NEWSSERVICE ANIMALS

If you're looking for the poster children for bad and bullheaded breed-specific legislation, it's hard to find better examples than Denver and Aurora, Colorado. Both cities passed pit bull bans years ago, drawing the ire of pit bull owners (as well as a handful of other breeds selected for the same more or less arbitrary reasons.)

Let's be clear about one thing. Dog bite statistics, at least the ones that purport to tell you how "dangerous" a particular breed is, are horribly unreliable. They're so unreliable, in fact, that the Centers for Disease Control, who knows a little something about public health statistics, refuses to even consider breed information in compiling bite stats.

Another federal agency that doesn't buy into the junk science behind breed-specific legislation hype is the Department of Justice. The DOJ last year revised the Americans with Disabilities Act to allow any breed of dog to be considered a service dog, including pit bulls. That, of course, put Denver and Aurora's local pit bull bans directly at odds with federal law; their ordinances ban pit bulls, no exceptions.

In 2009, Dr. Gael Yonnet of Salt Lake City received a precious gift from Canine Companions for Independence: a service dog named Elon. On January 29, 2011, the organization crossed state lines and took the gift back.

Elon was sent to a kennel in California to wait on a concrete floor. Canine Companions for Independence believes Dr. Yonnet's active lifestyle was putting Elon's life and health in danger, but Dr. Yonnet and many others disagree.

With the help of Seizure Alert Dogs for Life, Inc., Dr. Yonnet is fighting CCI to get Elon back. A Facebook page has been created in support of reuniting them.

Though Dr. Yonnet is wheelchair-bound due to a snowboarding accident five years ago, it hasn't slowed him down. Because of Elon, he has been able mountain bike, climb and stay active in the Wasatch Mountains.

Cartoons can be prophetic. In Peanuts, Charlie Brown admitted, "Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'" Too bad Denver City Council Member Charlie Brown lacks the insight and wisdom of his eponymous cartoon character. Last week, councilman Charlie Brown led the charge as Denver once again thumbed its nose at the disabled, their service dogs, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Sigh.

As we've reported before, Denver City Council delayed the vote on creating the service dog exemption to their pit bull ban necessary to come into compliance with the Department of Justice's new rule, which states that cities cannot discriminate against the disabled and their service dogs simply because of the dog's breed. This makes sense. You can't stop a disabled citizen on the border of a municipality and tell them they can't come in because they have the wrong breed of service dog.

Councilman Charlie Brown misguidedly believes that Denver has a right to do exactly that because they are a home-rule city. Except this is a federal law, not a state law. The U. S. Dept. of Justice really doesn't give a damn whether you are home rule or not, they just want to make sure the disabled have access.

And without a DNA test, how will Charlie Brown determine whether mixed-breed service dogs are pit bulls or not? Visual identification isn't reliable enough to clear Snoopy of Denver's law.

For six-year-old J.C. Bowen, his golden retriever, Pepsi, is more than just his best friend. J.C. has autism, and Pepsi helps him get through day-to-day life. He's trained to stop J.C. from running off, rocking, banging his head, and having a meltdown. Pepsi helped J.C. develop his balance and he learned to respond to J.C.'s seizures by keeping him from falling, alerting people when J.C. needs help, and keeping him calm before, during and after an episode.

It wasn't easy bringing J.C. and Pepsi together. Elizabeth Lasanta, J.C.'s mom, spent 15 months searching for help for her son. After talking to different service dog organizations, she finally connected with East Coast Assistance Dogs, who helped them find funding and the right companion.

Elizabeth said she's never seen an organization like ECAD. Not only do they help kids like J.C., but they also teach at-risk kids to train service dogs. They're accredited by Assistance Dogs International, which is above and beyond what the Americans with Disabilities Act requires of service dogs.

But none of that — not Pepsi's background, his training or all the ways he protects J.C. from harm and helps him get through life — made any difference to the Collier County School District. They told Elizabeth that J.C. had to leave his service dog at home.

The U.S. Justice Department's ruling that cities can't discriminate against service dogs simply because of their breed is having a welcome ripple effect: It is rightly forcing cities that have enacted breed-discriminatory laws to rethink and rewrite them.

In the past, Aurora, Colorado has spent a lot of tax dollars defending its breed-discriminatory law. Now, with the U.S. Dept. of Justice's ruling in hand, the Animal Law Center in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, is defending the disabled and their dogs.

Allan Grider, a Vietnam veteran, lives in Aurora. He has a pit-bull-type service dog appropriately named Precious. She's certainly precious to Grider, because she helps him with post-traumatic stress disorder by allaying his fears and helping keep him calm.

