance animals perform the same type of work;
• assistance animal handlers must have a visible disability;
• a person who can walk cannot need an assistance animal;
• every assistance animal must come from a large organisation;
• every assistance animal has identical identification;
• assistance animals and therapy animals are the same;
• a well-behaved pet automatically becomes an assistance animal;
• every person accompanied by an assistance animal must explain their diagnosis to anyone who asks;
• needing help sometimes means you must need the same help all the time; or
• someone can determine whether another person is disabled simply by looking at them.

You do not need to memorise responses to these yet.

By the end of the credential, you should be able to recognise a misconception, find reliable information, decide whether a response is necessary and respond appropriately.

1.13 Self-Advocacy Starts With You

Good self-advocacy does not mean winning every argument.

It does not mean knowing every section of legislation by memory.

It does not mean confronting every stranger who makes an ignorant comment.

And it certainly does not mean having to prove that you are “disabled enough”.

Self-advocacy means developing the knowledge and skills to:

understand your situation → identify what you need → know your options → communicate your needs → make informed choices → seek additional help when necessary.

Sometimes successful self-advocacy means confidently speaking up.

Sometimes it means asking for a manager.

Sometimes it means communicating in writing.

Sometimes it means making a complaint later.

Sometimes it means asking another person for support.

And sometimes it means deciding that your energy is better spent walking away.

You remain the person who decides what outcome matters to you.

Key Messages

At the end of Module 1, remember:

Your disability does not have to be visible to be real.

A diagnosis and an assistance animal’s job are not the same thing.

Assistance animals, therapy animals and pets have different roles.

Not every assistance animal partnership looks the same.

You can explain function without automatically disclosing your entire medical history.

Curiosity does not automatically equal a need to know.

Good advocacy is based on accurate information, not assumptions.

And most importantly:

Self-advocacy begins with understanding your own needs, your own partnership and your own voice.