[nagdu] Now - It's up to us. ALL of "us" Was Re: Proposed Act - Maine.

[Buddy Brannan]

Dailyah, you’re my hero. And we’re on exactly the same page, you and I. I’ve been posting something like this in comments sections of articles targeting “fake” ID’s whenever I’m able to do so, especially how we as a community have done a great job at one and a lousy job at the other. Also beating the ‘our dogs don’t have public access rights” drum, because i think that’s at least part of the problem. It’s an extremely important language distinction, and we cannot continue to let it slide by anymore. 

— 
Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV - Erie, PA
Phone: 814-860-3194 
Mobile: 814-431-0962
Email: buddy at brannan.name



> On Mar 3, 2015, at 1:19 AM, Dailyah via nagdu <nagdu at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Greetings!
> As a Service Dog user who's on the NAGDU list because I'm the director of the small, nonprofit, legal advocacy 'ProBoneO Program', I've got to admit that I don't see these flailing attempts at legislation as targeting the Guide community.  While WE all know that there are owner-trained (OT) guides, they're relatively rare and something I think we'd find Joe Public wouldn't believe exists.  Like the mini horses, I think OT guides are like unicorns in the public's eyes.  Really rare and if they've even heard of such a thing, they aren't actually sure it's real because they've never seen one and aren't likely to...and in the case of OT guides, even if the public sees one (hopefully!!!) they're not going to know the dog was owner trained.  *I* know this could impact OT Guide Teams, but I bet the legislators proposing this stuff were NOT thinking of guide dogs at all. 
> This is pretty clearly, to me, targeted at the OT "service dog" teams.  I'll even go so far as saying, based on personal experience, that for years nobody cared if the service dog was owner trained as long as it was well-behaved and was with someone clearly disabled.  I bopped around in my chair with a dog I trained to do the usual pull a wheelchair, pick up dropped objects, get help - type stuff, for years before I switched to program-trained dogs.  I am trying to remember being questioned even once.  Granted, this was almost 20 years ago and there were just a lot fewer dogs in public period, but still... so I think the actual difference is that dogs being used solely for mental health disabilities were almost non-existent.  OT 'psych' service dog teams are the ones who seem most under fire, to me.  (For the record, I both loathe and confess to not understanding "psych disabilities" being considered separate from "physical disabilities". Isn't the brain an organ and part of the pysical body??? But ANYway!  I had no hand in writing any of the laws the treat the two differently and I've no clue why they were written that way, but they were!) 
> Today, society's collective cup is starting to runeth' over with all sorts of dogs in all sorts of places where traditionally pets have not been allowed.  Many of these dogs are with someone who is not clearly physically disabled (unlike in the past) and many are claimed to be fully-trained if someone inquires (so the person isn't a puppyraiser or a trainer - therefore the dog is with their disabled person). Between invisible physical disabilities and "psych disabilities", it's entirely possible the team is completely legitimate.  The public clearly has a hard time understanding this and I think it's led to an erosion of public trust, but most people seem to know they can't really ask any specifics.  Indeed, they don't know what they *can* ask.  Almost everyone can recognize out of control behavior and certainly recognize out of control behavior that the handler is not successfully managing. That said, most folks seem to have no idea what to actually do about it and are hesitant to say or do anything even if they know that they can. Ours is an industry in crisis.  
> I think we can all agree on what some of the problems are - Federal law is, intentionally, incredibly vague.  State laws are often less vague, but there's so much variation State-to-State that even I'm always having to look them up so as not to get confused!  The laws are constantly changing! (Can't leave that one out.)  There's no certification, licensing, or any other such thing, that business owners or anyone else can look for and expect from a team. There's no requirement for any kind of standardized training.  Except for Guide Dog trainers in the rare locale like California, there's not even a recognized certification or license required for an individual to train, sell, offer an assistance dog to a person with a disability.  There's even plenty of straight-up fraud.  (With 8 week old puppies being sold at outrageous prices to unsuspecting parents as reliable diabetic alert dogs - because the puppy was "bred for the work" - no WONDER skepticism of our industry has started to run rampant!)  Heck, unless a person openly says they have an Emotional Support Dog (Animal) *instead* of just calling it a Service Dog, gatekeepers can't even ask to see documentation from a medical professional that the handler is actually disabled.  (The documentation need not state a diagnosis - and shouldn't.)  
