Hanni is my co-pilot. (Photo by Kaitlyn Cashman)
A story in the San Francisco Weekly last week described Tita, a Chihuahua service dog who works with a man suffering from bipolar disorder. A happy, feel-good story, except for one thing.
Tita bites people.
“She’s vicious,” Esler says with a smile, cradling the dog, which licks his face with abandon.
Once the story hit the newsstands, I was contacted by the blog moderator at The Bark. She wanted to know if I’d be willing to write a guest post about the service dog who bites.
What? You call yourself a dog lover, and you’ve never heard of The Bark?! Here’s a description of the four-color glossy magazine from their web site:
Taking the magazine’s slogan to heart—Dog Is My Co-Pilot—Bark became the first magazine to tap into the exploding phenomena of dog culture and lifestyle, focusing on the growing bond between individuals and their pet companions. Over the past ten years, Bark has chronicled the America’s love affair with dogs, the evolving status of canine pets and their role in society, as well as the incredible rise in services and products. Bark has become the recognized expert on the social/cultural world of dogs in America, and what they mean to us.
Bark’s impeccable pedigree includes publishing many of today’s most acclaimed authors including Ann Patchett, Augusten Burroughs, Rick Bass, Amy Hempel, and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver.
Hmm. Must be a proofreading error there. Somehow they left award-winning Children’s book author Beth Finke off that list. Because, of course, I’ve published a few articles in The Bark, too. It’s always a thrill to be contacted by their staff — it gives me the opportunity to brag that I write for the same magazine Ann Patchett writes for! You can read my guest blog at The Bark’s site and link to other Bark stories there, too—if you like dogs, trust me, you’ll like The Bark.
I recommend reading the whole SF Weekly article Beth links to here. It’s very well done. Apart from poorly trained dogs that actually do help their companions, able-bodied people are taking advantage of the situation in San Francisco. It’s not an entirely new phenomenon–Beth met someone many years ago on a plane who owned up to the fact that her father had used a harness and dark glasses so they could bring a dog on flights on family vacations. As far as people who have a legitimate need for a service dog, it only makes sense that the dogs are trained in a way that respects other people. Reasonable accommodation cuts both ways.
One of the big problems with some individuals is that they think service dogs have legal rights. They are not the ones with rights. People with disabilities are the ones that maybe accompanied by an *individually Trained* Service dog. With this rights comes responsibilities which the ADA does indeed cover as well. Any business has the right to refuse a service dog if that said dog truly is a threat to others or is unruly in anyway.
Basically he just admitted that his dog service or not is vicious: “She’s vicious,” Esler says with a smile, cradling the dog, which licks his face with abandon.” Therefore he lost his right to have his dog with him as he is not responsible service dog handler.
With that said I will have to look at the bark magazine.
Good point. Here’s a quote from the “Commonly Asked Questions About Service Animals in Places of Business” on the US government’s ADA site
http://www.ada.gov/qasrvc.htm
Q: What if a service animal barks or growls at other people, or otherwise acts out of control?
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A: You may exclude any animal, including a service animal, from your facility when that animal’s behavior poses a direct threat to the health or safety
of others. For example, any service animal that displays vicious behavior towards other guests or customers may be excluded. You may not make assumptions,
however, about how a particular animal is likely to behave based on your past experience with other animals. Each situation must be considered individually.
Although a public accommodation may exclude any service animal that is out of control, it should give the individual with a disability who uses the service
animal the option of continuing to enjoy its goods and services without having the service animal on the premises.
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Q: Can I exclude an animal that doesn’t really seem dangerous but is disruptive to my business?
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A: There may be a few circumstances when a public accommodation is not required to accommodate a service animal–that is, when doing so would result in
a fundamental alteration to the nature of the business. Generally, this is not likely to occur in restaurants, hotels, retail stores, theaters, concert
halls, and sports facilities. But when it does, for example, when a dog barks during a movie, the animal can be excluded.
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If you have further questions about service animals or other requirements of the ADA, you may call the U.S. Department of Justice’s toll-free ADA Information
Line at 800-514-0301 (voice) or 800-514-0383 (TDD).
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