I contacted San Francisco Animal
Control today regarding service dog tags for Glindy as required for
SDITs under
California Civil Code Sections 54.1(c) and 54.2(b). The person
manning the phones tried to insist that they only issued tags to
permanent residents, which is something clearly not spelled out in
the California Civil Code. Also, he tried to tell me that they
wanted a doctor's note before they would issue a tag in any case,
which again is something not required by either state or federal
law.
I pointed these things out to him, and he promised to have a
supervisor or director call me back to discuss the matter further.
The weird thing about all this is that the California tag
requirement is only required for SDITs, so the whole issue could be
avoided by graduating Glindy to full service dog status.
Personally, I prefer keeping Glindy in SDIT status for the simple
reason that people tend to be more forgiving of minor
transgressions when they see the "In Training" patch. Also, they
are less inquisitive about my own disabilities, because they assume
I'm a non-disabled trainer, rather than a disabled handler.
Still, it reopens the whole issue of where the dividing line is
between SD and SDIT. Personally, I'm confident that Glindy meets
the legal definition of a full-blown SD at this point, but would
like her to have more demonstrable tasks--and whine a little less
when she's excited--before I take off those training patches.
In fact, I'm not convinced that the presence or absence of those
training patches are conclusive evidence either way. Vests and
patches are not required by law, so I think a legal case could be
made that the wording is neither binding nor relevant to rights
enforcement. It's also worth noting that a fully-trained service
dog doesn't suddenly become untrained because its patches say "in
training," nor does an untrained dog become a service animal just
because it lacks a training patch.
At any rate, I'm going to try to get the California tags anyway, as
a matter of convenience in allowing me to claim Glindy as an SDIT
instead of a SD. But if that doesn't happen, it really changes
nothing except the need to be more assertive in the event that I
ever need police enforcement under California state law.