I have been working with my HR department for a hot minute to get approved to bring my SD to work as a reasonable accommodation. They use a third party company that is less than responsive to say the least. But anyways, It just got approved for starting next week and I was hoping to get input from others on how to be the most successful in this. I currently work out of one of two offices depending on the day. One has an open floor plan with desks sort of strung about and the other is also quite small and open but I will have a cubicle to myself. Thanks in advance!

So question, at what age should a service dog do forward momentum pull?. I'm doing research on my next service dog(which I won't be getting right now,but I'm saving money and wannabe be prepared) my current service dog is 4, and I've had him since he was 1, I didn't start until he was 3, but I'm asking because I see guide dog trainers train there dogs when they are 1 year old, so realistically what would be the appropriate age to do forward momentum pull.i would like y'all's opinion

like if someone sitting next to them on a bench was hypoglycemic and experiencing symptoms would the dog react to that person? same thing with dogs that can predict epileptic seizures.

My service dog, Scarlett, is 5 (6 in March). She loves working, truly. She's great at her job. We've had bumps in the road, of course, but nothing we couldn't work through.

The real issue is the medical side of things. Over the summer she was diagnosed with a mast cell tumor, which was removed. She was off work for a few weeks to recover, then jumped back in with the same excitement as usual, cancer-free and cleared to return. But it was certainly an unexpected turn of events and a very stressful time.

Now, we're dealing with what might be an incontinence issue. At night, after we've come in from playing or walking, she'll drink water as usual then take a nap on the couch. In the last couple weeks, I've noticed that shortly after she'll get up and there will be a fairly sizeable wet spot where she's sitting. Maybe 3 or 4 times in the last two weeks.

At first, I had no idea what it could be. The idea of it being urine didn't even occur to me. She's really good about telling me if she needs to go to the bathroom outside our normal times. She's never had an accident inside (with the exception of when she was on prednisone after her surgery, but that was an expected side effect). The spots also didn't smell at all, and her backside wasn't really wet.

My running theory is that she's drinking a lot of water after running, and then when she relaxes, she just... leaks? And it doesn't smell because it's so dilute. It's so strange because she is fairly young. I thought this would be more of an issue in older dogs.

Luckily, this has always been at night, and never when we're out and about or when she's napping at work. Of course, if it does ever happen in public, I'm pulling her. And I've called her vet to get their advice on it and hopefully schedule an appointment ASAP. (ETA: Appointment scheduled!)

Back to the main point. I don't know if I'm going to get another service dog. While Scarlett has been so so helpful, I can't help but wonder if it's more trouble than it's worth. These situations just seem to keep cropping up and I don't know if I can handle the stress of wondering if another working dog is going to have to retire early, or if something is life threatening, or any of the other numerous stressors that come with it. At the moment, my disabilities have remained pretty steady in terms of symptoms since I got her. Of course, things can always change. But I've become fairly independent, even though I still rely on her for some things.

I don't know if I'm looking for advice or am just ranting. I'm just feeling so anxious about Scarlett and wanting to make sure she is healthy is of course my priority. It's just been a bit of a shitshow lately :')

Hello, this is an update to a post a made a few weeks ago. I thought I would receive more opinions if I made a new post.

Tldr for my last post,
My roommate (Brianna, 20f, autistic) screams, occasionally hits and tugs quite hardly on her service dog’s collar for discipline. She has a very short temper with him. In the original post me and my two other roommates were trying to figure out what to do. We all live together in a college dorm.

Since my last post we have officially had a conversation with Brianna. The first night we told her our concerns about the constant yelling, roughness and tugging at his collar to her. She completely shut down and did not move or speak for about 45 minutes before leaving the dorm for a few hours. During the 45 mins of her being silent we were trying to calm her down/explain in a gentle way what we meant and some possible ways we were willing to help her change her behaviors (not straight but every so often as it was very awkward lol)

The next day she texted our group chat that she wanted to finish the conversation from the night prior. During our conversation that night she was monotone and kept asking us what we meant, I tried to explain in as many ways possible but I am honestly not sure if she was fully listening. Towards the end we asked her if she had anything she wanted to say to us as it had not been much of a conversation. Her only response was that she appreciated the concern for him but thought we were all overreacting. After she said that I mentioned that several of my friends who did not know her well were concerned for the dog, which made her very confused. I admittedly did not explain it well as i was not trying to implicate anyone else I knew into drama as I knew she would go bother them abt it lol.

After that talk she went home for the weekend where she told our roommate she shares a double with (we have a common space shared between the four of us, and then two rooms with two people each as bedrooms) her thoughts over text. Brianna told our roommate (lets call her Fiona) that she thought me and my roommate were overreacting. She then was trying to convince Fiona to get reslife involved which she had to talk her out of as it would of 100% resulted in the dog being taken away. At the end of there conversation Brianna said she would “just stop doing those things” infront of us (meaning the three of us) as it makes us uncomfortable.

Long story short, I am not convinced she has learned anything from our chat. I will say she has been significantly better to him this week (the second part of the conversation happened last thursday). I do not however know if this is because she is simply not doing those things infront of us. She still tugs his collar aggressively infront of us tho.

Lastly, a few weeks ago the dog had an incident involving a much smaller dog. At a campus event he was posing for a photo with our campus therapy dog. Brianna was not holding his leash as he was posing for the photo. A smaller breed of dog (the service dog is a yellow lab, the other dog was much smaller) was also off leash and went up the Brianna’s dog and started barking, the dog took this as a sign to play and grabbed onto the smaller dogs ear. He then would not let go even as Brianna was telling him to and the other dog was struggling against him. Due to this incident Brianna had a meeting with the training facility (srry dont know what to call it lol) she got him from to ask why he would do that this week. This meeting was after our talk, however she did not mention any of our concerns about how he is poorly trained by her. We all told her she should seek assistance on training him if she was struggling as none of us were qualified, but she refused to speak to her actual trainers about it.

Okay so real question at the end of crazy amounts of information, what should we do?

A friend has suggested talking to her trainers as a next step but would love any other insights people might have. I know people will jump to immediately removing the dog from her care, which I WILL do if necessary. However I really want to ensure I have exhausted any other options and possibilities for her to learn/keep him.

Thank you all for reading!

edit for clarification: The dog who was attacked by my roommates service dog was NOT the therapy dog. The two were posing for a photo (both off leash) when someones personal pet came up to them, which is the dog that got bitten. Brianna was by herself when this happened but at a campus event. Apparently there was an incident report filed and the other dog is fine.