Faith Hazelton retweeted
Why does this cow suddenly look like sheās about to be on The View?
Husband has a legitimate guide dog with a harness and is clearly blind. He is still asked these questions and scrutinized in public. Been denied from hotels. He has an ID issued from the company who trained his dog.
So Iām really sick of hearing about this from people who donāt understand what itās like to travel with a service animal.
Iām not even against paperwork, I just donāt want disabled people to become an afterthought.
ESA are not service animals.
A guide dog who lunges would be absolutely useless to its handler.
Hot take on this: I don't care very much whether you "really" need the service dog
I care whether it actually IS a service dog, i.e. whether it's sufficiently well-trained
Yes, I'm biased. My dad trains service dogs and doesn't really need one
He will sometimes take them into bars and restaurants, really only if he knows the owner is okay with it. But they are 100% perfectly trained labs
He is far less of a risk than the blue haired person with an untrained emotional support pit bull in Walmart
Why should I care that you don't need a dog if the dog is perfectly behaved?
Likewise, why should I care that you DO need a dog if the dog is danger, a nuisance, or a hassle to those around you?
Sure, we should have some distinction where, in places that truly don't want dogs, someone who's blind can have one
But in my opinion the bigger issue is that we're making the decision based on the needs (or alleged needs) of the owner instead of the skills of the animal
Make a universal test for companion animals. Make it extremely rigorous, test reactivity, test inhibitory control
People who don't need them will filter themselves out naturally anyways, most people are not capable of training one and don't have $30K to buy one
Faith Hazelton retweeted
Southern Wisdom: Heās a hard dog to keep under the porch.
Literally.
Axl cannot be contained. And as beautiful as my boy is ā as sweet as he is to me, he is aggressive toward strangers and other male dogs.
I know exactly what kind of damage he could do, so I take that responsibility seriously.
If Axl leaves the gate, he is on a leash. He rarely goes anywhere public. When he has a vet appointment, we donāt enter the building until his room is ready. He wears a collar sandwich so I have multiple ways to control him. And when somebody comes to our house, Axl goes to the bedroom.
Some people call that cruel.
It isnāt.
I love my dog enough to accept that loving him also means knowing his limits. Axl doesnāt get to run loose. He doesnāt get to decide who comes into my yard. And he sure as hell doesnāt get to make another animal pay for my failure to control him.
Thatās part of owning a dog. You know what youāve got, and you act accordingly.
My heart breaks for Lu. Iām so sorry your sweet boy paid the price because somebody else didnāt take that responsibility seriously. š„ŗšš¼
STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND READ WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO MY DOG MOOSE.
My dog Moose is a geriatric Great Dane.
We check in at our hotel. We walk up the front desk with him on a leash. Moose is sore from being in the crate. Walking gingerly.
All of a sudden around the corner runs an unleashed pit-bull with a fake ass service dog vet. With zero provocation it lunges at Moose and attacks him.
The USELESS FUCKING MORON OWNER starts screaming nooooo and jumps on her pit. It has Mooseās neck in his jaw. J starts punching the pit bull as hard as possible while the moron screams and flails.
J hits it hard enough it lets go only to lunge and grab Mooseās back leg. At no point does Moose fight back. J punches the stupid dog over and over. It lets go.
We haul our dogs to a stairwell behind a closed door.
The USELESS SACK OF HUMAN TRASH comes and says āOMG HE USUALLY DOESNT BREAK SKINā to which I say WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE A VIOLENT PIT BULL OFF LEASH WITH A SERVICE VEST ON WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU
I AM BEYOND MAD
Faith Hazelton retweeted
Emotional Support Dogs are the scum of society. They are NEVER, well trained. Ever. I guarantee that pitbull was an emotional support dog which is why she thinks itās entitled to a service vest.
Faith Hazelton retweeted
The problem with pit bull ownership is bifurcated into people who actually want vicious dogs and *intentionally* breed vicious dogs, and foolish people who adopt the dregs of this breeding process and then put them into dangerous situations to prove how misunderstood they are
And on the topic of Moose, it was a pet friendly hotel. Dogs were allowed regardless of service animal status. The owner probably did that to avoid a fee.
The real problem is untrained and unleashed dogs. And that pet owners are simply not responsible anymore
Here is my issue with service dog paperwork:
You are a blind person. You have to carry an ID card that you canāt even read because itās in print.
You lose it. It gets misplaced. Your wallet gets stolen.
While you wait for a replacement you must use a cane.
This is significantly more hazardous.
A cane canāt tell you when an electric car is coming.
It canāt tell you a driver ran the red light.
It canāt tell you a car is backing up.
A service dog can.
I donāt know what changed but growing up we knew if our dog was off leash it could be taken away and killed.
We always made sure our dog was leashed.
In the north, I saw one dog off leash growing up.
In the south, it was a weekly occurrence.
Faith Hazelton retweeted
Please don't take your dog to the store unless it's an actual service animal that is providing a service. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
I hate fake service animals too believe me, but when you are saying all service animals need formal documentation you are saying REAL disabled people need an ID to use medical equipment (that is what a service dog is) out in public.
I donāt know the solution. Maybe it is formal paperwork. We have a guide dog in my family and even with clear indications he is such- harness, husband is obliviously blind- we receive pushback.