The Spokane City Council has joined the state of Washington in putting some teeth into the law regarding non-trained service animals.
On Monday night, the council approved an ordinance that prohibits pet owners from passing off their animals as service or comfort animals. The sponsor is Councilman Mike Fagan.
“With this additional tool, it is going to act as a deterrent for those who serially like to pass off their Fifi on a stick, their snakes, their ferrets, their rabbits, their chickens and anything else other than a dog or a miniature horse as a service animal," Fagan said.
Fagan says the measure is nearly identical to a bill approved this year by the Washington legislature. The only difference, he says, is in the size of the fine if a pet owner is found guilty of disobeying the law. The state fine is $500, the city’s is $56 with a doubled fine for a second offense and increasing from there.
That’s too much, says Rick Bocook. He says many people in poverty rely heavily on their pets and to fine them because they can’t afford to formally train the animals is unfair.
“There needs to be a lot of time, I would even say five years, just for the education process," Bocook said. "There’s people out there, they’re not going to get it. All they know is somebody’s going to approach them and they’re going to get this ticket and it’s going to blow them away and they might end up losing the animal that is their friend that helps them in their disabilities.”
But a majority of speakers agreed with Laura Renz of the NorthWest Service Dog Alliance.
“What you’re trying to do today is very helpful," Renz said. "When a service dog handler goes out in society, all we want to do is the same thing you do. We just want to go about our business. We want to go to the grocery store. We want to go to the doctor. We don’t want to do anything different than you do and we have our dog by our side. We don’t expect to have any issues.”
In many cases, she says, service dogs are attacked by non- or poorly-trained animals, who sometimes then have to be retired as service animals.
I’m Doug Nadvornick reporting.