> As the advantages and benefits of dogs as furry medical equipment are becoming better known and more people are learning about the many things dogs can be trained to do to help people with disabilities, we're seeing more dogs in public.  Sadly, we've also seen a rise in the number of negative occurrences and the public, having a hard time understanding any of it, is turning to their representatives.  The representatives generally don't possess any better understanding, just want to make their constituents happy, and then they aren't sure what to do about it all partly because our own industry isn't united in what we tell them when they ask for help, opinions, and guidance.  And - Let's not lose sight of the fact that our 'industry' really has to include the voices of owner trainers, like it or not, because...
> Nowadays we have a lot of programs that train dogs that assist with a lot of different disabilities that Joe Public can see or are sort of obvious (vision, hearing, mobility, even autism can often be "figured out" by observers). (Aside = When Bonnie Bergin founded Canine Companions for Independence in the mid-70s, she was told that pairing dogs for people with disabilities other than blindness probably wouldn't work.  Fast forward almost fifty years and we can see her experiment worked out quite well after all.  Helper dogs are big business.)  We still don't have a lot of schools training dogs to partner with people whose disabilities are entirely of a psychological nature, though the number is slowly rising.  People who are definitely disabled by things like complex PTSD, dissociation disorders, severe anxiety, etc., pretty much have to train a dog themselves if they want a dog who can help them by performing tasks specific to their disabling condition.  
> Even if a program can be found that does train all or some of the needed tasks, the wait list is often years long.  I know multiple people who've actually found a program that trains dogs to help with their specific mental illness and then the projected wait has been so long that they've gone ahead and privately gotten a dog to try to OT who might learn to be of at least some help to them during the years they'll be waiting!!!  Sometimes owner training works out really well!  OT certainly isn't an option that should be poo-poohed, dismissed, or otherwise made impossible.  Sometimes either the dog or the human isn't able to rise to the challenge as well as we'd like to see for the team to be out working in public. Clients get no say about whether or not "our" dog washes out of the program so we aren't emotionally invested the same way OTs are.  With most schools clients only even meet dogs who are graduate material!  Any given dog in class might not be my perfect match, but the school is confident all the dogs who rotate through class are going to be a great match for SOMEbody.  Owner training is very different in this respect.  We all know how many puppies get raised who don't 'make it'.  (A 30-50% pass rate is considered pretty darn good for most types of assistance dogs.)  It can be hard (impossible?!?) for an owner trainer to make the decision that the dog they've been working so hard with for a year or more isn't appropriate service dog material and then to 'give up', 'wash out', maybe even rehome the beloved dog just to have to start fresh with another candidate. It's quite possible that the dog needing to be deemed unsuitable has already learned to do some helpful things and, of course, a new pup won't know anything useful. These OTs invested all the same time, money, and emotion that the schools' puppy parents do, but owner trainers also have hope that their life will be better in the future because they'll have the dog's non-judgmental assistance. Hope is important and can be incredibly powerful.  We shouldn't disregard the amount of hope people with disabilities have riding on these canine candidates.  It's this hope that can lead people to do things they usually wouldn't.  (For example, defend a dog's bad manners or keep a stressed dog working in public.)  Now let's add in some more factors that don't help and are part of the reason we're now seeing this sort of "scary" legislation being suggested...
