[NFBWATLK] Article: Cracking Down on Fake Service Dogs, Route Fifty, March 17 2019

Thu Mar 21 00:07:12 UTC 2019

British Columbia was influenced by articles like this one and crafted one of
the most draconian guide dog laws in North America!

I know that there are people who will fake a disability to bring their dogs
into public places.  I contend that pet dogs being walked by their owners on
public streets, or being allowed to roam off leash, constitute a much more
serious problem than faux service dogs.

Based on the stories in that article, businesses and other public places
already have ample permission to remove offending animals and their owners.
Laws already permit businesses to regulate animals based on their behavior.
The problem arises because people are afraid to throw out barking,
deficating, ill behaved dogs!  Instead, they want to believe that demanding
to see credentials will solve the problem for them.

I can tell you that the result of that cowardice in British Columbia has
been appalling!  I know one young woman who was asked six times to show her
credentials on one BC Ferry ride!  She says that she is frequently stopped
when entering shopping malls.  Her dog is from the Seeing Eye and her
harness says so in large plain easy to read letters.  I believe that her
problem is that she has enough sight to make eye contact so people think
she's faking blindness.  Her dog is beautifully behaved.  He's silent, calm,
and under perfect control.

I question the motivation of many of the advocates for registration laws.
Most of them are representatives of service dog schools.  Canine Companions
for Independence is a large U.S. school.  They're mentioned in almost every
article about faux service dogs I've read.  Could it be that some of this
hype has to do with cornering market share?

British Columbia has had a credential based registration program for a few
years now.  In the first twenty months of that program, only nine complaints
were received concerning people who attempted to pass off their pets as
service dogs.  One could be excused of thinking that the registration
program is a solution chasing a barely existing problem.

Anyone whose guide dog is being bothered by a badly behaving dog in a public
place should raise the issue.  If the owner or manager of that public place
says that he can't do anything because it's a service dog, educate about the
behavior requirements that are already in the law.  The answer isn't new
laws; it's better backbones and a bit more courage.

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBWATLK [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Judy Jones
via NFBWATLK
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2019 8:01 PM
To: 'NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List'
Cc: Judy Jones
Subject: Re: [NFBWATLK] Article: Cracking Down on Fake Service Dogs, Route
Fifty, March 17 2019

An excellent article.  When Chris and I had guides we ran into similar
scenarios numerous times.

Judy

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBWATLK [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
Nightingale, Noel via NFBWATLK
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2019 9:42 AM
To: nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org
Cc: Nightingale, Noel
Subject: [NFBWATLK] Article: Cracking Down on Fake Service Dogs, Route
Fifty, March 17 2019

https://www.routefifty.com/health-human-services/2019/03/laws-fake-service-d
ogs/155610/

Cracking Down on Fake Service Dogs
Route Fifty
March 17, 2019
By Kate Elizabeth Queram

On a trip to Walt Disney World, Karen Shirk and her service dog were forced
to take roundabout routes between attractions to avoid a woman with a
snarling chihuahua clad in a service dog vest.

"We had to go way out of our way at least eight times to get to the ride we
were going to, because this woman was there with this fake service dog
chihuahua," said Shirk, CEO of 4 Paws For Ability, an Ohio-based nonprofit
that trains and places service dogs with children and veterans. "It was in
her bag, but it would jump out and come barking and lunging and snapping at
us."

She's not alone. In Hawaii, a dog posing as a service animal attacked a
legitimate service dog, traumatizing the disabled veteran the pooch was
trained to help. In South Carolina, workers at the Greenville-Spartanburg
International Airport have been bitten by animals in service vests and
forced to clean up pet waste after the animals defecate and urinate on
airport floors.

Fake service dogs are on the rise, a problem advocates say has increased in
recent years thanks largely to the preponderance of service dog vests and
bogus certification paperwork available for purchase online. In 2016, 77
percent of graduates from assistance dog organization Canine Companions for
Independence had encountered a fraudulent or out-of-control service dog.
More than 25 percent had 10 or more encounters, and more than half had those
encounters result in their service dog being bitten, snapped at or
distracted.

Across the country, legislators have taken note. As of January, 28 states
had passed laws cracking down on the practice, with at least two more in the
process of considering similar legislation. Advocates say those measures are
necessary to protect people with disabilities who require legitimate service
dogs to complete everyday tasks.

"These people don't have a disability by choice. They need their service
dogs to help them with their daily living tasks," said Susan Guy, chief
operating officer for Canine Partners for Life, a service dog training and
placement nonprofit based in Pennsylvania. "Then there are other people out
there who just want to have their pet out with them because it's fun, or it
makes them feel comfortable. That harms the people with legitimate service
dogs because then people are looking at them a little more closely; looking
at the dog and wondering if it's a legitimate service dog. That's a real
disservice."

'Working Animals, Not Pets'

The Americans with Disabilities Act defines service dogs as "dogs that are
individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with
disabilities," including guiding a blind person, pulling a wheelchair or
alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure.

"Service animals are working animals, not pets," the definition continues.
"The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related
to the person's disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort
or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA."

