Related news article:
An example of politicians and lawyers over-thinking a problem:

<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-25/wa-bill-would-narrow-definition-of-service-animals.html>
<http://scienceblogs.com/culturedish/2009/01/dojs_rationale_behind_banning.php>

Having had a ferret save my life when our furnace malfunctioned I am
personally well aware that ferrets are totally capable of knowing that
something is seriously wrong with a person, climbing furniture, and
then persistently licking and nuzzling the person to help her come
around.

The arguments for narrowing the range of animals used as service
animals threatens both to make the costs of permits higher for
taxpayers, and more seriously to prevent a number of people who need
service animals from having them or from being able to get them in a
timely fashion.

How can the permits be done cheaply? That is easy. Just use the same
existing system which is used for handicapped car placards. It is easy
for politicians to assume that they know what is best for every citizen
who needs help, but let's face facts here. The ones who know best what
helps a patient are the treating physicians because each patient is
different. We trust those treating physicians to decide who can best
use handicapped parking, so why not trust them to say which animals
are performing a health assisting function for a person and fill out
township or county forms based upon handicapped parking forms to get
an assistance animal permit which can be carried? If a person wants to
bring an animal into a business without such a permit then the person
can be turned away. It's simple.

Not everyone NEEDS the many specialized functions many service animals
have been taught. I have heard of at least one family where a rabbit
alerts both the seizure victim and his wife before a seizure hits,
giving time to take medication and avoid a seizure. In addition, I have
heard of four people for whom ferrets perform such functions. One of
them, a woman who lives alone, used to have regular seizures after
being injured by a hit and run driver but her ferrets have given her
timely enough warnings that she has been able to medicate herself and
then lie down as a precaution, avoiding any seizures at one point for a
stretch longer than a year. For these people what their animals know
naturally to do has been sufficient.

Not being caught in a bottleneck waiting for a specially trained animal
for a year or more can in some cases save the lives of individuals who
can be served by animals they perhaps already and could take with them.
It also reduces costs.

In one case of a woman whose many seizures have been stopped long term
due to her ferret alerting her in time to medicate, her landlord wanted
to evict her for having an untrained service animal and she had to go
to court.

Remember, too, that a number of people are allergic to dogs or to
horses, or to both. Are those people to be unable to have any type of
service animal due to a law that does not consider the full spectrum
of needs rather than letting the treating physician decide for each
patient? I am sure that there are people here with here with such
allergies, and there are in our family, too. Are we to find it
impossible to have a service animal in the future if we need one
because of a restrictive law that could be replaced by a practical,
cheaper, and more fair solution using an already existing system?
Are you?

Some people need services a dog or horse can not provide. It looks
like the proposed changes would also eliminate a program which trained
monkeys to help with a number of the basic needs for people who are
unable to use their arms.

I don't know why some people are attracted to complicating easily and
cheaply solved needs, nor why some people are attracted to restricting
the lives of others who are fully capable of making their own choices.
Instead of imposing a costly and restrictive choice through law, just
automatically give permits for the highly trained animals and beyond
those just let each patient's physician decide if the animal is
performing a health related function. There has not been an issue of
abuse by physicians in filling out forms for handicapped parking
permits so there is no reason to expect that there would be abuse in
filling out forms to get service animal permits.

I am sure that Wolfy will have some informative things to add about how
absolutely essential an assistance animal can be to a person's life and
future, indeed for the future of the entire family. Those who do not
know about Sean have some heartrending and uplifting things to learn!

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html

"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
On change for its own sake: "You can go really fast if you just jump
off the cliff." (2010, Steve Crandall)

[Posted in FML 6991]