Originally Posted By: Lono
I don't know how it works everywhere else Benjamin, but out here they would admit a blind person with a dog without batting an eye. At least locally (and this may be a national interpretation), Seattle-area stores don't stop any entry from anyone with a dog or other animal, as long as they contend the animal is to meant to assist them. Those restaurants that advertise "No Animals?" I have seen one restaurant admit a Helper Ferret to dine with its owner. I would think that actually walking into a theater with a dog would be pretty mundane by comparison. Sure, some folks will push it, but for the most part people really use these lizards, cats, dogs and ferrets to help them out. <shrug>

Besides, not everyone with a guide dog is totally blind, and the sight-impaired folks I know tend to pick up on more than I ever could. I suspect they can follow alot of movies alot better than I could.


That's partly because there is NO national standard for what a helper animal is. I took the Red Cross Shelter Manager course a while back - it was clear as day - someone claims that an Animal is a helper animal, you let the animal in. Next drill, we threw a wrench at them (we tried to arrange it for real) - a helper elephant. Would have been great publicity. The fun was not only throwing the curve of a helper elephant at the shelter manager - but they throwing the "Now you have to feed, water, and deal with the mess" element - getting extra staff, having the staff at HQ try to find out where to get food for an elephant, plus the trucks to deliver it, etc - basically, took the drill from "Yawn, we know how this plays out" to "NOW what do we do?"

Ever try to find out from the owner of the building your in (in this case a NYC public school) if the floor load rating of the building can even support the elephant before you let it in? Yes the shelter manager thought about it - had them open a ground floor room - if they had not, we where going to throw a building collapse at them - yes, we got creative
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