Your cites do not say that the animal’s status “cannot be questioned,” as you claimed. As a matter of fact your own link - the second question - quite specifically says businesses CAN question the status of an alleged service animal. It’s the very first bullet point!
I don’t believe I should cater to those who are easily bothered by other people’s business. If there’s widespread abuse, show me some evidence. A couple of pigs and ponies is not widespread abuse.
No, the problem is, why should we care? Why can’t we assume the best of people? If their actions say they need a service animal and that animal is well behaved, why should it be any of our business? It just seems like we want to fix a problem that exists only in theory, and the only way to do that is a pretty large burden on those who are legitimately disabled.
If the animal is misbehaving, let 'em off at the next port. If the animal is behaving, then it’s a bunch of handwaving hysterics by people with nothing better to do than worry that some other person got away with something.
Sorry, what I meant by status was asking for certifications of the animal as a service animal.
A business can ask if the animal is a service animal but can’t demand “papers”.
I feel that a dog acting as a service dog is going to be a lot of places dogs are not normally permitted. Therefor, they should demonstrate some higher level of training and obedience, for example, in food situations, in kid situations, in crowd situations, in poop situations.
I think the general public has a certain right to not be confronted with a grabby bitey barky pooping-everywhere dog in a place they would not normally expect to encounter one. So I would favor some manner of certification, ensuring that service dogs are at a minimum standard of behavior when in public doing their job. Not seeing-eye dog for the blind level, not k-9 officer level, just a bare minimum level of good behavior and obedience.
ETA: I’m talking Petsmart puppy kindergarten levels here. I don’t think its so much of a burden. Just having the dog costs money too you know.
That’s actually quite interesting, but it would surprise me if depression were considered a to be disability under the ADA.
I lived in Manhattan near a large center for the blind with seeing eye dogs a common sight. That block was a poop minefield. I can’t blame the blind obviously, because they can’t see the poop!
According to the OP, there is a “No Pets” rule on the ship. Presumably, the cruise line doesn’t want a bunch of animals on board, for obvious reasons. If anyone can simply claim that their animal is not a pet, but a service animal, the rule would be pointless.
Is a depression dog a service animal? Nothing in the ADA links suggest that to be true.
I suffer from depression that is currently untreated because of financial problems. I am *much *happier when my dogs are with me, and get a bit antsy when I don’t see them for several hours. However, it would never occur to me to demand that a restaurant or cruise line accommodate my animals because of my condition. I just don’t go out, although, to be fair, I couldn’t afford it if I wanted to.
I work for a vet and we’ve had two calls in the last week from people who want us to “certify” their dog or ask us how to go about it. One had an rx script from her personal physician that she needed the dog with her for anxiety, the other flatly admitted that she wanted the dog (a cute but entirely untrained Silky Terrier) certified so she could avoid the dog flying in cargo during a portion of her airline flight.
Another person I know competes in agility with her dogs and since her father is a physician, he wrote her a letter that she carries with her. That, along with a service vest easily obtained online has never been questioned. In fact, she says that so many people who compete do it that when she travels to a national competition, the airline employees often comment on how many service dogs they have fly recently. She just tells them it’s a “service dog convention”.
I don’t think it is fair or reasonable that this person can do this. Her dogs are well behaved and not hurting anyone, but obviously more people are realizing how easy it is to declare their animal a “service” animal when they are not.
I absolutely agree. Furthermore, I think that every responsible dog owner, service dog or pet, should train to this minimum level.
But I also think we (people in general, Americans in particular) have this habit of thinking too hard when it comes to laws. Think about what you really want: civilized dogs. Okay, that’s fine. Now, rather than regulate the *way *in which that dog becomes civilized, why not regulate it that the dog has to be civilized? Certification is not important, a well behaved animal is important.
Certification, or lessons or any particular way in which you to try codify how someone goes about civilizing their dog, is simply a false assurance. I even wonder who’d be willing to do it, honestly. Given the unpredictable nature of animals, would you want to be the doggie school that says, “Yep, this dog is safe and civilized!” only to have a lawsuit dropped on your desk when the dog makes a mistake?
And if you require certification to let a dog into your establishment, and the dog misbehaves, then what? He’s met your legal requirements, he *has *a certificate.
No, I don’t see it. It’s needlessly complicated (and expensive) and it doesn’t solve the problem anyhow.
There have been times in my past,when we had our dog, that I would have happily put the kids in a kennel and taken the dog with us on the vacation. (And I’ve wanted to put the husband and kids in a kennel while I went somewhere so that the house doesn’t get re-painted/re-arranged or brought down to a new level of OMFGWTH have you done while I’m gone. With my group, it’s a crap shoot.)
