The trouble with service dog impawsters
Plus: Key segment of greenway nears completion; Charlotte airport falls back toward normal in passenger rankings; St. Matthew welcomes freed priests; City Council considers 4-year terms
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People who train service dogs say poorly behaved, vest-wearing ‘emotional support animals’ make life harder for those who have disabilities
When Joanne Maguire isn’t teaching at UNC Charlotte, she’s training Keaton III (pictured), who may become a service dog for a military veteran with mobility issues. Keaton III is a golden retriever and labrador mix who came to live with Maguire for 6 months in November. (Photo courtesy of Joanne Maguire)
by Lindsey Banks
UNC Charlotte Professor Joanne Maguire walked into her religious studies class one day a few years ago to find a small, furry addition to her normal audience of college students.
The new face belonged to that of a possum, who was wearing a service vest.
One of her students claimed the marsupial was an “emotional support” possum that they found on the side of the road. The possum attended class for the next three weeks until the student realized they could no longer care of the feral animal.
While it seemed harmless and might have even elicited a laugh from other students in the class, Maguire brings a different perspective to the situation.
In her free time, she trains service dogs for a California-based group called Canine Companions — and knows the harm that unofficial service and emotional support animals can have on trained service animals and their owners.
What’s the difference? The Americans with Disabilities Act defines service animals as “any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability.”
Emotional support animals and species other than dogs are not considered to be service animals. Yet, the growing number of people claiming their pets give them support and should be accommodated leads to confusion in public places.
These days, it’s as easy as one click to purchase a service animal vest on Amazon. And so it’s becoming more common to see people bringing vest-wearing ordinary pets into public spaces where they otherwise would not be allowed.
People who truly need task-trained service dogs can face discrimination and lose access to public places, which are both violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as a result of poorly behaved untrained dogs posing as service dogs, according to Canine Companions.
Canine Companions conducted a survey of 1,500 accredited service dog users in collaboration with Assistance Dogs International. Over half of respondents said they encountered poorly trained dogs in grocery stores, restaurants and shopping centers, and 59% said they had been denied access to public places with their service dog.
Fraudulent service dogs can usually be detected by their untrained behavior, like barking or not following basic commands like “sit.” According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, businesses and government agencies that serve the public can legally ask the owner only two questions: Is the dog a service animal required because of a disability, and what work or task has the dog been trained to perform?
People with a service dog cannot be asked about the nature of their disability, proof of the service animal’s training (like papers or a license), for the animal to wear a vest or tag, or for the animal to demonstrate its training.
“Our ideas of what disability is have changed significantly,” Maguire said. “And the way the law works, you can’t ask. It’s very hard to challenge someone in public legally about a service dog, so people tend not to do it. It leads to this slippery slope.”
Private companies posing as official registries: The easy-to-purchase vests and other gear make it confusing in public to tell which dogs are trained service animals at work, and which are like the possum in Maguire’s class.
A company called the National Service Animal Registry, which sells official-looking vests, identification tags and registration documents, reports that of the 216,225 service dogs currently registered with the for-profit company, 115,832 are registered as emotional support animals.
The National Service Animal Registry’s name makes it sound like a government agency that certifies support animals, but no government agency records people using emotional support animals.
Local volunteers provide service with a bark: Maguire is among a group of Charlotte volunteers for Canine Companions, a California-based LLC with a center in Gastonia that provides service dogs to adults, children and military veterans with disabilities. The nonprofit also trains facility dogs for healthcare, criminal justice and educational settings.
Maguire has volunteered with Canine Companions since 2006 and has trained four pups to serve military veterans with PTSD and severe mobility issues.
The organization works with labrador retrievers, golden retrievers and mixes of the two. The pups go to live with their trainers at eight weeks old and stay under their care for about 18 months before passing the leash onto the new owner. Trainers like Maguire find it to be an emotional but rewarding experience.
“You bond differently with this dog,” Maguire said. “You think of them as someone else’s dog, like you’re doing this for someone. You are hoping that what will happen is the dog goes away and it does a great job and changes someone’s life. Any little bit of sadness, it’s just minor.”
Maguire is never alone, though. She has her own dog named Moose to fill her dog-loving heart.
Lindsey Banks is a staff reporter for The Ledger: lindsey@cltledger.com
Today’s supporting sponsor is Landon A. Dunn, attorney-at-law in Matthews:
Construction expected to wrap up in the spring on key greenway segment that will link Pineville to NoDa
The newest section of the Cross Charlotte Trail in south Charlotte is set to be completed by the end of the spring but may take longer, according to city officials.
The 1.54-mile segment, which will also be a part of the Little Sugar Creek Greenway, will connect the portion of the trail that ends at Brandywine Road (near Park Road Shopping Center) to the portion of the trail that ends at Tyvola Road, near Park Road. Once it’s completed, pedestrians will be able to walk or bike between Pineville and NoDa on an uninterrupted path.
A spokesperson for the city told The Ledger that the construction contractor ran into a large section of bedrock on the northern end of the segment near Woodlawn Road, which required a redesign of the trail to go around the bedrock and a large rock removal.
