Autism Service Dogs

While I recently posted about my speech in Sacramento, it's always good to get alternative perspectives from other people. Arielle and her husband were my hosts during the visit to U.C. Davis, and so I thought her comments on the presentation were noteworthy. I appreciated her kind words, and was also glad to hear that some things I'd mentioned over dinner made a positive impact on her personally.

On a side note, her blog entry also contains a photo of Glindy and I with the Buddy System hands-free reflective leash. Since the picture was taken with a flash, you can get a pretty good idea of how useful this leash could be in low-light situations.

This other photo shows Glindy wearing her chest strap cover from The Raspberry Field. As you can see, the cover makes her "service dog" markings visible from the front, which makes it easier for people to identify her as a service animal when she's sitting or lying down. I've found this to be important when store clerks are peering over their counters, or when waitresses peek under the table at restaurants. YMMV.

Tuesday night was the big night. Glindy and I took center stage at the U.C. Davis M.I.N.D. Institute to present two hours on autism service dogs. The evening went well, and I think the speech was well-received.

Our hosts from Sacramento Asperger Syndrome Information and Support were, I think, pretty impressed with Glindy. It often surprises people how well she behaves in restaurants and other public places, and how well she travels in cars and other conveyances. Overall, she made a good impression.

There were a couple of low points, though. Despite my efforts to desensitize her ahead of our speech by giving her a chance to sniff the strange dog, Glindy couldn't be dissuaded from barking and whining at a puppy-raiser's SDIT who was in attendance. She settled down with a bit of distance, as I knew she would, but it was still a bit embarrassing to have one's service dog making such a fuss in a public forum. As this has been an ongoing issue for us, I wasn't really surprised, but I was still a bit disappointed that the desensitization training I'd given her over the past year hadn't really made more of an impact.

Also, Glindy was a little less sedate and a little more attention-seeking than I might have liked during our two-hour presentation. Part of this was no doubt because it was the first time the two of us, as a team, had ever been in front of such a large audience. While I've done my share of public speaking before, this was something totally new for Glindy. Dogs consider direct eye contact as a challenge, and here we were in front of 50-plus people all looking directly at her. Considering that, I think she managed with considerable aplomb.

In addition—and this was probably my fault—I didn't put her into a down-stay or otherwise tell her what to do when we got started. That was largely because I wasn't sure what to do myself; I was still trying to decide whether to use the podium or wander the stage right up until showtime. In the end, I stood directly in front of the audience, which probably seemed a bit unnatural to Glindy.

She was pretty good throughout the entire two hours, but several times she miscued, thinking we were ready to walk off-stage before our time was up. My guess is that there were sounds from the audience that I didn't cue in on, but which she determined were "we're done here" signals. Or perhaps the shuffling of pages from my own speech acted as a false signal, since she's attuned to the sound of shuffling paper as the cue to end our therapy sessions. Aside from causing her a little confusion, though, this wasn't really a big deal.

Glindy also pawed at me increasingly as the talk went on, and several times during the last hour offered me her belly for scratching. Glindy isn't a submissive dog by nature—she's a status-seeking beta—so I'm pretty confident that this was intended as a calming signal for me rather than a submissive gesture to the audience.

The tactile support actually helped tremendously. Even though I felt confident and comfortable with being onstage, the stress of the constant sensory input from the lights, the echoing sounds in the room, and the constant interaction with the audience were definitely putting a strain on me. I think Glindy sensed that, and was doing her best to provide a relief valve for me. It worked, and the periodic belly-scratches enabled me to finish the entire two hours without needing to take a break.

I don't really know how other people perceived my interactions with Glindy, but overall I felt that we'd done a good job as a team, and that the speech itself presented a good model for how autism service dogs can help in a real-world setting. While we could have been a bit more polished, I think we did exceptionally well for our first speech together.

I hope that Glindy and I will be able to take our message to more such groups in the future. In the meantime, it looks like desensitization to other dogs is back on the training agenda.

Today I added a new PDF slide show to my handouts page. It provides an overview of autistic spectrum disorders, provides an introduction to the subject of autism service dogs, and points to some future goals for the ASD-SD community. I've licensed the presentation under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license in the hopes that this will encourage folks to incorporate the information into their own advocacy efforts.

If you find the slide show useful or interesting, I'd love to hear about it. Of course, if you have constructive suggestions for how to improve it, I'll welcome that too.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Sometimes the old aphorisms are true.

Even after posting my last entry about LDS Leather, I still decided to give them a try because I really wanted a couple of their service dog clip-on patches to go with my new Har-Vest. Boy, was it a big mistake to give LDS Leather another chance!

