"Buddy!" said Jenny Dickinson, who has been training therapy and service animals in the East Bay and beyond for more than two decades. "I love talking about Buddy, I'm very, very proud of him."

Buddy is a two-year old Golden Retriever, One of Ms. Dickinson's star pupils — and he is Rhode Island's first funeral home therapy dog, working out of the Anderson-Winfield Funeral Home in Smithfield. By all accounts, Buddy has been tremendously comforting to the home's bereaved clients, being friendly and upbeat, though quiet and gentle when he needs to be. As much as Ms. Dickinson credits Buddy's skills to his personality and instincts, she also credits owners Becky and Tim Winfield. "They really did their homework, and stuck it out through the process," she says.

"You cannot be in a hurry (training dogs)," Ms. Dickinson said. "You have to take the time and do the work. It's about practice and experience — dogs cannot be convinced by your words."

For the uninitiated, you might see a dog (or increasingly, another animal) sporting a vest or credentials, and lump them all together as therapy/service/support animals, but there are several important distinctions. Therapy dogs, like Buddy, and dogs that work at places like Hasbro Children's Hospital or at senior citizen's facilities, have been trained to be available to, and comfort, many people. A service dog, like one that has been trained to assist someone who is blind, or a veteran with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, attends to one person, and a great deal of their training time is dedicated to learning how to relate to, and respond to the cues given by that particular person. Service dogs have also been used with great success to alert people with seizure disorders, heart disease, and diabetes. Technically, service dogs are considered (by insurance companies at least) to be a piece of medical equipment.

"Emotional support" animals are another category entirely, and one not without some controversy, as people are bringing these animals more and more often into public spaces where they are not necessarily equipped to conduct themselves appropriately. One recent example was when an emotional support dog charged the stage at a production of the musical Cats. The story made the national news because, haha, dogs chase cats, but the story was not as amusing to animal behaviorists who recognize that the dog was agitated and should not have been in that theater. What's more, according to Ms. Dickinson, is a legitimate service dog could have been distracted and missed his owner's cues, due to the havoc being caused in the theater by another dog. This incident happened because there is no standard certification for "emotional support" animals, as opposed to the strongest requirements imposed by, for example, the Veteran's Administration's service dogs.

I'm a fan of regulation," said Ms. Dickinson. "Regulations protect people."

Airlines, in particular, seem to be at a loss as to how to handle these animals, resulting in inconsistencies across the industry and the profusion of animals on planes in recent years (a friend recently photographed a woman boarding a flight with a pig over her shoulder.) This confusion means that while airlines are permitting some of these animals to board, existing regulations prevent Ms. Dickinson and other trainers from bringing service dogs with "in-training" status on these same flights. "We can come to the airport, train them to go through security and navigate the baggage carousel," she said. "But we can't get on the plane."

Legitimate psychological support animals are, in contrast, very well trained. In the event that the owner of an emotional support animal is brought into court, the animal needs to demonstrate, before a judge, at least one skill that helps the owner. For example, a dog can be trained to apply comforting pressure to a person with an anxiety disorder. That animal is, most often, a dog. In fact, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) only recognizes as service animals two types of animals besides dogs: Capuchin monkeys (who are reportedly phenomenally helpful to paraplegics) and miniature horses (who can effectively aid people who use wheelchairs.)

Ms. Dickinson came to dog training, and her keen interest in animal behavior, in a roundabout way. Thirty years ago she was an editor with degrees in art history and English literature, when she was diagnosed with cancer. "My dogs sustained me," she said. As she recovered, she got increasingly interested in taking her dogs to obedience competitions, and a friend who was a dog trainer invited Ms. Dickinson to apprentice with her. It was working with aggressive dogs that really got Ms. Dickinson interested in the science behind animal behavior. "With dogs, 99 percent of the time, it is fear, not meanness, that is motivating the aggression."

Interested in training a dog for a specific service? Ms. Dickinson recommends consulting a trainer first, who can guide you to a particular breed, depending on your needs. "I think rescue is a wonderful thing," she said. "But it can also be worth your time to choose the dog that has been selectively bred to meet your goals. Retrievers retrieve things."

Ultimately, Ms. Dickinson thinks the most important things to remember when training dogs is to follow the science, do not apply human behaviors to dogs, and remember that we are the ones with the privilege of language. "Dogs are absolutely honest, and they have no hidden agenda," she said. "That's not the way their brains work. They don't make stuff up, strategize, hold grudges or score keep. We do."