Your Seeing-Eye Ferret Will Have to Wait at the Door, Sir
Jacob Sullum | June 17, 2008, 6:27pm
Under regulations proposed by the Bush administration, The New York Times reports, "the use of monkeys as 'service animals' for people with disabilities...would be forbidden." Well, not quite. The regulations would narrow the range of helper animals that businesses open to the public are required to allow on their property under the Americans With Disabilities Act:
When the existing rules were adopted in the early 1990s, the Justice Department said, few people anticipated the current trend toward "the use of wild, exotic or unusual species" as service animals.
The proposed rules define a service animal as "any dog or other common domestic animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks" for a person with a physical or mental disability.
Under this definition, the administration says, monkeys could not qualify as service animals, nor would reptiles; amphibians; rabbits, ferrets and rodents; or most farm animals.
Isn't a ferret or a hamster a "common domestic animal"? What about parrots or cats, which are now more common than dogs? Granted, these are hard questions. But if the federal government did not decide whether to allow pot-bellied pigs in your restaurant, who would?
Sukie Crandall | June 18, 2008, 1:26pm | #
If REASON were used the definitions would include the types of services performed rather than who performs them.
A service ferret, BTW, can be at the person's feet or on the person's lap in a modest carry-case, making them even less noticeable than seeing eye dogs. Ferrets are capable of raising an alarm without being out. They can yell. Then the individual can enjoy a restaurant or other everyday amenities and at the same time avoid a seizure.
BTW, according to Ken Wells of the WSJ perhaps 7 years ago when interviewed on the Leonard Lopate Show, there were even at that time enough domestic ferrets as pets in the U.S. that their care and supplies comprised $2 Billion dollars of the then $32 Billion dollars per annum of the national pet expenditures. (Just giving some scale here for what is not unusual...)
My mother was someone who was a chain smoker; she railed against moves to have non-smoking areas in theaters and restaurants, despite her addiction having damaged the health of some of us family members. But the one truth of life is that things change, so those who are able bodied today wind up needing some tolerance in their futures, whether due to age, health problems (transient or permanent), injury, or even damage from serving our nation at war. In her case she learned why non-smoking sections make sense when she found herself with tumors on her vagus nerve and in her lungs.
Life changes us all. In my mid-forties I could preacher-curl 50 pound dumb bells and on good days work up the rack to 70 pounds, not a usual feat for a woman. Now that I am approaching 60 I need a seating cane when I travel due to neural damage which might be from Lyme, an illness that anyone can get at any age, so I am grateful for the handicapped sections of trains so that I can lift my legs and reduce painful and limit swelling. (I can still preacher-curl 30 pound dumb bells with my arms, though, with no problems at all and plan on working my way up the rack once again...)
Life is full of surprises.
