From assistance animals to cloning, pets are in the news
By Kim Campbell Thornton
January 1, 2009
Two stories in the New York Times illustrate our ever-evolving relationship with animals. The first, a seven-page opus by science writer Rebecca Skloot, looks at the increasing variety of service animals. We all know about guide dogs, hearing dogs and service dogs that perform tasks for people with disabilities, but joining their ranks these days are miniature horses, capuchin and macaque monkeys, African grey parrots and more. Because service animals are permitted in any public place, including restaurants and department stores, the question of what makes a service animal is currently under debate.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines service animals this way: “any guide dog, signal dog or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including, but not limited to, guiding individuals with impaired vision, alerting individuals with impaired hearing to intruders or sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair or fetching dropped items.”
But some health departments and businesses want to ban certain animals–horses and monkeys, for instance–citing size or sanitation issues.
Skloot writes:
…a growing number of people believe the world of service animals has gotten out of control: first it was guide dogs for the blind; now it’s monkeys for quadriplegia and agoraphobia, guide miniature horses, a goat for muscular dystrophy, a parrot for psychosis and any number of animals for anxiety, including cats, ferrets, pigs, at least one iguana and a duck. They’re all showing up in stores and in restaurants, which is perfectly legal because the Americans With Disabilities Act (A.D.A.) requires that service animals be allowed wherever their owners want to go.
One of the problems is people who claim that their pets are therapy or assistance animals in a bid to take them to restaurants or on planes without hassle. I know someone who does this. She asked me not to tell Jerry because she knew he’d light into her about it. I said, “Forget Jerry; I don’t think it’s right either.” Yet she continues to offer to loan me the jacket she bought for her dog whenever I complain about the cost of carrying an animal on board a plane (which is, indeed, outrageous).
One expert Skloot quotes makes an excellent point about banning certain species as assistance animals, which also applies to breed bans. Lex Frieden, a professor of health-information science at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and a former director of the National Council on Disability, says:
People shouldn’t be able to carry their pets on a plane or into a restaurant claiming they’re service animals when they’re not. But that has nothing to do with what species a service animal is. It’s fraud, and it results in increased scrutiny of people with legitimate disabilities.
The appropriate response isn’t a species ban, he says, but rather strict punishments for people who pose as disabled. He also suggests formation of a national committee to develop certification standards for all service animals as well as a formal process for preventing and punishing service-animal fraud.
The Department of Justice is considering revisions to the ADA that may include limiting service animals to a “dog or other common domestic animal,” specifically excluding “wild animals (including nonhuman primates born in captivity), reptiles, rabbits, farm animals (including any breed of horse, miniature horse, pony, pig or goat), ferrets, amphibians and rodents,” but no decision has been made yet.
An article on cloned dogs answers such questions as how the cloning process is done, why dogs cloned from the same genetic material may not look exactly alike, and whether a housetrained dog that is cloned will result in another housetrained dog (sorry, no).
In horses, cloning is done to replicate the characteristics of expensive performance horses in sports such as dressage or cutting (but not racing, which forbids reproduction of horses through any artificial means). I suppose that might become the case in dogs, but for now it primarily seems to appeal to pet owners who want to recreate a beloved dog.
I sometimes wonder idly if Darcy could be cloned from the bits of fur and baby teeth I have tucked away in a cedar box (I’m guessing not), but then I dismiss the idea. There’s no way we could ever recreate the conditions that made her the dog she was. Then I go throw Harper’s ball for her and thank my lucky stars for all the wonderful, unique dogs we’ve been fortunate enough to share our lives with.
Read the rest here.
“He also suggests formation of a national committee to develop certification standards for all service animals”
Speaking as a genuinely disabled person with a real assistance dog, this is a very bad idea. The certification folks, for starters, want to ban from assistance dog work any dog that might protect the owner if she is attacked. Their bizarre reasoning is that such a dog will also attack someone who is trying to help the owner. This shows a gross misunderstanding of what a psychologically sound dog does as far as protection is concerned. Also, since disabled people are more vulnerable to criminal attacks, it takes away their only source of protection. All of the wonderful Fidelco German Shepherds, who guide the blind, would be outlawed, since they would do something if a thug started bashing their owner’s head in. Bad dogs! Dangerous dogs! According to the certification folks. I know of one case in which they lied to a wheelchair-bound woman and told her that she could not legally use her wonderfully well trained, very social, and very stable German Shepherd for assistance dog work because the dog had a Schutzhund title.
