LIHU‘E — Robert Romero is hardly a poster child for a person who relies on a service animal. The 47-year-old Wailua resident is neither blind nor spends his time in a wheelchair. Instead, the slender, suntanned man can be found
LIHU‘E — Robert Romero is hardly a poster child for a person who relies on a service animal.
The 47-year-old Wailua resident is neither blind nor spends his time in a wheelchair. Instead, the slender, suntanned man can be found walking or riding his bike, with “Druk” nestled in his backpack, as he makes his way around the island.
“He cues me for my panic attacks,” Romero said of the whippet/dachshund mix. “If I get panicky with someone, if I’m standing up, he’ll grab my leg.”
If seated, the dog will crawl into his lap and lick his face profusely. “It’s like he diverts your attention,” Romero said.
In addition to suffering severe panic attacks, Romero suffers from thrombocytopenia and is prone to passing out from complications due to hypoglycemia.
If he is about to black out while biking, Druk will lick the back of his arm. This tells Romero to get off his bike — effectively preventing a crash or scene he’d rather avoid.
Since adopting and training Druk for eight months, Romero said he’s been able to give up most of a pharmacopeia of medicine for his conditions. “He’s replaced the medication,” Romero said.
New ADA definition
Having an invisible disability and a service dog, however, comes with some difficulties.
Although he falls under the Americans with Disabilities Act’s newest definition for service animals and those who have them, Romero sometimes has to argue his way into stores, hospitals, buses and other public accommodations normally open to service animals.
“People think that a service animal is a guide dog only,” Romero said. “I would think the same thing, too, unless I wasn’t going through this.
“You just try to educate them because they don’t know.”
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act’s revised regulations, which went into effect in mid-March, a service animal refers to any dog 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. Other species of animals — except for miniature horses — aren’t included.
“That eliminates a lot of people,” said Christina Pilkington.
As the ADA coordinator for Kaua‘i County, Pilkington said she receives about a call per week from a man who claims his pet rooster is a service animal. It may be comforting to its owner, but the rooster isn’t covered by ADA nor is any other comfort animal.
“Everybody who has an animal, I think, has a comfort animal,” Pilkington said. “Why would you have an animal unless it was a comfort to you?”
The Fair Housing Act does allow for people with service, comfort or therapeutic animals if they get a doctor’s note. “They can live in a housing situation where no animals are allowed,” Pilkington said.
To qualify for ADA under its new regulations, the work or tasks performed by the service animal must be directly related to the handler’s disability. Examples given include but are not limited to assisting people who are blind with navigation, alerting people who are deaf to the presence of others, pulling a wheelchair, assisting someone during a seizure, retrieving items and helping persons with psychiatric and neurological disabilities by preventing or interrupting impulsive or destructive behaviors.
“The crime deterrent effects of an animal’s presence and the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition,” the revised ADA definition states.
Dr. Lucy Miller, a local woman who sits on the state Disability and Communication Access Board, is deaf and uses a service dog. She said she gave input on the ADA refinements. The clarifications, she explained, were needed in the definitions after 20 years of finding out where the confusions lay in interpreting the original wording.
Under the ADA, businesses and organizations that serve the public must allow people with disabilities to bring their animals into all areas of the facility where customers are normally allowed to go, according to an ADA Business Brief released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in 2002.
The federal law applies to all businesses open to the public including restaurants, hotels, taxis, grocery and department stores, hospitals, medical offices, theatres, health clubs, parks and zoos.
Education key to avoiding discrimination
Businesses may ask if an animal is a service animal and what task it’s been trained to perform, but cannot require special ID cards for the animal or ask about the person’s disability, the brief states. Violators of the ADA can be required to pay money damages and penalties, the brief warns.
“The whole purpose of the ADA is to protect people from people discriminating against them for things they don’t understand,” Pilkington said.
A person can be asked to remove his service animal only if it is out of control and the handler does not take action or if it is not housebroken.
“It doesn’t matter if you have the highest trained service animal in the universe. If your animal behaves in a manner that scares other people or misbehaves … a service animal can be asked to leave if its behavior is wrong,” Pilkington said.
She said there’s a lot of confusion surrounding service animals, even with the new definition.
“Often, people will say ‘I trained my own dog to be a service animal,’ but they may not have a qualifying disability,” Pilkington said. A qualifying disability is one that effects a major life activity, such as seeing, hearing, breathing, walking, talking and working, she said.
The most typical service animal is a guide dog. The majority of service animals need specific and extended training to assist their people, although seizure dogs have the innate ability to recognize when their handlers are about to run into trouble.
‘He’s almost like a third leg’
Maureen Nuccio-Hiraga has had a somewhat different experience with her service dog “Sager” than Romero and Druk. She, too, approves of the new definition under the ADA, because it clarifies the law for those who want or need a service animal.
In 2005, after undergoing surgery on her pancreas and dealing with other ailments that affected her mobility, Nuccio-Hiraga became interested in owning a service dog.
“I thought the dog would help me with pulling the wheelchair, help with my balance and also (provide) companionship because at that time, I was in bed most of the time,” Nuccio-Hiraga said.
She researched several organizations online and eventually found Canine Companions for Independence. Following multiple interviews and a more than a two-year wait, she and her partner, Madeline Hiraga-Nuccio, were matched with the Labrador/golden retriever mix in 2010.
The 61-year-old Wailua resident said Sager knows about 41 commands. For her, he turns light switches on and off, retrieves items she dropped or cannot reach, and opens doors with a “tug” — a device that looks like a soft pull toy placed over door handles.
He also helps pull the wheelchair and can pay for items at stores, when given a credit card to hand to a cashier. “We wish he made the money, too,” Hiraga-Nuccio said.
When the couple went to O‘ahu recently, Sager rode in the plane with him.
“He has changed my life 180 degrees, from being in bed almost all the time. Now, I’m out and about almost every day,” Nuccio-Hiraga said. “I see him as my partner — he’s almost like a third leg.”
what people with service animals need to know:
The Air Carrier Access Act, which was amended in 2009, prohibitsboth U.S. and foreign carriers from discriminating againstpassengers on the basis of disability, according to a document fromthe Disability and Communication Access Board of Hawai‘i. Thatapplies to all U.S. carriers and their operations and aircraft. Itonly applies to foreign carriers that have flights that begin ofend in the United States.
For people with service animals, that means carriers must permita service animal to accompany a passenger with a disability, thedocument states.
On flights scheduled to take eight hours of more, carriers mayrequire documentation that the animal will not relieve itself onthe flight or that in can in a way that doesn’t create a health orsanitation hazard.
For non-service animals — the Americans with Disabilities Actonly allows dogs and miniature horses — a carrier must determinewhether any factors preclude them from traveling in the cabin asservice animals. Foreign carriers are not required to carry serviceanimals other than dogs, the document says.
Emotional support animals are limited to people with a diagnosedmental or emotional disorder. Carriers may ask for currentdocumentation from a licensed mental health professional and 48hours advance notice to provide access.
Passengers should contact their carrier for moreinformation.
