[nagdu] Legislative Consideration

[Tamara Smith-Kinney]

What?  Give disabled people recourse against abuse?  How about that! /grin/

Good points, as always.  And yes, the waters are very, very muddy.  There's
a healthy growth of pond scum there as well!

I was having a friendly argument with a friend -- on of those arguing just
for something to do types -- about those issues.

His premise -- and he insisted he knows more than I do about it -- is that
he could take Mitzi down to the grocery store and take her in with him, and
they couldn't do a thing because she is a service dog.

My premise was they the most certainly do something about it, because he is
not disabled. We both knew there would be no permission given for him to
take Mitzi anywhere in the first place, BTW!

Still, he insisted, if I wanted to take Daisy down to the same grocery
store, I could take her in with me, and they couldn't do a thing about it,
because I am disabled and have a service dog -- even though it's not Daisy.
"Well..."  He paused, considering.  "She would bite someone, then they could
do something about it.  But until she did, they couldn't get you in
trouble."

Ignoring the fact that at I would never consider doing such a thing, what
with the biting and all, they could kick me out in a heartbeat because Daisy
is not a service dog.  I would have to tie her up outside and let her do her
biting there.  /smile/

Needless to say, we don't take Daisy out in public because of that fear
aggression thing.  We've been giving her a bit more exposure with a soft
muzzle on and me, Mitzi and Daisy's Dad all keeping our eagle eyes (or ears,
in my case) out for someone who might come closer than 100 feet.  When it
comes to "not taking chances with her," I guess we err on the side of
paranoia.

Anyway, even though nobody was planning to take anybody's dog to the store
that day, unless I went along and used Mitzi as a guide, this person
genuinely believed that he had it right!  I picked up enough over the years
from casual discussion around here that the majority of people -- including
those who are likely to make the decision of whether to allow a dog access
-to realize that he was stating something pretty close to the commonly held
assumptions.

So, like you say, education must go on!

Do people ever ask you if Panda bites?  /grin/

Tami Smith-Kinney