Imagine, also, what disabled people would be subjected to from the certification folks—having to wait for appointments, then having to show up to grovel and beg for certification from the same types of ninnies that sometimes run rescue groups. It’s degrading, and assumes that a physical disability implies mental deficiency as well. No doubt there would also be hefty fees that disabled people would have to pay to be subjected to this degrading nonsense.
Rest assured that most disabled people are perfectly capable of selecting a well-behaved assistance dog who meets their needs. We don’t need the “superior” non-disabled folks to check up on us and pass judgment on our assistance dogs.
I am not aware of any widespread problems caused by current assistance dogs. Frankly, out-of-control children are a huge nuisance and sometimes dangerous, and yet no one talks about certifying the parents as fit to take the kids out in public.
Certification will also create a nice lucrative little racket for “trainers” and professional busybodies who can’t drum up enough business on their own.
As for people faking disabilities to get their dogs into public facilities, no, I don’t approve of it, but unless the dog misbehaves, this is hardly a major problem that I’m going to lose sleep over. And any misbehaving dog, whether she is an assistance dog or not, will legally and promptly get kicked out of the facility. I do not want to have to start carrying X-rays, notarized doctor’s statements, etc. to prove that I’m disabled. You want to clobber someone for faking a disability, go ahead. But don’t make the already difficult lives of disabled people more difficult in the process. I get enough harassment as it is when I’m out in public with my assistance dog.
Comment by Susan — January 1, 2009 @ 11:58 am
Great points, Susan. You should send it as a letter to the editor.
Comment by Kim Thornton — January 1, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
Well, I’d rather have some people get away with “cheating” then make folks like Susan go through the kinds of things she describes. Why should it matter if someone has a dog or a gecko for their service animal?
Comment by Susan Fox — January 1, 2009 @ 2:10 pm
Remember - there are plenty of folks who would not like to have to deal with animals in public places at ALL - be they service dogs or otherwise. So those people are likely to support additional restrictions due simply to their distaste for having animals share their space. (Funny - I can’t seem to get the same level of sympathy when I try to find a restaurant where I can enjoy an entire meal undisturbed by loud children - but I digress . . . . )
On a slightly more legitimate note are those who suffer from allergies and claim they are at risk sharing space with animals they may be allergic to. I’m not sure how justified such concerns are, but they do carry some weight in public discussions on these subjects.
Bottom line is that human beings will manage to mess with (and frequently mess up) any program put in place by other human beings. You simply can’t design a “mess-proof” program, and you need to be careful about trying to make a program “mess proof” by instituting more and more restrictive rules. Because ultimately, you simply can’t come up with a program that someone, somewhere, won’t figure out a way around. And in trying to do so, you may end up altering the original objectives of program significantly - perhaps to the extent that they no longer bear any resemblance to the original goals. This is something legislators and rulemakers should pay far more attention to than they do.
I’d hate to see that kind of damage done to the good work that legitimate service animals are able to perform.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — January 1, 2009 @ 3:04 pm
I find it rather funny that this guy has spent millions of dollars to clone his mother’s dog, and she refuses to associate with the clone or even have it in her house.
I’m all for cloning technology and what it can do positively for our breeds and ourselves in the future, but I can’t help but notice that many of the people involved with it currently are a little… off.
Comment by Christopher — January 1, 2009 @ 5:31 pm
From what I have read under the ADA Amendment Act is that Pres. George W. Bush signed it into bill on Sept. 25, 2008. The requirements of the new law will become effective January 1, 2009. Which means it’s not the ADA anymore it’s the ADA Amendment Act. It makes it quite clear that Psychiatric Service Dogs are Service dogs.
I agree with the other poster about certification paper. As I person that has service animal (ie dog just to clarify what species), I don’t see this as a solution to the problem of poor teams or people claiming their pets are service animals. Nor is it going to correct the many issues such as Emotional Support Animals NOT being a service animal under the ADA Amendment Act nor was it ever. Even though FHA and the DOT include these not task training animals as service animals. Nor is it going to stop therapy dog trainers / schools saying that these animals are also service animals. I have had several individuals with therapy dogs think that they had the same rights and found out the school was telling them this misinformation.
Certification papers only tells a person that this particular animal graduated in learning task training. (formal teachings). It really doesn’t tell anybody that the handler is actually a person with a disability. And if the individual isn’t a pwd then their animal cannot be a service animal. Not to mention that a spouse, co-worker or friends cannot take an individuals service animal out and about for them and then go into a store. Reason why is because Service Animals do not have legal rights. It’s people with disabilities that has the legal rights to be accompanied by their individually trained service animals.
Comment by letRVoiceBHeard — January 1, 2009 @ 5:57 pm