S.A. veteran says service dog was kicked out of store, harassed

[haele]

187. Dogs for people who suffer from seizures don't fall into the same category, eh?

Last edited Thu Nov 1, 2012, 02:15 PM - Edit history (1)

My neighbor, an Iraq vet who survived an IED was medically discharged with traumatic brain injury - TBI - and severe shoulder damage has a small spaniel trained to anticipate his seizures so he can take his meds or get help if he doest have them on him - which can happen when he's driving, out shopping or trying to do his part-time work.
The many doctors he sees still don't know what triggers the seizures, but he can have them anywhere from none to daily within a month's span, and the dog is the only accurate method he has to be able to pull over when he's driving and take his meds - because in the eyes of most people, he's not "disabled" enough not to work, but too disabled to hold down a regular job.

This isn't a "feel sorry for the poor depressed vet" whine, you don't f'n know why the guy had his dog. TBI affects a good number of vets, and you can't tell who has it or who's "just depressed", or who might just fall down in front of you or go off in a blind rage for no apparent reason - or pass out and crash a car into a schoolyard and needs that dog to keep from killing or injuring you and your kids while he or she is trying to have the "normal life" most US citizens expect them to have instead of living off the dole that consists of "hard earned taxpayer money".
Or would you rather they just go ahead and slink off into the bushes with the other homeless and wait to die, or be locked up in the family attics/institutionalized like in the good old days because they're obviously too defective to be in the general population?

It is acknowledged that as therapies that is a wider range of service animals available than just for the blind than there were back in the 60's/70's, because studies have shown a greater usefulness due to the heightened awareness and senses animals such as dogs (or parrots, or horses) have that most people don't have. Their ability to anticipate has been a lifeline to normalcy for people with epilepsy or other physical issues that aren't easily visible to the naked human eye.

But, hey. It's easy to be hard on the whiners, isn't it. Especially if their rights to have a normal life might just seem to inconvenience someone else's comfort level.

Out of consideration for a family member who is apparently allergic to animal hair, I have edited the post, but as someone who is allergic almost to a disabling level to various industrial vapors myself, I find that there is very little sympathy for me because I know that because I am in public I might be in contact with those sorts of vapors and if do not have the means - benedryl, etc - to control or treat my reactions, it's pretty much on me. Just as someone who has seizures and the service animal (means) to anticipate them has the responsibility to have his or her service animal and their meds with them.

Haele