01st Apr 2008
Service Dogs at Work
When you think of a service dog, you may think of a dog helping a visually impaired person to navigate. Or perhaps a seizure alert dog. However, there are a number of other ways in which dogs can perform as service dogs including Psychiatric Service Dogs for people with Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Autism, Anxiety Disorder, and Schizophrenia. I mention this after coming across the story of Wal-Mart kicking out a service dog-in-training (Why is Wal-Mart always the non-example of decent behavior? Why?) and remembering a story of a fellow writer in workshop regarding how her service dog often gets her kicked out of businesses because she doesn’t look obviously blind.
You can read a story about the need for and about the work of psychiatric service dogs here.
I don’t understand how a dog can be kicked out without the owner being asked if the dog is a service dog. HELLO? I mean, isn’t there some kind of protocol? Common courtesy?
In all the stories I read, the employees assume the dog isn’t a service dog and don’t believe the owner. It’s that idea that you have to be blind to use a service dog. It’s illegal too, btw.
Oh lord have mercy. There def needs to be some kind of protocol. I hate when a place has rules that it doesn’t know how to follow.
Your blind friend does know, I hope, that it’s illegal to kick out a service dog from a place of business? Hmmm, or is that just a California law? I have a friend with a service dog and we’ve eaten at restaurants and gone into shopping malls. She’s been talked to, but she’s fierce about the law on that one. I love service dogs!
No, you’re right, it’s a federal law (the americans with disabilities act). My friend is actually an advocate for others with disabilities, but she had a lot of stories of people becoming irate in businesses that she wasn’t blind as that’s how most people understand service dogs.
Oddly, I once had another customer get all pissy over a service dog because she “wasn’t allowed to bring in her own dog so why should they?”
I did not offer to poke her eyes out thus making her eligible. It was tempting.