Some dogs are trained to be assholes in the service of cops. Some are trained to locate people trapped in collapsed buildings. Some are faithful hunting companions. Some help the blind or the physically disabled. Some protect livestock. Some are fashion models. Some provide valuable ball-retrieval services.
Cats don’t give a shit what humans would like them to do because they are all just looking out for themselves.
FTFY…
Disabilities can have incommensurate requirements. What one person might absolutely need to have in order to function (or to live) might be impossible to bear (or actively harmful) to another.
It’s all complicated, and when you’re talking disability, they’re both valid, and they both have the right to be in that space… it’s just that they are not going to be able to be there at the same time.
But also, people who say their junkyard mutt is a service animal and you’re not allowed to question them about it even while it’s humping your leg while its teeth are sunk in your arm, they’re horrible human beings who are actively ruining things for disabled people, and are worse than the people who park their cars across two disabled spaces “just for five minutes”.
Because people suck, and are why we can’t have nice things.
I’m sure this has all been said before, but it all, I think, bears repeating.
That’s a lot.
Oh more than that. If you tell that dog to heel, it’ll lay its paws on you and start to pray.
I think they should have let the dog stay and kicked out the human
I didn’t say other wise. Telling people with service animals that they can’t enter a place is not particular helpful and it breaks the law.
If you repeal this particular public accommodations due to allergies or fears of dogs, then you’re going down the road of going to a pre-ADA world, which I don’t think ANYONE wants.
I think we’re all agreed that the person was being a dick, and the bar was within their rights to kick him out, and that the presence of a service dog was exactly the wrong reason to have given for doing that.
And that disability accommodation is more complicated than you think, no matter how complicated you think it is. The rights of people to have service animals and travel freely should not be restricted. And yet those rights can interact badly with the rights of other disabled people to travel freely.
Disability advocacy is hard.
Having worked in various service industries, like being a server in a restaurant, I know that if you have a good manager and they know what your needs are, then when someone comes into the restaurant with a service dog, they can be put in the station furthest from the server who is allergic. There are ways for us all to manage together, but we have to be willing to want to try.
You bring up an interesting point… You have an individual who requires a service dog to help control their PTSD and another person who experiences PTSD when in the presence of a dog. If they are both in the same establishment, who “wins”? (That’s a poor word choice, but I’m sticking with it because it also kind of highlights the problem) The law will stand on the side of the person who requires the service animal. But why? The purpose of the law is to ensure individuals with a disability of some kind be able to exist in our society with as close to the same amount of freedom and agency as everyone else.
The person who experiences PTSD when around dogs will probably encounter a lot of shrugged shoulders and be encouraged to not go where there will be dogs. But the person who needs the service dog used to experience more or less the same thing. “You get PTSD from loud noises/crowds/travel/etc.? Maybe you should just stay home.” Why does one person’s disability trump someone else’s?
I suppose it’s easier to legislate something additive in nature vs subtractive in cases like this. e.g. saying an individual has the right to have a dog operating as a service animal to control their PTSD is easier than saying an individual has a right to be in a dog free area to control their PTSD. If the latter is being told to pound sand because their PTSD isn’t everyone else’s problem, why is the former’s PTSD everyone else’s problem? Why should one person experience PTSD so another doesn’t?
Lest anyone think I’m just a huge asshole, I’m all for service animals. I would like to see accommodations made for people. I just think it’s an interesting discussion I haven’t heard before… usually it’s about people with allergies to animal dander being dismissed in favor of service animals. It’s a similar argument but dealing with non-reciprocompetitive (I just made that word up) medical issues. The person with allergies will experience exacerbated symptoms by allowing a service animal, but the individual with PTSD may not necessarily experience worsening symptoms by ensuring the one with allergies isn’t exposed to animals.
I wish this point got made more often. In abstract conversation threads like this, people go down rabbit holes of theoreticals that just don’t ever actually happen in the real world. “What about my allergies conflicting with your service dog!” Well, okay, both need accommodations, but…
At the end of the day, all this getting bent out of shape about theoretical competing rights that people do just distracts from the fact that conflicting disabilities are rare and accommodating everyone at once in the real world just ain’t that difficult.
I have been told, to my face, that my necessary accommodations are wrong and don’t exist because of building standards designed (incorrectly) according to the (misunderstood) standards which are designed for a different disability.
