But this seems like a level where regulatory agencies might not be able to interfere much, at least not without unfairly burdening the owner. I don’t know. I’m wondering, home visits? Monthly cert requirements? Loss of license after two spoiled dogs? How would something like that work? And if the animal became a service animal via field promotion–like the parrot in the story–how would you match up idiosyncratic training with an official idea?

(Silly comment submitted itself randomly!)

An acquaintence of mine is blind, and has a trained service dog. This is her second dog. For both this dog, and her previous one, when she got it, it was properly trained and well behaved. She went to all the classes on how to work with the dogs, and keep the training going. But once she was home, in both cases, she quickly let the training slide, and the dogs’ behavior deteriorated badly.

I’m allergic, and don’t care to be around dogs. I’m generally quite happy to have someone with a service animal around, however, as the service animals are supposed to be well trained, and focused on their owner completely, so that others get left alone. Once the training is gone, however, a “service animal” is not any better than any other.

Requiring certification wouldn’t mean that the people who got the certification would keep up with the work it takes to have a properly behaved working dog.

(It’s a shame about these dogs, because they’re donated, and there is a long waiting list. To have them go to someone who doesn’t take advantage of the heavy investment in training that they’ve had seems a waste. If she just wanted a pet, )

The problem with political legacies is that they are even more subject to branding than many other careers, and sometimes less equipped with industry checks. For a politician, a surname is not merely an in. It can become a substitute for education, training, apprenticeship–a degree and a residency, in other words. I doubt, as you seem to, that nepotism can be formally destroyed altogether. I still think it’s important to try to overcome a tendency towards promoting a name above other qualifications.

Just saying… I think the hysteria over pets in public places is unfounded :)

For me, the most interesting thing about the article was the predominance of stereotypes even in discussions of policy. And the insistence that stereotypes were useful tools in and of themselves. It makes perfect sense that people with mental-health issues should be ignored; that’s an ableist trope elsewhere, too: not visible to outsiders, not real. And it makes perfect sense that acknowledgement of service-animal utility is based on the same reductive impulse. A dog is a white-tipped cane, whereas a pony is a circus act. Even people who know nothing about service animals insist that they can judge their owners.

The point is that if you publicize the laws well, that’s something of a disincentive in itself; beyond that, if something did go wrong, it would allow greater leeway for prosecuting abuses.

Animals may be part of nature, but not all animals are safe. Not all animals are clean. As the article explained, there serious diseases that can be transmitted between humans and animals. It violates health codes to have animals around. If I’m out to dinner and someone next to me pulls out their pet rat or their wild monkey, that’s a problem. If I’m an employee and all of a sudden it becomes part of my job to deal with someone’s poorly-trained and aggressive dog, or some idiot’s loose snake, or animal feces, that’s a problem. And it’s not just because I don’t like “change.”