Lots of people in this world need help in some sort of way. Whether it is getting around, calming down, finding items, or alerting others there is always a way to be helped. This help can sometimes come from a furry, four legged friend. Dogs have been used for many decades to help physically disabled people and emergency service providers, such as firemen and policemen. Now, dogs are being used for a wide variety of jobs and services that tons of people benefit from.  There are service dogs for mental and physical disabilities, dogs for stress, dogs for research, police dogs, and regular pets. Each type of service dog is trained to have certain skills based off of what their job is and what their human needs assistance with. All dogs, whether service, therapy, or pet, can help humans live a safer and happier life style. 

First, dogs are known to improve a human’s health in various ways. The article “6 Ways Dogs Are Helpful to Humans’ Mental and Physical Health (As if You Needed Another Reason to Love Them)” summarizes how helpful dogs are to the human race. There is a noticeable bond between a dog and their owner but they have so much more potential than just being a man’s best friend.  One example is, dogs can boost a person’s Oxytocin levels just by looking in to their eyes (Thorpe). Oxytocin is a chemical released in the brain and it gives humans attachment to things (Nagasawa). It solidifies relationships between humans and dogs and even between humans and humans, which makes this a big mental health and social skills benefit. The oxytocin release in a human’s brain is how dogs help with people suffering from depression and mood disorder (Thorpe). Therapy dogs help clam humans down and boost mood significantly by relieving loneliness.  Another way dogs can help all humans whether they have a disability or not is by boosting immune systems. Dogs boost the immune system because they carry germs that are different than human’s. They transfer these germs to humans by licking the environment, people, or themselves (Thorpe).  Having a dog can also make people feel safe in their home. Lots of people get dogs and title them as “guard dogs”. These dogs will bark at anyone approaching the house to let the owners know. Most dogs do this anyways. Some people have small dogs that think they are vicious, and that is always funny to watch. Dogs bring humor into a household and keep people laughing and smiling, which is always a benefit for mental health. 

Next, therapy dogs are being used more and more for kids in schools, in public places, and in offices. These dogs’ jobs are to provide affection and comfort to individuals in hospitals, nursing homes, and other facilities (United States Dog Registry). One way the therapy dogs help humans is by helping lower blood pressure in highly stressful situations. The San Diego Public Library use therapy dogs to comfort young kids as they learn to read (Hartman 13). Cuddling up next to a dog gives the kids the confidence to read out loud. Most kids get nervous reading to adults, so the dogs are the perfect substitute. The struggling readers feel they can try their best when they read to the dogs because they do not have the constant stare from adults. Some kids pet the dogs after they turn each page and this lowers their blood pressure and relives them of the stress of learning how to read (Hartman 13). Service and Therapy Dogs in American Society: Science, Law and the Evolution or Canine Care Givers has a real life scenario of a young girl who is in a psychiatric hospital, and tells the story of the relationship she has with her dog. She talks about how the dog is her best friend and helps her from being lonely. Researchers found that the dogs help the patients in many ways.  “Dogs have been found to reduce anxiety among children and adolescents about being in therapy, improve the rapport between a patient and a therapist, provide comfort, allow children to nurture, and serve as models of relation-ships with other people and animals” (Ensminger 88). 

The well-known stereotype for service dogs has always been that they are used for humans with physical disabilities. Over the last ten or so years dogs have been used to help those with mental disorders. When someone has a mental disability you cannot see a physical problem and some people might question the need for a dog. “Indeed, from society’s perspective, the distinction between visible and non-visible disabilities often defines the boundary between when a dog must be accepted as a special category of animal and when it need not be” (Ensminger 73). These dogs are trained to calm these people down. The book, by John Ensminger, provides a table that shows how the dogs help with certain mental illnesses people have. For example, when a person suffers from memory loss their dog will remind them to take medication and help find missing items like keys and phones. A dog that provides service for someone who struggles with PTSD is trained to do many skills. These skills include: Cuddle and kiss, asses the environment for anything that will stimulate a startle or fear, turn lights on and safety check a room, focus on owner when they have avoidant behaviors, interrupt sleep when owner is having a nightmare, and create a personal safe space when their owner feels threatened (Ensminger 77). 

