I have a service dog and get asked all the time why I have him. It depends on my mood (or which part) but I usually say that I dissociate and tell people that it is a normal thing to do (like forgetting what you went to your bedroom for) but that I can do it for longer. Once in a while when I say I dissociate, I can tell that the person I am speaking to knows what that is. Sometimes I get asked why. My answer to that varies from I don't know to we think early trauma to telling people it started after I was very ill. It really isn't any of their business, though. Sometimes I think I should be less forthcoming because other people might not want to say why they have a service dog.

I care less what strangers think of me than what the people that I interact with regularly think of me. There is one young woman that I mentor that knows when I dissociate. Which is kind of weird because she is not particularly good at reading social signals.