Rage Footage Caught of Service Dog in Training Reacting to His First Real Life Alert Shows Just How Extremely Important These Animals Are in a Medical Emergency

There is a huge difference between service dogs, therapy dogs, and emotional support dogs. Service dogs have to go through rigorous training and are held to an extremely high standard, to the point where if they start to even interact with another dog while they're on duty, they will be retired from their position as a service animal. Also, service animals are legally allowed in all public places. 

Now, when it comes to therapy dogs or emotional support dogs, they have no legal standing for being allowed entry into anywhere—that is up to the establishment. And they don't even come close to holding the same sort of duties. Therapy dogs are usually trained for situations like visiting a children's hospital or a nursing home and other volunteer-based activities like that, but are not trained to handle medical emergencies. And an emotional support dog is usually someone's pet that a therapist or psychiatrist wrote a note saying it helps them with something like anxiety or depression—these animals don't usually require any sort of training (though you should always train basic manors to your dog), so they are not allowed where pets are prohibited (like the grocery stores, restaurants, etc.)

So now that we've cleared that up, meet Koda. This sweet Corso pup is a service animal in training whose owner shares his training progress online. The trainer also suffers from seizures, so she is specifically training him to alert for that medical condition. Recently, she was in the middle of training him in a grocery store when a real life emergency struck.  

u/koda_sd_in_training

The trainer was in a Harris and Teeter when the emergency happened. She was recording already, as she does to document Koda's training progress, so she caught the entire serious situation. Though Koda is still in training, he handled his first real life emergency amazingly. 

u/koda_sd_in_trianing

Koda starts to ignore the training commands because he can smell that something is changing in his handler. She ignores his first alert, thinking it was just a set back in training, but quickly realizes that this is serious. As she is trying to handle her own situation, you can see Koda going into action. She barks several times as an alert to her handler, but also to get attention of anyone near by who can come help. As the trainer starts to feel worse, she sits down and Koda immediately goes into the position under her legs. 

He checks again and continues to alert, because he can smell that a seizure is about to strike. The owner writes in her post of the video, that the leash was actually hindering Koda from doing his job properly, but he was still able to continue and achieve what he needed to do. Staff of the grocery store heard the dog's alert and knew what it meant, and immediately went over to check it out. Because of that, medical professionals were called in.

Koda did so well during the entire situation, even the staff was very impressed by his job well down. They made sure to give him treats and pets indicating that he did his duty as a service animal and that his handler is going to be alright. Service animals in this situation go with the handler in the ambulance and are even trained for that kind of ride. 

So if you or someone you know goes on Amazon and buys those fake “Service Animal” vests for your dog who is most definitely not a service animal, maybe think twice about it. Because if your pet reacts in any way to a real working service animal while they're on duty, then you could end up taking away that very important medical device from somebody that truly needs it.  

Watch the full emergency situation unfold below:

TW: Real time true seizure occurs