Meet Our Staff
Since 1995, National Service Animal Registry has actively trained, facilitated, and registered service, therapy, and drug detection animals. We first operated in southeast Tennessee, working closely with various county justice and sheriff's departments training and coordinating the use of drug detection dogs. Through our experiences with the public, we quickly became aware of the profound need for service and therapy animals for people with disabilities. These disabilities included people with balance problems, difficulty hearing, diabetes, asthma, panic disorders, seizures, and more.
Training dogs as service animals was important work and benefited many people. But just having an animal important to the daily functions of a person with a disability didn't mean that your service dog could accompany you where you needed to go - at least without confrontation and long explanation. Unfortunately, the public isn't always aware that many disabilities are invisible. In these cases, businesses are inclined to prevent you from bringing your dog with you into a store, mall, restaurant, or motel because you look perfectly healthy!
The first time National Service Animal Registry CEO Tim Livingood personally encountered this problem was when he entered the restroom of a state park in Oregon. He looked perfectly healthy and his dog had no identifying patches or apparel. The park ranger refused to let his dog into the restroom with him because state law prohibits animals in state park restrooms. It took several minutes to convince the park ranger that his small dog was, in fact, a service animal. After many similar encounters, explanations, and arguments, it seemed logical that having an official identification card and a service animal patch or apparel for the dog would prevent most of these.
Since we began providing certification and registry services to the public, the experience of the owners of dogs registered with National Service Animal Registry has proven to be highly positive. 94% of the time, businesses will not confront you about your dog once they have seen the NSAR patch or apparel on the dog. For the remaining few, when owners have voluntarily offered the photo ID of their certified service animal, businesses have immediately allowed the dogs to accompany their owners.
We're in the business to help animals help people and we take pride in providing the best, old fashioned service available. We guarantee your satisfaction!
National Service Animal Registry is a division of Chilhowee Corporation.