That is, when the building I work in was redesigned, the lighting levels were set somewhere around the “We have ways of making you talk” level, flat and uniform and glaringly brilliant in all directions. It was interfering with my autism and giving me anxiety and sensory overload. I knew of another person who was getting migraines from it. One of the architect’s team was sitting in the office for a shakedown period, so I raised this issue with him, asking if the light levels could be changed in various regions. He told me that the light levels were designed to the Australian Standards, and couldn’t be changed (actually, given how it was done, I believe that last part). We checked: his luxmeter readings were low, and the lights were brighter than he said they were, and the uniform flood lighting was set to the level that the standard sets for close fine work: that is, think of the level of light you’d want to have at your desk when you’re painting miniatures, but everywhere, including in the walkways and interstitial spaces. We called him on this again, and he flat out told me that no-one needs less light, and the standards and design are correct.
Conflicting disabilities aren’t, I suspect, actually that rare: it’s just that disabled people learn quickly which places they shouldn’t even bother trying, and self select away from rather than trying to press the issue.
And I agree, designing in the flexibility to accommodate everyone should be easy and common. It’s just that that doesn’t take into account bloody-minded design purists who think they understand accommodation but don’t, build in rigid adherence to misunderstood standards and explicitly reject the flexibility which is actually required, and tell disabled people that their accommodations aren’t possible when they complain.
Which is all distracting from the original point that the Houston bar in the OP are being a bunch of dicks and deserve opprobrium.
Which speaks to the need to expand definitions, not pit one disability against another, and come down on the side of shutting some people up in their homes… I’m all for figuring out ways to accommodate everyone, because we need everyone to be able to fully participate in society. But telling people with service dogs that they are barred isn’t it.
I’m trying to furiously agree with you. It shouldn’t be hard.
But in practice it too often is made to be hard when it doesn’t have to be, and not just with the service animal issue that we’ve gotten caught up on.
I am actively working on disability advocacy in my workplace, and pushing for inclusive and flexible design. I’ve been pushing at it for almost ten years. The first Provost with disability inclusion as part of their remit was installed a couple of days ago.
You’re accurately describing a battle that I’m currently fighting.
Sure. Okay. Sorry.
Have a good one.
As goes restaurants and businesses that’s complicated.
Though probably not applicable to this one given how they seem to be handling it.
There’s competing bits of regulation and law say you can’t let a pet in. As goes restaurants, which is what I’m familiar with. Letting non-service animals inside is a serious health code violation, at minimum. Letting pets in can straight up get you shut down. There’s also huge liability concerns, if a customer’s animal harms another customer or a staff member. Even something like @Michael_Cross 's asthma, there’s seriously liability on the part of the restaurant for allowing that animal in.
That’s part and parcel of the ADA requirements here, it doesn’t just ensure that a disabled person with service animal can be accommodated, it gives the business a shield against all of that. Even if the “that” is just some Karen stirring shit cause the seeing eye dog was distracting.
I’ve worked places that wanted to be dog friendly, and had the space and format to be dog friendly with minimal issues. And we had to stop, cause our insurance company threatened to stop covering us.
It creates a bit of an unsolvable conflict. Cause the ADA says you’re not allowed to ask people to prove it. But your state, county, liquor licensing body, insurance company are all telling you you have to prove it.
You can’t simply ignore it, even if nothing difficult to ignore is going on.
Ultimately that’s on the very large number of people who want to exploit the service animal system. Not on the service animals or people who need them. Nor on the business who are stuck policing this.
It’s not even just a distinction between “emotional support” animals and service animals. I’ve had to deal with a person bringing a very poorly behaved, aggressive dog into a restaurant. With what appeared to be all of the proper paperwork and proof of a service dog. Straight down certificates from a fake service dog non-profit that turned out to be a sketchy breeder.
That’s in fact how one of those dog friendly places I worked ended up non-dog friendly. That person attempted to report us for violating something, to absolutely everyone after being asked to leave. And that revealed the presence of dogs to our insurance company and the state liquor authority.
Yup, that’s been my experience for over 20 years. Even though these days you can find a dog anywhere.
After many years of work I’m only briefly paralyzed when I encounter an unexpected dog and not sent into full-blown panic attacks - that’s not theoretical. But despite that I fully support the rights of others to utilize a service dog whenever and wherever, even if the presence of the dog itself is a trigger for me.
In my experience most people are too enamored of dogs to believe that anyone can have a legitimate reason to not want to be around one - I’ve encountered reactions ranging from “stop being silly” to “there must be something wrong with you” (well yes, it’s called trauma, thanks for noticing.) I’ve been told that I must want to ban dogs from public, get rid of dogs as pets, and even eliminate the entire canis familiaris species when I’ve mentioned my hesitation to people.
So yeah, I just don’t bother trying anymore.
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