“We’re working hard to meet an end-of-April date, but we have given ourselves to the end of June in case weather or other factors affect the timeline,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The city has a pretty cool flyover video rendering of the segment — which frankly would be better if set to soaring music and marketed as a “sizzle video” — but it’s still pretty neat:
The Cross Charlotte Trail is a project between the city and Mecklenburg County to create a 30-mile trail and greenway that connects Pineville and the Cabarrus County line, running through Center City and onto the UNC Charlotte campus. —LB
Prayers answered: 2 Nicaraguan priests greeted in Charlotte after being released from prison
Members of St. Matthew Catholic Church are celebrating the arrival of two priests who were released last week from a notorious Nicaraguan prison.
Worshippers had been praying for months for the release of Father Ramiro Tijerino, Father Óscar Danilo Benavidez Dávila and other critics of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. Tijerino’s sister attends St. Matthew, which is in the Ballantyne area and is one of the largest Catholic parishes in the U.S.
The Catholic News Herald reported that the two priests were greeted at Charlotte’s airport late Sunday by about two dozen well-wishers, many of whom were holding blue-and-white Nicaraguan flags:
“There were some hard months but thanks to God and the prayers of this parish, we were given the strength to endure,” Father Ramiro said, working his way through a receiving line in baggage claim.
Father Óscar was embraced as if he were family, too. “God bless the parish,” he said. “I am grateful to this diocese, and to the parish, and to the faithful whose prayers sustained us.”
The two priests were put on house arrest Aug. 5 and were taken to a prison called “El Chipote” known for torture and brutal living conditions. —TM
Related Ledger article:
“With her priest brother held in a Nicaraguan jail, a sister worries in Charlotte,” (🔒, Aug. 26, 2022)
Charlotte’s airport tumbles in passenger rankings, as other cities recover from Covid
Charlotte’s airport, which had a brief moment in the sun during Covid as the world’s sixth-busiest airport, is tumbling back down toward its pre-Covid ranking.
As airports around the globe report their passenger numbers for 2022, Charlotte looks as though it will rank no higher than 19th. It was No. 6 in 2021, largely because air travel in other countries and other parts of the U.S. recovered from the pandemic more slowly. Before Covid, in 2019, Charlotte ranked No. 34 in passenger traffic.
Forbes reported last week that Charlotte appears to rank No. 10 in the U.S., surpassed by Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas and New York’s JFK airport. Wikipedia says numbers posted by several foreign airports for 2022 were also greater than Charlotte’s 47.7 million, including London, Paris, Madrid and Istanbul.
But Charlotte seems likely to hold up better using a different measure of an airport’s size: the number of takeoffs and landings. Because of its heavy use of smaller regional jets, Charlotte has long been in the top 10. It was No. 5 in 2021. —TM
You might be interested in these Charlotte events
Events submitted by readers to The Ledger’s events board:
THURSDAY: Charlotte Area Chamber lunch meeting; “Community Business Resources,” 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m., Refinery Building, 1213 W. Morehead St., Suite 500, Charlotte. Join the Charlotte Area Chamber of Commerce for a lunch meeting, where Mimi Curlee of Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and Alexis Gordon of the city of Charlotte will share information about local business resources and tips on how to maximize them to work smarter and gain insight into the ins-and-outs of growing a successful business. Registration required; $35 for members, $45 for nonmembers.
➡️ List your event on the Ledger events board.
In brief:
Longer City Council terms? The Charlotte City Council tonight is expected to discuss a possible referendum in November to lengthen terms to 4 years from 2 years and to add an additional district representative.
Homeless encampment to be disbanded: A small homeless encampment on West Sugar Creek Road, near the Hidden Valley neighborhood, might soon be shut down. Land owner Piedmont Natural Gas said it is working with police to “avoid trespassing for unauthorized individuals.” (Observer)
CMS board hires search firm: The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board voted Friday to approve a $57,000 contract with Illinois-based search firm BWP & Associates to find a superintendent. The timeline calls for having a new superintendent sign a contract in April. (WFAE)
Patents up at BofA: Bank of America said it received 608 patents last year, up 19% from 2021. “The patents represent innovation across many areas including artificial intelligence, machine learning, information security, data analytics, mobile banking and payments,” the Charlotte-based bank said. (Yahoo Finance)
Super Bowl fashion with local roots: Lincolnton-born fashion designer Charles Harbison’s talents were on display at the Super Bowl, as actress and vocalist Sheryl Lee Ralph sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing” before kickoff wearing a custom red jumpsuit by Harbison Studio. Harbison attended N.C. State and has dressed A-listers including Michelle Obama and Beyoncé. (Fashionista)
CMS wins PR award: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools won six statewide awards last week from the N.C. School Public Relations Association “for outstanding and effective communication,” CMS said.
Loves me some internet: More fun with AI images
The artificial intelligence image we created last week showing how Pablo Picasso might have painted uptown Charlotte’s skyline seemed to strike a chord with readers.
So we gave the image-making bot another assignment, in honor of last night’s Super Bowl: “Carolina Panthers playing football on the moon”:
Taking stock
Unless you are a day trader, checking your stocks daily is unhealthy. So how about weekly? How local stocks of note fared last week (through Friday’s close), and year to date:
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Contributing photographer/videographer: Kevin Young, The 5 and 2 Project