Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

VA Plans to Provide Service Dogs to Veterans

WASHINGTON (CN) - The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to establish a single regulation to provide assistive dogs, including both guide dogs and service dogs, to veterans.

The benefit would include insurance for veterinary treatment and payment for hardware and its repair. The VA also would pay for travel expenses associated with obtaining a dog.

The VA benefits would only be for veterans with visual, hearing, or substantial mobility impairments, and they only would apply if a VA clinician's medical judgment indicates that a trained service dog would provide optimal assistance that technological devices or rehabilitative techniques would not. The VA also would require that the dog maintain its ability to function as a service dog, for benefits to continue.

This regulation would provide the VA with discretion to choose between a service dog and assistive technology based on medical judgment rather than on cost.

The VA plans to allow service dog benefits if the dog and veteran have successfully completed a training program by an organization accredited by Assistance Dogs International or the International Guide Dog Federation, or both (for dogs that perform both service- and guide-dog assistance).

Click the document icon for this regulation and others.

Categories / Uncategorized

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...