I’ve seen dogs (of all sizes) behave better than human children. And I’ve seen (primarily) yippy dogs that were the exact reason that everyone hates yippy dogs.
As long as the dog and the kids are well behaved, it’s all good to me.
Whynot, imagine a circumstance where someone moderately allergic to dogs (they don’t choke or anything, but their eyes get red and itchy and they sneeze a lot) is in a public establishment–say, an airplane–and someone who’s blind gets on the plane with their service dog. There are two conflicting desires here: the desire to be free from the presence of a dog on the part of the allergic person, and the desire to be able to go out in public on the part of the blind person.
Our law is currently set up to favor the blind person, and I think that’s fair. The allergic person will be moderately inconvenienced once in a great while by the current setup, whereas the blind person will be tremendously inconvenienced constantly if the law favored the allergic person.
Under the spirit of the law, there are plenty of people mildly inconvenienced: those without a severe disability may not take their pets with them in many public places. The law favors the allergic person, and that, too, is fair: if the law was written otherwise, they’d be moderately inconvenienced very often.
People appear to be finding a loophole in the law that allows them to get an unscrupulous doctor to write a note for them, claiming a disability, so that they needn’t face the mild inconvenience. Not only does this violate the spirit (and possibly the letter) of the law, it also risks a change to the law, or to observance of the law, that will inconvenience our blind friend. The more people that exploit this loophole, the better-known it’ll be, and the more irritated folks will come at the law, and the better the chance that people won’t accept the blind person’s real need for a service dog.
Now, in addition to the allergic person, there are also folks who simply don’t like dogs: don’t like their smell, don’t like their sounds, don’t like being around a predator with powerful jaws, don’t like whatever about the dog. You might find their reasons for disliking dogs to be trivial, but get this: you’ve already declared off-limits an exploration into why people do what they do. If it’s none of our business why someone wants a service animal, then it’s none of your business why someone doesn’t want to be around service animals.
The law was clearly not intended to be used the way it’s being used. Use of the law in this manner dilutes it. It violates the Kantian imperative. It’s unethical, and folks should knock it off.
Do you really think the regulations against dogs were put into place, or continue to be enforced, for the benefit of allergic people? That’s ridiculous. For one thing, they’ve been in place far longer than allergies have been very common. For another, there are allergens in the air everywhere, and everywhere there are people, even more so. Dander and pet hair doesn’t stay at home.
And I think they’re assholes. That doesn’t mean I think we should burden a whole bunch of disabled people because of a few assholes.
That’s one possibility, sure. But it’s not a foregone conclusion. We could just as easily become more European in our tolerance of dogs in public places, and not worry so much about the distinction between service dogs and well behaved pets.
There are folks who simply don’t like children. There are folks who simply don’t like gay people, or black people, or people kissing on the subway, or SUVs or Wal-Marts or strollers on the sidewalk. I’m not about to pander to their sensitivities, either. I’m willing to move my stroller to one side, and to call people who don’t inconsiderate jerks, but I’ll get awfully pissy if you try to pass a law banning strollers when a law requiring strollers to stay to the right would do. Regulations are best when they’re least restrictive. Address the real problem, don’t try to dictate how it must be avoided.
You’re absolutely right. I don’t care. It’s none of my business. Never in this thread have I tried to understand why someone doesn’t want to be around service animals, because I don’t care. As long as the animal isn’t threatening them, isn’t harming them, then I don’t care.
No, I don’t agree. Kant isn’t useful for every problem. This thing isn’t a problem when a few people do it. If *everyone *did it, it wouldn’t be a problem, because we’d all have our dogs and our tolerance with us. Only somewhere in the middle, where many people have their dogs and some don’t, is there a problem. And that problem can be ascribed to intolerant people as well as it can be ascribed to dogs.
So really what you’re saying is if we allow people to claim their animals as service dogs without some sort of regulation, then we’ll . . . have people claiming their animals as service dogs without some sort of regulation. Ummm…okay.
okay. think about it from the business’ perspective: animals shed, crap, piss, don’t have human-level concepts of sanitation, and otherwise have a propensity to upset at least some people by their presence. so, they definitely are a hassle. **that’s why they have a no pets policy in the first place; if they didn’t think their business would suffer by allowing pets on board, they wouldn’t prohibit it. **
this is an exception to the rule that can swallow the entire rule itself. but only if the businesses capitulate under the fear of bad publicity.
reading the plain meaning of department of justice regulations there is no way a “depression dog” would pass muster under the ADA
- the depression dog doesn’t do anything. a guide dog actually does something - navigate for a blind person. But what this boat passenger does have is a bullying scare tactic.
