A coworker of mine admitted to registering his standard poodle as a service dog so they can take him on vacations. There is no one in his family that needs a service animal. He said all you need to do is take them to a class then register them. Not sure if its really that easy but why lie about something like that?
Well he's not just wrong for doing that, but he's wrong in thinking there's any class or certification service dogs need.
Now for dogs who help the blind and other simliar things they DO need training. But I met people in my town who accidentally discovered that 2 of their 3 lovely big can't-recall-the-breed dogs could sense their son's diabetic blood sugar changes and would naturally alert the family. Their son is an adult and came back from Iraq with PTSD and a TBI, and he now lives with them. He also has diabetes, but the dogs were new to them from while he was deployed so they didn't know the dogs' abilities. And one night two of them came into the parents' bedroom and very urgently woke them up. His had dipped dangerously low and they sensed it and knew just what to do. They are now his service dogs. No training needed.
For the one where it was a small lap dog under their arm, it could easily be a dog that is trained to sniff out an epileptic seizure coming on
Yep! Or blood sugar changes before the person would even think to check (or while they are sleeping).
Real service dogs do not require certification and are legitimately trained to do something to mitigate someone's disability.
Yep.
The losers here are people with legitimate disabilities that are now looked down on or questioned because others decided that rules don't apply to them.
Only by jerks who are looking for reasons to look down on those with disabilities.
Businesses are allowed to ask certain questions, and then move on.
Businesses and housing are also allowed to kick out a service dog *just as they could kick out a human behaving badly*.
I believe that
Disneyland has announced only dogs with specific certification will be allowed (papers will be checked), but I can't find the news story.
Alas there's no central certification. So that's going to be difficult.
ADA should give legit service animals a credential as part of the very expensive training this dogs get in order to service the disabled
Not all dogs require expensive training.
I'm not in favor of putting yet another hurdle up for a disabled person to get a service dog.
This will happens when one of this dogs bite or do harm to other park goers.
If that happens now the dog can be kicked out. They are treated like a human, and if the human bites someone in a themepark they will be kicked out.
A VERY ill behaved dog was with a family near me. The pooch was jumping on everyone who walked by, barking loudly, urinating on the trash bins and rock walls. I asked the dad about the dog and he flat-out told me that he got an online service dog card/vest for the dog. The animal was no more "service" than the average pet.
And when you went to the CMs there and told them about both the behavior and the fact that the dog did nto perform a service for the man, what happened?
The behavior alone, just like if it was a human doing that, would have consequences.
Unfortunately this comes up all the time lately and businesses hands are tied.
Well, they feel like their hands are tied, but they aren't. Even if the person lies in response to the legally allowed questions, if the animal acts up they CAN kick them out. Businesses tend to be scared, but from what I've read on ADA pages and I believe even here on the Disabilities page there has not yet been a lawsuit that doesn't favor the business. As long as the dog is legitimately behaving very very poorly, the business is within their rights to treat them as they would a poorly behaving human.