Each type of service dog is trained to meet the needs specific disorders that help out a person and make them feel safer and live with more ease. A service dog for someone with a mental or social disability can also fall under the more particular category of Emotional Support dogs. Emotional support dogs help individuals with emotional problems by providing comfort and support (United States Dog Registry).  Some of disabilities covered by the dogs are: Anxiety, depression, Bipolar/mood disorders, panic attacks, and other emotional/psychological conditions (United States Dog Registry).  Suzanne Degges- White talks about how dogs help with day to day stress of life, and if they help with romantic relationships in her article “Dog ownership, Stress, and Finding Romance”. She describes the findings of Cloutier and Peetz study that having a dog is most likely going to bring more energy into a person’s romantic relationship and establish a better connection. Having a dog as a pet makes you have to be responsible. They found that dog owners are more responsive to their partners and had more relational investment. Seeing how someone reacts with their pet can show you how they can behave in a long term relationship (Degges- White). 

Normally, the typical service dog is there to help with preforming a function for a person that is limited by a disability (United States Dog Registry). Most people would recognize this as a seeing eye dog, but that is not the only type of dog. The disabilities covered by these service dogs are: Mobility issues, visual impairment, hearing impairment, seizure, diabetes, PTSD, Autism, epilepsy, Multiple sclerosis, and other physical/mental disabilities (United States Fog Registry).  The various jobs the service dogs do depends on what the person needs. These are the most trained and skilled dogs.  For dogs that help humans that have epilepsy the dogs have been trained to sell the chemicals that signal seizures says Katie Moisse on Rebecca Johnson, professor at the University of Missouri’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Then the dog is able to alert their human to either take medication or stop what they are doing and get to a place where they will not get injured even more when they are seizing. This can prevent head injuries and any other serious injuries that could happen when someone has seizures. 

There are also service dogs that are referred to as signal dogs, they are very helpful to people who are hearing impaired or anyone else who needs this type of attention form the dog. In, John Ensminger’s book, Service and Therapy Dogs in American Society: Science, Law and the Evolution of Canine Caregivers, dogs for people with hearing loss jobs are described and how they provide assistance. These dogs are referred to as signal dogs; this is because their owners cannot hear ques via barking. Ensminger states, “Signal dogs alert their handlers to specify sounds, often by nudging an arm or leg, including a doorbell, alarm clock, someone calling the handlers name, a baby crying, sirens, cars honking, a smoke or security alarm, or a sound made by a computer when an email is received.” Hearing dogs are sometimes trained to find certain items, and even sometimes they deliver messages to people in the household (Ensminger 53). “One owner of a hearing dog is quoted as saying: “I don’t have to wonder if anyone is at the door or be concerned about the phone ringing. I can sleep peacefully at night knowing that if anybody uninvited is around, my dog will let me know it.”” (Ensminger 53). Signal dogs also help with people who have Diabetes. The dogs can alert their owner when they have high blood sugar so they know when they need to take insulin (Moisse). Ultimately, this is the main goal of service dogs; to make sure that their owners feel comfortable and know that they can trust their service dog to do their jobs. Although training all of these dogs takes lots of time and money it is all worth it in the end when an owner feels satisfied with his or her service dog. 

Furthermore, dogs have a very good sense of smell and hearing, so they are the only animals that can take on the job or leading or searching. Their highly adapted senses make them useful in the police force and K-9 unit. “Police Dogs in Action-Historic Training Documentary” is a documentary on German Shepard police dogs and how they are used specifically in San Mateo County, California. The dogs are used to help find missing children and to search for suspects in buildings and fields. No other animals are able to do this job because their senses are not strong enough. The Police dogs make the work more efficient by saving time and money for the officers. These highly trained dogs can pick up the scent of missing people and use their nose to follow a trail that is invisible to the human eye. When a building needs to be searched the police man sends the dog in to locate and find out if a suspect is in the building. This makes the search move quicker so the officers can do more investigating throughout the day. There are also dogs on the K-9 unit that sniff drugs, explosives and other things. These dogs are used in the crime circuit, but also in schools. Middle schools and high schools use drug sniffing dogs to keep the school safe and drug free. The drug dogs are trained to sniff out illegal substances or explosives and then alert the police men. They are often used to patrol boarders coming in and out of the United States. Fire dogs have been around since the 17th century. Back then they were referred to as Carriage dogs (Geier). Fire dogs’ jobs are to keep up energy, spirits and give the firefighters motivation (Geier). Most of the time fire dogs are rescued from the burning buildings the firefighters are putting out.

