[nagdu] New definition of a service animal

[Jewel S.]

I agree whole-heartedly about cats. They are wonderful service
animals! Sadly, many apartments and public places do not let cats in,
so they need to be designated as a service animal if they are trained
to be such, such as the wonderful example of a seizure alert cat or my
friend who had an alert cat because she was hearing impaired (not
deaf). The story of the cockatiel is awesome...I never thought of a
bird being a seizure alert. I imagine when he gets older, the bird
could alert the people around the child if he has a seizure, becoming
progressively louder if no one comes, or even instructing people not
to hold him down when he's seizing or to roll him to his side? That'd
be pretty awesome, since most people, when they see a person having a
seizure, have no clue what to do. Or perhaps the bird could take a
card from his pocket to give to someone that has instructions such as
doctor contact, which hospital what to do and not to do, etc. But
because of the limitation to the definition, this bird will not get
the chance to do these jobs. How sad.

On 7/28/10, Mardi Hadfield <wolfsinger.lakota at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am very disappointed at the new regulations. I had a seizure alert cat and
> she was trained to walk on a leash and harness and she was trained to sit in
> a basket on my wheelchair.even though her alerting was a natural task,I
> trained her to stay with me when I had a seizure until some one came to help
> or I recovered enough to get up. Most cats would run off if they saw a
> person going through a seizure.This took a lot of time and patience to train
> my cat to do this. It was a great comfort to be able to see my cat lying
> peacefully on top of me while I was recovering from the seizure, because
> most people ten to get "freaked out" at an incident like a seizure. I used
> to train seizure alert and hearing alert cats and placed them all over the
> USA and several other countries.I also know a family living on my street
> that have a child that has seizures and they have trained their Cockatiel to
> come and tell them when Timmy is having a seizure and they are not in the
> room with him.This bird will squawk and say seizure,seizure, and fly in to
> the room to get them.I have witnessed this. They do not take the bird out of
> the house,but this bird is trained to get Timmy's parents if they are in
> another room and away from him. I think this changing of the regulations is
> a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has already gotten out. If
> the barn door had been closed in the beginning,the horse would not have
> escaped. If they had regulated the species in the beginning,they would not
> have had to do it now.But, that is typical backward government mentality.
> MHO.   Mardi and Shaman and Nala,retired.
>
> --
> http://wolfsinger-lakota.blogspot.com/
> http://wolfsinger2-thegoldendragon.blogspot.com
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-- 
~Jewel
Check out my blog about accessibility for the blind!
Treasure Chest for the Blind: http://blindtreasurechest.blogspot.com