My dog was attacked and knocked down by someone else’s off-leash dog, and I was told that dog didn’t need to be on a leash because it was a service animal. It makes all dog owners look bad when people get away with this shit.
This is a tragedy of the commons. In a mature society only people who really NEED a service animal would bring them along. The wanna have my ferret folks are screwing both those who might need a life hack service animal due to lack of proper finance and healthcare as well as making it harder on those with the 100% legit guide dogs for the blind and hearing impaired.
The fake service animal seem to come disproportionately with a white privilege owner.
It’s okie dokie in California.
No good deed goes unpunished, or …
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, or …
Another mark of the end of compassion and empathy in our Me-First society.
My park ranger in training friend has told me that ticketing someone for an off-leash violation is the interaction most likely to get a national park ranger shot. It seems pretty outlandish, but maybe there actually should PSA programs about not being a terriorist.
the service animal needs to be on the leash.
I also aware that people with autism (such as myself) own pets for their mental conditions (I don’t know much about the details). But even though those technically count as a service animals, I personally wouldn’t bring my Labrador-retriever/Siberian-Husky mutt everywhere I go.
Maybe it’s because I’m a cat person, but I don’t understand the need some people have to take their pets everywhere. If you can’t leave them at home at least some of the time, then you need to reevaluate whether you’re responsible enough, or have the right home circumstances, to own a pet.
I get it, you’re going to park your ass at Starbucks so you can finish that novel you’ve been working on since you were eighteen five years ago, and there’s no one to let the dog out. Fundamentally, I’m okay with that, and I think Starbucks should be too, within the bounds of reason. But I don’t need to round the corner at the public library to make uncomfortable eye-contact with some idiot’s great Dane pissing on the periodicals. We have a hard enough time with people not knowing how to behave themselves in public without throwing a spoiled Labrador into the mix.
So what?
There was a very funny and informative story on this in the New Yorker last fall.
One of the apartment buildings in my neighborhood recently settled a discrimination case brought by the federal government after they tried to evict a woman who insisted that the stray pit bull she took in (that bit another dog) was an emotional support animal.
Big problem here is, the whole thing is similar to Handicapped people being asked if they are actually handicapped when they get out of their cars like normal people and park in a handicapped spot and have the plate. You just can’t do it.
You can also spot a real service dogs, it should not mind other dogs, nor bark at other dogs or pull on the leash. Uncontrollable dogs are not service dogs.
I really don’t believe there are any actual mini-purse “yappy” size service dog either, they are usually medium to large dogs.
The part where they fed the dog reminds me of someone I used to work with, he had a seeing-eye dog. At lunch, any number of presumably well-intentioned people would feed the dog, which meant later on the guy would have to go outside so the dog could puke up the treats.
Erin, who is not disabled, travels everywhere with Bo because she says she can not bear to leave him home alone.
“It concerns me when there are four dogs on a flight, and I know that
mine isn’t fully certified,” she says. “I know he’s fine but I don’t
know if some other dog is going to freak out.”
Wow.
Because there are places where it is inappropriate to bring animals that aren’t properly trained. Even a legitimate service animal can cause problems for innocent bystanders, such as those with severe allergies. Circumventing laws, regulations and business practices designed for the greater health and safety of the public for the sake of your own convenience is a dick move.
And I say this as the happy owner of a Golden Retriever.
People,
People who need fake service animals
Are the suspiciousiest people in the world
They’re children, needing other children
And yet letting a grown-up pride
Hide all the need inside
Acting more like terrorists than children
The expanded uses of service animals has made it tougher,too. When I was a kid, “service animal” was pretty much just guide dogs for the blind. If someone was blind, you didn’t give them a hard time about their dog. But it was pretty obvious who was blind. Now that service animals are all sorts of animals for all sorts of reasons that aren’t as immediately obvious to onlookers and shop owners and such, it’s harder to not offend folks that really have real service animals and easier to lie about your pet being a service animal. That people now have them for emotional support, mental disability kinds of issues, seizures, etc. it’s more complicated. You can lie about having PTSD much easier than you can lie about being blind.
There’s lady I see somewhat often who brings her dog everywhere and lies and says it’s a service dog so she can bring it places it wouldn’t otherwise be welcome (the places I see her with it most are bars and concerts). I wouldn’t mind the lie so much if it weren’t that the dog is nowhere near as well behaved as an actual service dog would be. Real service dogs are AWESOME. Hers is clearly an average house pet. That’s where I see it being tough to go with just loosening the rules on bringing your pet just because you wanted to bring your pet. Real service animals are trained intensely for their purpose. They don’t cause trouble or increased risk to anyone or scare anyone or damage anything. I’ve never once had a real service dog pee on the floor of my store or bark at and scare another customer or run boisterously into anything or put their nose in a stranger’s crotch (and I even used to let a lady who trained service dogs use my store for practice). But if you open the flood gates to allow pets, it’s much tougher, especially in places that aren’t like my little bitty locally owned shop but are bigger more corporate things, to predict or determine which pets are going to be a problem for your other patrons and which aren’t. You don’t have that assurance that because it’s a real service animal that it’s going to be exquisitely well behaved. It could be a good dog that’s not a problem for anyone or a little hellion.
Sometimes it gets overused, but in this case, your story and the original blog post does deserve a “this is why we can’t have nice things”.
I believe that a lot of problems we have with dogs stem from the fact that many people have no idea how to train their dogs.
Yes, indeed. I’d like to see the Venn diagram of people who get fake “service animal” gear and those who get bogus (if not literally “fake”) handicapped parking placards. Abuse of the latter is endemic in LA. And to those who say it should be dealt with by having better/more parking, I say, NO, IT SHOULD BE DEALT WITH BY $10,000 FINES!