Another interesting aspect of a dog is the following research being conducted, they have recently been detecting cancer with their extraordinary sense of smells. According to ABC News, “Marine, a specially trained Labrador retriever, detected colorectal cancer 91 percent of the time when sniffing patient’s breath and 97 percent of the time when sniffing stool” (Moisse). In addition, dogs have successfully sniffed out many other types of cancers including: Skin, bladder, lung, breast and ovarian cancers (Moisse). For a long time, dogs have been trained to detect explosives, mold, and allergy prone substances, so of course detecting life threatening disease was next to come. What makes dogs able to do this is because “a dog’s sense of smell is up to 1 million times better than that of a human, depending on the breed,” says Moisse. There are some dogs that are better for this job and it mostly consists of labs and retrievers. On another occasion dogs were trained to sniff out lung cancer. According to Nature World News, these dogs were able to detect 79 percent of people with lung cancer. The experiment involved 122 people and there were 39 people wo had lung cancer. Although these results were not as high as they hoped because the dogs could only detect 34 percent of the patients who did not have lung cancer, although the hopes are still high for the future (Marucot). Yes, this experiment does show that dogs are not the best at detecting whether or not someone has lung cancer, but it still has potential to be a better experiment in the near future.  

 Of course, there are a few cons to having guide dogs that are forgotten in all the hype of how beneficial dogs are. “Dogs and Canes, Pros and Cons” outlines the main problems with having a dog to care for. The first problem with having service type dogs is how the public view them. Bystanders passing on the street want to pet and play with and this can distract the dogs from doing their jobs. Second, having a dog comes with lots of responsibility. The owner must be able to keep up with walks, feeding, grooming, and general well-being of the dog. Guide dogs also can cost a lot of money and they are very big investment. Another con is that if they get sick you have to pay for their care and you are unable to use them until they are better. Also, the dog will eventually pass way and this can be a big emotional loss as it is your best friend. These cons are small problems in the grand scheme of things. If the dog is going to do a big service, the least the owner could do is take care of it and give the dog as much love as possible (Dogs and Canes, Pros and Cons).  

 Unfortunately, some dogs in this world do not get the chance to be loved and cared for. There are many horrible people in this world that neglect their dogs, abuse their dogs, or put their dogs in fights. These furry creatures were put on the earth for a reason. Whether that was to just be man’s best friend or to help the Human race out with the things previously discussed they should be treated with respect.  Dogs can always brighten the most stressful days with a nice kiss to the face. Although there are some people who would prefer cats or other animals. People should respect the amazing tasks dogs can do for people. If more people know how beneficial dogs were they would give them another chance and possibly change their life. Dogs benefit our society in plenty of ways. Sometimes people are not available to help out someone who needs it or they do not know how to help them. This is where Dogs can take over and provide help without complaining. This also allows the owner to feel more independent and not have to rely on help from other people. 

In the end, dogs have more special skills to comfort and help people. Yes, the dogs need help and training to be able to help a human out but it is all worth it to see the end result when a person in need is matched with a dog to be there for them. Also, it is not only about the dogs that provide a specific service, but about all dogs that provide happiness to all types of people. No machine can mimic a dogs smart, loving behavior. Until this unlikely event happens humans should listen and pay attention to their dogs because they can teach us a lot about ourselves and our health. Humans should continue to trust dog’s abilities to keep them safe and live happier lives.  