> There's not a lot of awareness of the many trainable tasks that a dog can do for someone who suffers from a mental illness - so *many* people still think of a dog who's paired with a person with a psychiatric disorder as being with the person just to be petted and keep the human calm...and that's all.  Provide Emotional Support. Obviously, that alone does not a service dog make...no matter how disabled the human is or in what way they are disabled.  As we also all know, no matter how many great tasks or how much amazing work our dogs do for us, they ALSO do a great job of keeping us calmer and happier when we get stressed or face uncertainty!  Clearly, the functions of providing emotional support and performing tasks to mitigate a disability aren't mutually exclusive, but it takes socialization and training for service work.  Add in the stigma our society still, unfortunately, has for mental illness/psychological disability and the whole picture gets even less pretty!  
> There are still people in power who question whether or not psychological disability is REAL.  (Thankfully, more and more people and institutions are accepting both the legitimacy and the prevalence of 'psych disabilities'!)  To me, personally, it's seemed like a lot of people who may or may not meet the definition of legally disabled are self-diagnosing themselves with psychiatric disabilities in part to avoid the stigma of having an actual diagnosis on their medical record.  These people and those who have been diagnosed by a professional are then, with or without their medical team's knowledge or encouragement^^, correctly or incorrectly, concluding a service dog might be of help to them. (^^This is one of my hot button topics.  Medical professionals are rarely truly knowledgeable about what dogs can - and can't - do for a PWD.  They've often no idea the level of commitment they're encouraging their patient to take on.  Far too often I've learned that a doctor or therapist has even encouraged that the 'dog project' be started just as soon as possible - 'because it'll give you company' or 'it'll be something you can focus on', or 'let you get your mind off of other things'.  ARG!)  So, frequently with little in the way of guidance from a professional in the assistance dog industry or even a dog trainer or behaviorist, a puppy is obtained or a decision is made to train an older dog already in the home. Each of those scenarios can pose unique problems and lead to unexpected challenges. Sometimes everything works out swimmingly!  It's great when that happens, but I think it's safe to say that at least as often the results are almost disastrous.  Unsuitable dogs (be they task trained or no) end up being pushed into public service and/or dogs who can handle ordinary daily outings get taken into highly stimulating scenarios without any build up or practice...with the expected results. These dogs may melt down from stress and suddenly become aggressive.  They may do things like chew on furniture while the handler is otherwise occupied. They toilet inappropriately or even worse, mark - often with the handler ill-prepared for proper clean up. Unsuspected "baggage" from the dog's past can pop up, leading to things like guarding (of resources or the handler) or reactivity toward another service dog encountered in public (Eeek!) - All scary stuff for both dogs and handlers! These same dogs may even then start to exhibit separation anxiety - having spent so much time with their human that they no longer know how to be comfortable when left alone or even with another handler.  (Remember, much of the reason for a disabled person to have an assistance dog in the first place is to make life easier!  Getting stuck with a dog who needs constant attention does not increase independence!)  
> We're seeing the consequences of all these types of unexpected results.  Outsiders are making attempts to regulate our industry and many of the proposed attempts take away civil rights that disabled people had to fight hard for. Let's not let our right to have the help of our dogs eroded little by little while we are looking the other way, not paying attention, or maintaining that whatever proposed restriction is ok because it, "doesn't apply to my team", "won't impact me and my dog", or "it's not an undue burden for me."  YET!  Our community does not want more legislation regulating us, our industry, our relationships with our canine heroes...not the kinds that Arizona and now Maine propose!   Fortunately, and I can't stress this enough, the answer to the problem already exists.  It's been on the law books for years.  Most of these hard to prove issues become moot (like ferreting out and punishing fakers)!  ID Cards, Special Gear, Expensive Testing - and all the costly, privacy-invasive, measures and accompanying bureaucratic red tape - can remain non-existent.  The civil rights of people with disabilities can remain strong and free from tampering.  We, the legitimate dog handlers, need to be more proactive with what's already in place.  If too many of us remain complacent, I predict and fear we'll find ourselves stuck with things that get put on the books as purely a knee-jerk response to the plethora of negative reports we're already starting to see.  Businesses can require that dogs behaving inappropriately - legitimate service dog or no, disabled handler or no, be removed.  This almost never happens, though.  Why?
