A couple of months
ago, I wrote about visitors to Walt Disney World who are using people with
disabilities to enable them to take advantage of the “perks” WDW provides to
families traveling with them. As someone who greatly benefits from the accommodations
made to people with disabilities in various settings, and on the eve of a trip
to WDW, I found this extremely disturbing.
Well, this morning I
woke up to the following story on National Public Radio:
Lauren
Henderson goes everywhere with her service dog Phoebe — to the grocery store,
Disneyland, the beach. For Henderson, who used to be paralyzed, her 100 pound,
lumbering Saint Bernard is a necessity.
An
actor who lives in Malibu, Calif., Henderson uses her dog for stability and
balance. And if she falls, Phoebe helps pull her back on her feet.
"She's
basically like a living walker," Henderson says.
Lately,
Henderson has noticed more dogs wearing vests that label them as service
animals, but she can tell they're different from Phoebe. They'll shake, pee,
bark incessantly or growl at people.
"I
know how service dogs are trained, though, and I know the behavior they're
meant to display in public and definitely are not," she says. "And
that's not a service dog."
A
service dog is highly trained to perform a specific task for its disabled
owner. It's different from a therapy dog, which comforts the sick and elderly,
or an emotional support animal, which soothes anxiety.
But a
dog wearing a vest might not be any of those things. For people wanting to take
their pets wherever they go, a brisk business has developed in the sale of
bogus service animal certificates and vests.
Tim
Livingood runs one of many websites that sell certification paraphernalia. For
$65, customers can procure papers, patches and vests to make their dogs look
official. They can even buy a prescription letter from a psychiatrist after
taking an online quiz.
The
laws are broad enough to allow that, Livingood says. While his business, the
National Service Animal Registry, sounds official, he says
government-sanctioned registration agencies do not exist — federal law does not
actually require registration or identification patches. Property managers or
airlines cannot mandate that service animals come with patches, and they can't
ask owners to produce ID cards.
Joanne
Shortell, who has a service dog, works to educate people about their rights to
have service animals. And there's a lot of confusion, she says. Animals are
helping more people cope with a range of illnesses and disabilities, but the
terminology and web of access rights make it almost impossible to sort out the
frauds from the legitimate helpers.
Is this the lesson we
have learned from the horrific events on this date in 2001? Has the glimmer of
hope and decency and shared purpose that we saw in the dark hours and days
following that tragedy been replaced by despair and self-interest and cynicism?
I appreciate that
this seems a very small concern next to discussions of military intervention in
Syria. But perhaps the root cause is the same: our human tendency to view ourselves
as more important than anyone or anything else. That tendency has undoubtedly
led to a multitude of inspired ideas and inventions that have enhanced human
existence. Our survival depends on our being able to keep the negative aspects
at bay. Are we up to the task?
Love,
Rebecca
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