My prediction is that if this catches on enough, some company will put their foot down, say enough is enough, and this will be litigated, they will win, and it will all stop.
:)Why I think cruise line companies should be allowed to openly defy the ADA and ask questions about service animals - and indeed, be allowed to say no.
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The close quarters. Even the largest of normal staterooms [mini-suites, for which people pay around 3x the “inside” staterooms] are very small. Barking & howling are difficult to tune out in such tight spacing, and when you’ve paid an unrefundable $10,000 for two weeks, and your neighbor’s got a yapping lapdog, and…
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You can’t change your mind in the middle of the ocean. A poorly behaved dog that’s annoying other guests can’t be disembarked at will - especially on longer [transatlantic] cruises. Some cruises on the Princess Line [where I spotted the DD] last 100+ days.
Here’s my proposal:
Yes, you can ask permission to bring along your service animal. However, XYZ Cruiseline reserves the right to deny boarding to parties with animals not deemed suitable for cruising.
There’d probably be even MORE DDs on board under such a policy, but it would tend to weed out Seeing Eye Saddlehorses and Therapeutic Pigs.
I think that’s perfectly cromulent. I think that just as a cruise line should say no to say, a customer in an iron lung, because they can’t provide a safe cruising experience for that particular person’s needs, they should be able to say no because a particular dog is unsuitable. I’ve said all along that misbehaving dogs, service or pet, should be booted.
Although I don’t believe for a minute that there’s a cruise line that is out on the water for 100 days with no stops at port to allow shopping, sightseeing, personnel change or to offload unruly passengers or rulebreaking employees. Ports aside, they need replenishment shipments of fresh food and water - those carved pineapples won’t stay perky for 3 months! Yappy dog and owner can go back with the food barge or go in the pot! 
Actually, this brings up a few very interesting legal questions… Foreign nations and foreign waters aren’t beholden to the mandates of the ADA. What happens if a foreign country has a law where no animals, regardless of service or pet status, are allowed on cruise ships entering their waters? What happens if a heretofore normal service pet gets seasick and starts going whacko on the boat, clearly necessitating its removal from the ship? This is an acceptable action under the ADA (e.g. you don’t have to allow a service pitbull into your store if it endangers others) yet the foreign country may not allow the animal onto its shores without clearance, documentation, etc… then what do you do?
If anything, I would grant a blanket exception to cruise ships that leave the territorial waters of the US from the regulations of the ADA requiring the acceptance of service animals.
Is this true anywhere, or are we borrowing trouble again?
See, then, you DO care: you care about whether the animal is threatening them. That’s pretty much the same level of care as whether the animal is really assisting the person who claims it as a service animal. And if you’re allowed to care to that degree, then I’m allowed to care to the degree of whether it’s really a service animal.
And comparing dogs to gays, blacks, or children is an absurd comparison, unless you’re a PETA member.
ETA: It’s irrelevant whether the laws were designed for allergic people. I’m showing one situation in which the law-abusers are acting unethically, and pointing out that there are many other such situations, and that if you declare off-limits the subject of whether an animal is really helping someone with a disability or is merely a pleasant companion, then it should be equally off-limits whether someone is threatened by a dog (as by allergies) or merely doesn’t like dogs.
Maybe not but people do have legitimate interests in keeping dogs away from them. That’s issue right here. Maybe they have a phobia, maybe they think dogs stink, they can be a santitation hazard.
If you dilute the ADA to the point “service dog” means “kennels are expensive”, which voluntary compliance would do, then there will be real backlash against it.
Fairness is an important of public policy. Even in the core of our justice system you’re promised fair and speedy trial, not a utilitarian and speedy trial.
Yes they’re assholes wondering why this lady apparently gets to break the rules. Shame on them! Like I said before, if she can demonstrate a need for a service dog, much as one must demonstrate a need for a handicapped parking tag, then more power to her. That is fair, but dragging along a yapper just cause while others can’t. Not fair.
Yes and people do feel a need to regulate animals. So that is a problem.
Entering the water, I can find no cases of. I have heard of a case where US passengers tried to bring their service animals on-shore in the UK, and were stopped cold, threatened to sue (it’s the American Way!), and then the story drops off the radar. But that’s a special case, and involves customs and health regulations, not handicapped regulations. Nonetheless, I have read in the Western Morning News where a French fishing boat got in some hot water because they had dogs and other animals on board and were too close to the coast, and someone bitched about it. It’s probably a theoretical problem, rather than a real one.