> Many business gatekeepers I've talked to simply say they are afraid of being sued.  To avoid this they just have a policy to allow dogs to come in. They don't know what to do and so they do nothing. The conclusion I've been forced to reach is that handlers have, for many years, done a great job of making sure gatekeepers know what our rights are and what their responsibilities are.  We've done a lousy job making sure businesses know what OUR responsibilities are and what THEIR rights are. (Shocking. I know.)  Having been half of a service dog team for longer than I care to admit (though nowhere near as long as some of you with guides!), I know that educating businesses about our rights as disabled people was critical.  Yes, there are certainly still business owners and other gatekeepers out there who haven't gotten the memo.  ProBoneO Program's office still gets plenty of calls from handlers asking for assistance because their team has suffered an access denial, but we are seeing that number decline!  Over the last five years, better still, we've seen a profound decrease in the number of complaints we've received where the business owner turns out to have acted in error from a place of complete ignorance.  I think people who don't know anything about service dogs are in the minority these days. Shop keepers who are genuinely unaware that service dogs are not pets and restaurant managers who don't know that disabled people typically must be allowed to have their service animal accompany them seem to really have become the exception!  I'll confess that this means that these days access denials are often more challenging to resolve though mediation as the gatekeepers making the denials DO have a clue and are denying access anyway. Ignorance can usually be fixed with patience and education.  Misconceptions, preconceived notions, and foregone conclusions are much harder to smooth out in friendly ways!  Unfortunately, the amount of negative press attention service dogs have been getting and the number of calls and emails ProBoneO Program receives from businesses who are frustrated, concerned and feeling taken advantage of has risen in direct proportion to the decreased number of more 'honest' access denial complaints.  
> If you're a new handler, I'll let ya off the hook a bit.  I've run into plenty of people with assistance dogs (of all types), owner trainers, people with Emotional Support Animals (Dogs), who have had the animal for a year or more and remain unclear regarding even proper terminology and many, many more who've little to no understanding of the laws that protect their rights.  I'm letting one and all know that there's no real excuse and we ALL need to have a solid grasp of at least the basics. (I'll try to send out a short email list  and FB Group resource list for those interested in interacting with owner trainers of all types of service dogs, ProBoneO's page for legal questions/advocacy assistance/education, Etc. tomorrow. Too tired tonight!) If you're going to handle a dog in public, you need to know these things.  We legitimate handlers need to be able to communicate clearly and concisely among ourselves and we've got to start presenting a coherent (!), united, front to the public. I cannot blame gatekeepers and members of the public for being confused.  Just two days ago I was loading my vested service dog into the car and had someone declare (with great certainty!) that she, "Also [has] one of those Emotional Service Dogs". Sigh!  We are the ones with the information.  We are the ones this 'stuff' really matters to. We are the ones whose lives can be made more difficult.  We are the ones who stand to have our civil rights taken away.
> Which means that WE are the ones who'd better get on the ball and do something.  I've been forced to come to the conclusion that, unless we want to have our right as disabled people to be accompanied through life by our highly trained dogs artificially limited or arbitrarily denied by lawmakers, it's time we once again get active about education.  We need to educate ourselves - about terminology, possible tasks, and our fellow assistance dog handlers - the better to speak clearly and with a common voice.  We need to educate the public - in order to regain lost trust and foster understanding.  We need to educate gatekeepers like shop owners and restaurant managers - so they, in exercising their own rights, can join with us in the struggle to decrease the number of inappropriate dogs in no pets establishments.  We need to educate law enforcement and other first responders - enabling them to better assist us when problems do arise or tragedy strikes.  We need to educate our government officials - from your city council members to your senators, we want these folks to hear our voices and understand what's important to us.  WE need to do these things.  We need to start immediately. We need to be gentle with one another and band together because we need to be successful.
> 
> 
> Apologies for the length.  I wanted to be thorough!
> Dailyah and Riley    
> _______________________________________________
> nagdu mailing list
> nagdu at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nagdu_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nagdu:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nagdu_nfbnet.org/buddy%40brannan.name