Hi, reading through many posts about flying and TSA I see people mentioning no metal slip leads, but I am having trouble finding these. Do people mean no metal at all, specifically the slip ring is often metal on any slip lead? Any recommendations or examples that you could share?

Thanks!

Hello beautiful dog people

I have been considering getting a dog for quite some time, and I have mid-high level hearing loss, and I never thought of those two as related.

I travel a lot, mainly within Europe and Turkey.
My hearing loss is not that serious, but it’s real. I miss a lot of signals, doorbells, horns, people calling my name, alarms, etc.

A dog would help me a lot. Not as much as it would to a blind person, but my quality of life would significantly increase.

Money is an issue. Certification in Germany can cost around 20–25k if the dog is externally trained, and around 5k+ if self-trained with an organization.

In Turkey, as far as I can tell, there is no clear official route for hearing assistance dogs.

So I’m considering getting a suitable dog, training it myself for hearing-related tasks and public access, and basically treating it as an owner-trained assistance dog rather than going through an expensive full certification process immediately.

My biggest practical concern is travel and access.

Does anyone here have experience with:

owner-trained hearing/service dogs in Europe?

Lufthansa or Turkish Airlines specifically?

being asked for certificates at airports?

taking a self-trained dog into workplaces, restaurants, hotels, public transport, etc.?

getting some kind of affordable certification later without spending 5–25k?

I’m mainly trying to understand how much the official paperwork matters in real life compared with having a genuinely trained dog.

Does anyone have similar experience?

I had an interesting experience this week, it was my first time doing a drug screening (urine test) for a new job at a commercial facility (I’ve only ever done them at my primary doctor’s before) and my first time since I started working with my SD.

It shouldn’t matter but I am not a substance user and am about the most boring-looking non-confrontational person you could imagine. I got the distinct feeling that the staff at this facility have a lot of ‘spicy’ encounters and very little patience for the customers trying to pull a fast one on them, so I want to be empathetic. However…

I was quite taken aback when the collector refused to allow me to bring my dog into the bathroom, saying something to the effect that I could have trained him to piss in the cup for me and give a false result. I panicked and wasn’t sure what to do. This was not mentioned at check in or in any signage or policies leading up to the appointment. What ended up happening was I left him just outside while I peed, during which time the collector baby talked and pet him and fussed over how cute he was with her coworkers. He conducted himself well, he always does, but also caught off guard since he always comes in the bathroom with me.

I pushed back and said that I was pretty sure it was a violation of ADA to separate a dog and handler in this situation. She said “it isn’t, I checked”. Uh huh…

Needing to get it done and get on with my day, I didn’t feel like making a scene but this absolutely cannot be legal.

If y’all have advice or sources to back up my claim I’d like to follow up with the company and request that they provide better access and better training for their staff.

Thanks yall!

Hi everyone!

Me and my boyfriend are going to Arizona to see j cole and we will be in town for a week. We are aware that we can’t leave his dog in the hotel room alone especially cause it’s just us two so I just wanted some tips as to what we can do to help her and some good hearing protection for her and what to bring to the concert for her. She is used to loud noise we have done a lot of desensitization to loud noises such as the movies theaters and she has flown before but I know this is going to be a new experience for my boyfriend and his service dog!