[NAGDU] Fake Service Dogs Redux (Cross Posted)

[David]

Unfortunately, I think all this fake service dog news is stirring up a 
lot of stuff right now.

For the record, I have been, and I am, a big Costco fan and have had 
incredible service from their employees.  I am also impressed with the 
quality of their products.  However, I had an incident at Costco 
yesterday where I was told by the person at the door that if Claire Rose 
was a service animal I needed to fill out a form.  I told the person 
that I did not need to fill out a form, which two questions I was 
willing to answer, and that I had already answered one of them.  He did 
not ask what Claire Rose did for me, and told me that it was corporate 
policy and that I had to fill out the form.  I was in a hurry so I 
walked past him.  After my denial of service from Uber earlier in the 
day, I probably was bit grumpy.

I called and left a message for the store manager.  He returned my call 
today and said that there was no form for anyone to fill out, but that 
people at the door were told to ask customers with service animals to 
read a memo informing them that Costco could not allow service animals 
to ride in carts.  This sounds entirely reasonable to me from a health 
standpoint.  We talked for quite a while and I think the guy at the door 
is going to get some retraining.  We had a long discussion about the 
problem stores are having with fake service animals and how they feel 
that they are stuck once the person says that Fluffy is a service 
animal.  I explained that animals that misbehave are very likely not 
service animals.  He said he also understood that people with legitimate 
service animals would likely not put them in carts, or would their 
animals bark and snarl at customers.

This problem is not going to go away, folks.  Companies obviously 
believe that their hands are tied.  When so many people increasingly 
feel entitled to bring their pets anywhere they wish, it is 
lawsuit-suicide for stores and restaurants to call the police in the 
event that it turns out that the dog that appears to be untrained is 
actually a trained epilepsy, insulin, or whatever, alerter, even in 
states where fake service animal legislation is in place. after all, how 
are police going to determine whether the dog is a fake, or not. The 
criminal statutes for faking it simply have no reliable method for 
enforcement and we will increasingly become the targets of suspicion and 
accusation. I don't think that there are any easy answers, but we're 
seeing a surge of reactions from airline passengers and news 
organizations and we need a unified solution, not a state by state 
dribble of ineffective patches.

The public is becoming angry.  Store and restaurant owners are becoming 
frustrated.  We are getting angry.

In my opinion, because of the free-for-all attitude among those who want 
pet privileges equal to ours, I think the time has come to try to 
address a federal certificate, or ID, that perhaps is training school 
triggered in the case of program trained animals, or maybe regulations 
legitimizing training school IDs. We are also going to have to bite the 
bullet and figure out how to get self-trained animals certified without 
creating yet another bureaucracy.   The turmoil is not going to calm and 
I think we need to be proactive.  With so many having worked so hard to 
win our protected status, it is a bit of a disappointment to think that 
it could be eroded.  There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the 
fake dog issue will erode that status if we don't collectively figure 
out how best to effectively deal with it.

David and Claire Rose in Clearwater, FL