About Service Paws
Service Paws is an independent service dog certification body. We certify dogs that have been trained and assessed through our program, document each team in our registry, and provide the verification tools that airlines, hotels, and businesses rely on.
What is a service dog?
A service dog is individually trained to work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability — for example mobility assistance, medical alert and response (such as allergen, seizure, or stroke detection), and psychiatric support. Under applicable disability and human-rights law, a trained service dog accompanies its handler in public spaces such as restaurants, shops, and airports. Service Paws certifies service dogs; emotional-support and therapy animals are trained differently and carry different access rights.
Is your dog a good candidate?
There are no breed, size, or age restrictions. What matters is temperament: a calm, confident, people-oriented dog with genuine motivation to work. Every candidate must pass public access testing that demonstrates focus and reliability in busy, distracting environments.
Our assessment standards
Dogs certified by Service Paws are evaluated against our own training and assessment standards. Each dog completes a structured public access test that demonstrates calm, reliable behaviour in busy, distracting environments, plus task-specific assessment for the work it performs — controlled trials, real-world searches, and public product checks — each documented with completion dates in the dog's file.
Read a summary of our certification standardsOur role — and the law
Service Paws is an independent certification organization, not a government agency, and our certification is not a government license. Our assessment and registry document that a dog has been trained and evaluated — they do not by themselves grant legal access rights. Public-access rights for service dogs are set by federal, provincial, and national laws that vary by location, and handlers are responsible for the rules that apply where they travel.