› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Pets: Furry friends … or fiends? › Disability rort fears over hearing dog decision › Current Page
As you will discover elsewhere on this site (and just in last week’sFlat Chat column, HERE) – we support pets in apartments generally and the concept of assistance animals too – including those that provide therapeutic emotional support.
This story is highlighting the very loose interpretation of the definition of an assistance dog and how that could be abused in the same way people managed to get disability stickers and used them to give themselves free parking, thereby undermining the whole system to the detriment of people with genuine disabilities.
The guidelines need to be clearer so that people with genuine issues that are alleviated by companion animals can keep them, even in otherwise ‘pet-free’ buildings. Right now, the system is open to abuse and that is likely to harm genuine sufferers in the long run.
I wonder, however, what will happen when a bona fide assistance animal puts its owner in breach of other by-laws relating to noise and nuisance.