Because of their unique capabilities, service dogs have the right to
accompany their owners in public places where animals would normally not be
permitted, including restaurants, shops and hospitals. Even when it's not
obvious what service the dog provides, business owners are prohibited from
asking questions about a person's disability and cannot request medical
documentation or training certification paperwork, and cannot request a
demonstration of the dog's abilities. Service dogs can be asked to leave a
business only if they become disruptive or are not housebroken.

Those guidelines were written to make life easier for people with
disabilities, Shirk said.

"The intentions were good, but it almost sort of backfired," she said. "Fake
service dogs are a problem all over the world, but it's probably worse here
because our rules and regulations are so lenient. In other countries, dogs
have to pass national standard testing and you have to have some kind of
identification. Here, you can self-train your dog and you don't need
anything."

There's no tracking system for service dogs in the United States. There's
also no national registry or agreed-upon set of training standards, which
can make it difficult to police the problem, said Sally Day, director of
development for Service Dogs of Virginia.

"The waters are really muddy. Anybody can go online and print out
documentation that says that their dog is a registered service animal," she
said. "But there is no national registry for service dogs. If there was, it
would have been written into the ADA law. The thinking behind that was that
it would be an additional burden for someone with a disability because
they'd then have to register their dog, but it creates that muddy water."

That, along with a proliferation of online retailers selling dog vests and
bogus certification papers, makes it easy for anyone with internet access to
make their dog look the part of a working service animal.

"There are hundreds of online sellers and fake registries. You see ads all
over Facebook that say things like, 'Take your pet anywhere,'" Shirk said.
"You can go on Amazon and buy a vest that says 'service dog.' Anybody who
wants to can fake their dogs, in public, as service dogs."

That amounts to impersonating someone with a disability, Guy said. On its
own, it's unethical, but problems begin to snowball when a dog that isn't
trained to spend its life in public spaces begins venturing with its owner
to restaurants, stores and airports.

"We train all of our dogs to the specific situation, so if a future client
says to us, 'I fly a lot for work,' we go to the airport. We train going
through security, going on the escalators, climbing the steps to get on the
plane, being in the plane," Day said. "People who just don't want to be away
from their pet aren't doing that, so they're potentially traumatizing the
animal. That's why you hear about people being lunged at and nipped
at-because those dogs are not trained to be in the situations they're placed
in."

The result can be traumatic. Shirk's service dog was attacked by an
untrained dog wearing a working dog vest, and she's had numerous clients
report similar incidents. It can also add to existing stigma against people
with disabilities, leading business owners and airport workers to be wary
even of well-trained service dogs who actually help their handlers.

"I think these people justify it because they don't think they're hurting
anybody, but life for people with disabilities is already hard enough,"
Shirk said. "We don't need them making it harder. When they do these things,
they ruin a good thing for people who have true disabilities who actually
need assistance to access the community."

Proposed Laws

Legislators are increasingly aware of the issue. Oregon and South Carolina
are currently considering legislation to penalize people who misrepresent
their pets as service dogs, and a third bill is seeking sponsorship in
Montana. Each levies a fine and makes the offense a civil infraction or a
misdemeanor, with community service as a possible penalty in some versions.

In South Carolina, the proposed bill would make it a misdemeanor to
intentionally misrepresent a pet or emotional support animal as a service
animal. Fines would range from $350 for a first offense up to $5,000 and 10
hours of community service for third and subsequent offenses.

The bill is meant to protect members of the public from animals who do not
have the right to be in stores and airport terminals, according to state
Sen. Scott Talley, a Republican from Spartanburg who co-sponsored the
legislation.

"The Greenville-Spartanburg Airport is in my district, and based on issues
that arose there, I worked with the administration to draft this bill," he
said. "We are simply trying to protect the public from animals that are
being misrepresented and have caused problems."

The existence of such laws may work as deterrents, Guy said. But they're
difficult to enforce given the restrictions put in place by the ADA.

"Let's say a business owner calls the police and says, 'There is someone in
here with a service dog and I don't think it's legitimate,'" she said. "If
the person admits it, that's one thing, but if they don't, there's nothing
in place to prove whether it is a service dog. There's no national registry
or paperwork. There are physical disabilities you can recognize, but some
service dogs assist people with disabilities that you can't see, like Type 1
diabetes or epilepsy. And you can't ask about the disability and you can't
ask the dog to perform its service skills."

Other solutions have been debated in the service dog community. Day favors a
proposal that would require service dog owners annually to take what's known
as a public access test, where an expert assesses whether a dog is properly
trained to assist its owner in public. People who pass the test could
receive an identification card with both a date of issue and an expiration
date.

"If I was a business owner, I'd really like that, but I think we're pretty
far from it," she said.

Shirk supports the idea of regulating the online sale of service dog vests,
as well as cracking down on fake dog registries. An oft-discussed option is
establishing a national registry, though that would raise similar questions
of enforcement and oversight, Guy said. Barring that, most advocates
day-to-day simply try to educate people on the characteristics of a trained
service animal-and why it's unfair to try to make your dog look like a
working service dog if it isn't trained to be one.

"Just having that heightened awareness of fake service dogs could be good
for our industry," she said. "We're trying to educate people about how it's
morally wrong to say that you have a disability when you don't. You are
impersonating someone with a disability, and on top of that it's not safe
for the dog to be out in public. It's just not the right thing to do."
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