Americans With Disabilities Act

Today was a big day for non-canine service animal news, which I keep tabs on here as part of ongoing follow up to my New York Times Magazine article, Creature Comforts, about the use of non-canine service animals (which include ducks, monkeys, horses, goats, and at least one kangaroo).  The biggest news is that a court in Missouri has rejected the discrimination case filed by Debby Rose, who I featured in my story. She was forbidden to bring her Macaque monkey Richard into local businesses, despite the fact that she says he's a service monkey trained to help with her agoraphobia (Richard…

Today, in their segment called "Seeing Eye Horse Shocks Store Patrons," Good Morning America featured a woman riding her full sized "Seeing Eye horse" through the grocery store (pictured left). In doing so, it made one of the most common media mistakes: focusing on the quirk factor (woman riding horse in store!) at the expense of the issues involved.  The result is a classic oversimplification of a complex story that's pretty misleading about the use of horses as service animals:  Most non-canine service animal users are not, in fact, people who ride horses through stores.  As far as I…