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posted by janrinok on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the my-emotional-support-is-a-lion dept.

The young, perfectly healthy looking guy ahead of me in Panera Bread walked his fifty lb. dog to the front of the line - I can't tell you the breed since I don't know dogs - and was immediately told that the dog had to go. "Um, I have an anxiety disorder", he replied. The cashier turned around to consult with the manager, but people were still waiting to order, and soon it was conceded that the customer and his service dog/best friend could stay for lunch. And they did.

The Chicago Tribune reports that similar incidents are cropping up on airlines. Passengers dread having their pets locked up in a kennel in the cargo section, and airlines charge hefty fees for the service, so some of them are taking advantage of a legal loophole allowing service dogs of disabled people to ride in the passenger cabin free of charge; but in these cases the disability is "emotional distress" rather than, say, blindness. Many of these passengers pay a licensed therapist for the certificate of need required by airline gate attendants, and for an expensive vest for their "service animals".

From the Tribune story:

"It's definitely gotten carried away to the point where people are taking advantage of the system," [Atlanta flight attendant] Williams said. "It's hard when someone is following protocol and they're not allowed to take the animal out of the cage, but others use the loophole to have an animal sit on their lap."

The story mentions that some fellow passengers and advocates for the (real) disabled are annoyed with the game-playing and lax enforcement. However, others perhaps side with the late Harry Nilsson, who famously sang "I'd take my puppy everywhere, la-la-la I wouldn't care. We'll stay away from crowds, signs that said 'No friends allowed'".


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @10:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @10:39AM (#428058)

    > disabled people are apparently offended at the very idea that they might have to "prove" their disability. WTF?

    TF: The value of catching cheaters is not worth the harm done to the legitimately disabled in being required to prove their legitimacy to every uneducated tom, dick and harry who will feel empowered to arbitrarily deny them entry. There is no legal requirement to tolerate a service animal that misbehaves. Therefore the burden of accommodating a service animal is miniscule, even a "fake" service animal.

  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday November 17 2016, @02:50PM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday November 17 2016, @02:50PM (#428120) Homepage Journal

    I have to disagree. There is no reason to tolerate service animal fraud [thedailybeast.com]. The thing is: a genuine service animal is highly trained, and will not misbehave. Fake service animals [nbcbayarea.com], on the other hand, are owned by self-entitled twits, and are (pretty much by definition) *not* trained.

    Take a misbehaving animal, and a self-entitled twit, and try to kick them out of your business. You're likely to get a huge scene, and when the story hits the interwebs, lots of crappy publicity.

    A brief search, and here is a prime example of a self-entitled special snowflake [wordpress.com]. She picked up a stray puppy, "trained" him herself, and now calls him a "service dog". In the blog entry, she's discussing some basic behavior problems that no genuine service dog would exhibit; worse, her comments show that she has no clue how to actually guide a dog's behavior. Hint: it isn't through occasional "refresher courses" when your dog's behavior becomes intolerable.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:02PM (#428162)

      While I agree with your disgust of people who pretend to have a disability in order to get special treatment, the ADA (if you're in the US) does not allow businesses to ask for documentation. Businesses can, at least, ask people to remove their animal if it is out of control.

      https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm [ada.gov]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:43PM (#428190)

      > I have to disagree. There is no reason to tolerate service animal fraud.

      That approach inevitably means that some deserving people will be denied. What you are saying is that it is more important to you to punish frauds than to help people who genuinely need help. No amount of sophistry will change that.

      > Take a misbehaving animal, and a self-entitled twit, and try to kick them out of your business. You're likely to get a huge scene, and when the story hits the interwebs, lots of crappy publicity.

      Ok, if that's true then there must be a million examples of that. Name three. That "special snowflake" link you provided isn't even close. Not one word about making a scene in public. If that's the best example you've got, you've disproven your own thesis.

    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday November 18 2016, @04:04AM

      by Reziac (2489) on Friday November 18 2016, @04:04AM (#428638) Homepage

      In fact, a good way to distinguish might be to innocently inquire if they've had the "service dog" since it was a puppy....

      --
      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.