This is a very well written piece. Thanks for posting the reference.
Increasingly, business owners, landlords and city officials are challenging the legitimacy of noncanine service animals and refusing to accommodate them. Animal owners are responding with lawsuits and complaints to the Department of Justice. This August, the Arizona Game and Fish Department ordered a woman to get rid of her chimpanzee, claiming that she brought it into the state illegally — she disputed this and sued for discrimination, arguing that it was a diabetes-assistance chimp trained to fetch sugar during hypoglycemic episodes.
Cases like this are raising questions about where to draw the lines when it comes to the needs and rights of people who rely on these animals, of businesses obligated by law to accommodate them and of everyday civilians who — because of health and safety concerns or just general discomfort — don’t want monkeys or ducks walking the aisles of their grocery stores.
As one who relies on a service animal, I can attest to their importance. And, yes, indeed, the law does not specify species.
This is the problem with laws and rules that are enforced without regard to reasonableness--and the people that take advantage of them.
A person with a service animal (such as me) needs to act responsibility and sensibility. A miniature horse would not do well in an urban apartment complex where a large dog would not be appropriate (even though a service horse can serve for three times as long as a service dog). Nor would a grocery store be particularly pleased if a person who is blind sought to bring in a full size horse as a guide.
It comes back to reasonable accommodation and not abusing laws that are designed to assist people with disabilities. Some people with disabilities do tend to take advantage of their protected status. They consider themselves victims of an unjust, unfair world.
The best part of the entire article--and the take home:
“Many people try to make this issue black and white — this service animal is good; that one is bad — but that’s not possible, because disability extends through an enormous realm of human behavior and anatomy and human condition . . .”