Not many people know what to do when a service dog approaches them. Some may think the dog is being friendly and pet him, while others may get annoyed or scared of the dog and back away. Very few people will actually realize that the dog is approaching them to seek help for his owner.
A woman named Tessa, and her service dog, Raider, faced this scenario first hand one day when Tessa tripped and fell down, and Raider went looking for help. Tessa had been diagnosed with epilepsy, and although this collapse wasn’t related to epilepsy, she still realized how dire her situation might have become if it was an epilepsy collapse.
So she made a post about the incident and put it on her Tumblr page, hoping it would help in educating people on how to react to service dogs approaching them. Her post quickly went viral, garnering over 90,000 notes on Tumblr and liked and retweeted over 375,000 times.
This is the post Tessa wrote:
Tessa is also planning to put a patch on Raider’s vest that reads “If I am alone, follow me!” to help in such situations in the future. We hope more people become aware on how to react to service dogs so that prompt help can be provided to disabled people who need it.
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