Quote:
Originally Posted by Snoop Todd
I have really appreciated your honesty in this thread Gobbo. I do think it is ironic that you are asking for compassion and understanding, but are not trying very hard to empathize with the people who get anxious around your dog.
I am a huge dog person and I also don't really understand why some people freak out around dogs, but I give them the benefit of the doubt and accept their feelings as legitimate, just as you are asking people to do with your mental illness.
That dog is awesome.
To me it comes down to risk and which is truly the bigger issue. I don't know how many people have serious fear of dogs and that is probably causing me to not understand the impact that having Oscar in a public place can have on people. But I do know how much he helped me.
Note, I'm not claiming that emotional service dogs should be allowed. Most of my comments in this thread are talking about legit service dogs. The problem I see is that people are using complaints against emotional service dogs that would apply to ALL service dogs, not just the ones that people find frivolous. So to me, that begs the question how much more necessary are physical ones than mental ones and are ALL physical service dogs more valid than mental? That seems extremely unlikely to me and indicative of a huge bias in our culture.
Appreciate the kind words. Oscar is my bro.
Diablo, same response to you in essence. I'm going to assume that you are fine with seeing eye dogs and many other "legit" service dogs. Are you claiming that all of those dogs are more necessary than psychiatric service dogs? Those seizure and diabetic alert dogs that people have claimed "aren't necessary" get full federal protection but if a veteran has PTSD and has a serious freakout at loud noises unless Rex is there to calm him down, he's **** out of luck when it comes to functioning in society? That seems like a huge double standard.