Service Animals Defined in Alabama

Under Alabama law and the ADA, a service animal is any dog individually trained to perform tasks or do work for the benefit of a person with a disability. In addition, the ADA covers miniature horses that are individually trained.

To be covered under these laws, the tasks or work your service dog does must be directly related to your disability. Under these definitions, service dogs can include:

• a guide dog (or "seeing eye" dog) that helps a visually impaired person navigate public transportation and city streets
• a hearing dog that alerts someone with a hearing impairment to important sounds, like doorbells and alarms, or
• a seizure alert dog that warns someone with epilepsy of the onset of a seizure.

Psychiatric service dogs are also included under state and federal law (in 2011, Alabama expanded its service dog law beyond physical disabilities). Psychiatric service animals assist those with mental disabilities in any or all of the following ways:

• interrupting self-harming behavior
• scanning spaces for intruders
• responding to anxiety attacks with calming pressure, or
• providing medication reminders.

Service animals can do various other tasks too—from alerting someone to potentially deadly allergens to tracking an autistic child who's wandered away