Ok. This thread is YEARS old and probably no one who wrote here will ever see this. But in case anyone wanted an answer to this question, I will tell you an answer to it from my personal experience with my service dog. (And it's not the one in my pic.) My issue is not "just" "anxiety'. I am both physically and mentally disabled and am in a wheelchair. So my dog helps me with mobility tasks too, such as retrieving things for me, and helping me stand by bracing his back so I can support myself off of him when I go from a sitting to standing position.
In terms of "anxiety" I have PTSD, DID and sometimes psychotic symptoms, etc. (and major depressive disorder, OCD, yada, yada, yada) -- all severe.) So, does that mean my SD simply makes me feel comforted by being near me all the time? No. He is trained to do things such as blocking -- where I will use the command "block" and point either in front of me or behind me, where he will go respectively and sit, making a space between me and whoever is in front of or behind me (a useful PTSD distancing maneuver.) It keeps people out of my space so I don't panic as much. I also use him for things like DPT (deep pressure therapy) which is another trained task. DPT involves me giving him a command and then depending on where/how we are, he will drape his body over mine, which puts pressure around my legs and abdominal area, thereby physiologically alleviating physical anxiety. Other things he does include retrieving my medications and a drink to swallow them with on command. One thing that is not really a trained task, but that I use him for is hallucination discernment....I often have visual hallucinations (and other kinds) and if I'm seeing things, I can direct him to "walk through" my hallucinations, or even just observe him quietly to see whether he's reacting to anything in the environment. If I'm seeing something scary and violent with lots of people around and he's sitting quietly, not noticing anything at all, it's easier for me to try to reason inside that these things I'm seeing must not be reality. That's just a bonus, I guess
There are several other things, but these are some of his primary tasks to give you an overall sense of the *types* of ways he helps me, whether when focusing more on mobility or mental illness. I also have suffered enormously with agoraphobia as part of my illnesses and having him has been an incredible help in allowing me to start getting out of the house again. I"m still very disabled and struggle a lot, but he continues to be quite the miracle maker. He is a trained service dog (training is what makes him a service dog, of course, as well as the fact that I meet the legal definition of disabled.)
We actually just came back from our first trip to WDW in June (it's almost Sept now.) And we had an awesome time! We spent two weeks, just my SD, me and my husband. We used the DAS and remarkably, had a fantastic experience with it. No complaints at all. Thank you for letting me share my experiences.