Aurora Animal Control eyeballed the dog, determined that she was a banned breed, and incarcerated Precious for 10 days, leaving Grider alone to confront the demons brought on by military service, along with new worries about his beloved companion.

Ah, Denver — the chutzpah. One might think that the altitude has the city council not thinking clearly. They've been clinging to their breed ban since 1989, despite the fact that it doesn't work; Denver continues to have the highest rate of hospitalization for dog-related injuries in the state. And it's estimated that they've wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars and continue to throw thousands of dollars at legal fees to defend the ban in court.

Now, on November 1, the Denver City Council once again delayed the vote — for the third time — on whether to create an exemption to the city's "pit bull" ban that would allow the disabled to use the dogs as service animals. This conduct on Denver's part is simply disgraceful.

As we reported in a previous blog, the city council has been stalling, avoiding a decision for months, despite a rational new regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Justice that allows people with disabilities to choose any breed of dog they want as a service dog. After all, the Americans with Disabilities Act is all about access, and disabled folks traveling around the country, who count on their dogs for assistance, have a right to be just as welcome in Denver as any other city.

Candice Alder,with the Rocky Mountain Disability & Business Technical Assistance Center, has some advice for Denver. She believes that they should have a formal conversation with the Department of Justice and not assume that making a reasonable modification in their ordinance — allowing pit bull service dogs — would open the floodgates for abuse. Ms. Alder wants to make sure the disability community's voice is heard in any conversation Denver is having with the Department of Justice on this subject.

Denver has a long history of dog discrimination. Their ill-conceived pit bull ban was passed in 1989 at the height of media hysteria against the breed. The Denver city council has clung to this inhumane legislation like a dog with a bone, despite how ineffective and expensive it's proven to be.

However, as Martin Matheny reported in July, the Department of Justice issued a new rule stating that cities cannot discriminate against breeds of service dogs without running afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So, given Justice's ruling, you would think that Denver's city council would hurry to comply with the federal government and help the disabled.

Think again: They are stonewalling the service dog exemption to their breed ban.

For three months, Anthony Barnett of Game Dog Guardian and his therapy dogs helped our wounded warriors by volunteering at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Topeka, Kansas. Anthony would faithfully bring his two registered therapy dogs, Liam and Leonidas, to comfort patients. The dogs were a hit. Staff even asked him to extend his visits and add other buildings on campus to their tour so more veterans could experience some canine companionship and compassion. All was going smoothly when Barnett was suddenly asked not to return by hospital administrative staff.

Why deprive our wounded warriors of therapy dogs? Canine profiling. Barnett's therapy dogs are American pit bull terriers, and when a media outlet called the administration for access to film a visit with the dogs, the administration panicked. Pit bulls at the hospital? Oh my.

However, pit bulls are dogs, not werewolves. Liam and Leonidas are obedience trained, have passed canine/handler team testing, and are both registered with the Delta Society. In fact one of the dogs, Leonidas — a victim of cruelty — is an amputee himself. Many of the veterans felt an especially strong connection to him. His ability to overcome his challenges helped our veterans rightly believe they could also heal.

The Marines want to more than double the number of bomb-sniffing dogs in their ranks in Afghanistan. Roadside bombs and other makeshift explosives continue to plague the troops, and high-powered canine noses are still one of the best tools for detecting danger and saving lives.

They're not looking just to increase the number of dogs on the ground, but also to provide their veteran four-legged troops some relief. It's been shown that military dogs suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, too. Just like the men and women in the military, stress takes its toll, and even those who aren't diagnosed with PTSD often come back after a tour of duty thinner and in need of some downtime.

As I write this, I'm listening to a keynote speech by Patricia Callahan from Canine Companions for Independence. Every service dog that's helping someone regain their independence is a hero. But this weekend, under the shadow of September 11, 2001, there is one service dog in particular whose name has been brought up throughout the weekend. Roselle was the guide dog working with Michael Hingson, who had an office on the 78th floor of the first tower in the Twin Towers — Ground Zero. When the tower was struck on September 11th, she led Michael to safety 15 minutes before the building started to collapse.

The story of Roselle and Michael embodies everything that service dogs are all about. They're a team — Roselle's job was to get Michael to safety, but he had a job, too. Michael says he knew he had to stay calm in the chaos so his dog could focus on what needed to be done. He also needed to trust her — that when she ran, it was time to run, knowing she would stop if their path was blocked or if she was getting ready to lead him down stairs. And she did.