I placed an order for two patches on August 1st. When I processed the order online, I noticed that they were mistakenly charging me Oklahoma sales tax (I live in Nevada), and put in the order notes that they needed to manually correct this.

A day later, I received an invoice, still showing the wrong total, followed by an email saying (in part):

In order to fill your order, we must be provided the phone number associated with the credit card used for payment of the order. Your issuing bank suggested that we not fill the order until a proper phone number is provided.

This sounded fishy to me, since I have an unlisted number and don't provide it to anyone on a routine basis. This has never been an issue before with either my bank or reliable vendors, so I sent back the following response:

My issuing bank does not HAVE my telephone number; it's unlisted. I've been successfully performing such transactions without giving out my unlisted number for many, many years. The problem is more likely to be with your merchant account or payment processor.

If it is *your* company's policy that is preventing the transaction, that's a different conversation. However, if it truly *is* the bank, please provide me with the transaction number at issue, and I will raise the roof with them directly. This has never happened before, and I can absolutely guarantee that if it *is* my bank, it will never happen again after I speak with them.

I look forward to some further illumination on the issue from you.

As you can see, I was willing to assume that there was a legitimate problem processing the transaction, and was more than willing to help LDS Leather resolve them. I even let them know that, if they were trying to enforce some internal policy, that this wasn't the right way to go about it. However, they weren't done yanking my chain.

In response to my reasonable email, I get this back from "Karen" at LDS Leather:

I spoke with your issuing bank. We view your entering a phone number such as 999-999-9999 as intentionally providing inaccurate information to a merchant you wish to accept financial risk on your behalf. It is clear that you do not wish to provide either email or phone contact information. We do not wish to provide services under such circumstances. Both your issuing bank and our processing company vigorously support our level of security.

So, despite that fact that we're clearly communicating using a working email address, she states that I won't provide an email address. She's still going on about my unwillingness to provide a cagey and unresponsive vendor with a telephone number that I don't provide to anyone, and asserting that it's my bank that's raising the fuss instead of owning up to it herself. One should also note that she made a point of not providing me with the authorization number for the transaction that she claims was declined by my bank, which I'd specifically asked for; I thought that was highly suspicious under the circumstances.

So of course I immediately called my bank. I had them look up the transaction, which they said had already been approved for payment several days ago. So, not only had LDS Leather lied to me about there being a problem, they had already processed my payment and were now refusing to send me the patches I'd paid (and overpaid!) for unless I coughed up my unlisted telephone number.

I don't know what Karen could possibly have been thinking. Did she really believe I couldn't simply call my credit card company to find out the truth? This seems remarkably naive. What could she possibly gain by trying to mislead me about the source of the problem? I was mystified, and more than a little angry.

I wrote another email, setting out my expectations at this point.

*I* just spoke with my issuing bank. They tell me that they authorized a payment of $31.03 to you on August 2, with authorization number [redacted]. So, not only did you overcharge me by improperly collecting sales tax, you have told me something patently untrue: that a transaction has been declined when you have in fact already sent it through and received approval.

Because I'm a reasonable person, I will give you a choice:

- You may complete my purchase for $28.73, unless you are authorized to collect sales tax for the state of Nevada.

- You may cancel the purchase and refund my money in full.

However, unless we reach an immediate accommodation, I still reserve the right to contact both the Better Business Bureau and your state's Attorney General regarding deceptive business practices. Lying to customers--or potential customers--is never acceptable, and taking money for products you don't intend to deliver is surely actionable.

The fact that *you* don't like the working email address I've provided, or that you don't respect my right to an unlisted telephone number, is quite beside the point. You could have accepted or rejected the purchase based on that, rather than resorting to deceptive and possibly illegal tactics.

I await your response.

After sending the email, I did something I should have done in the first place: I cruised on over to the Oklahoma BBB to see what they had to say about LDS Leather Company. I should have done this before deciding to do business with them, as they clearly have an unsatisfactory record with the bureau at this point in time.

Regardless of what happens next, the whole situation has left a very bad taste in my mouth. This whole experience stands in sharp contrast to the positive experiences I've had with other SD equipment vendors such as SitStay, Har-Vest, and Raspberry Field. I'd definitely recommend these three responsive and responsible businesses over LDS Leather any day.

Sometimes being an advocate, whether for privacy or disability rights, means "taking one for the team." I certainly think I'm doing that now, and hope others can benefit from my experience.

Even though I haven't posted much lately, I've been keeping busy. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to engage in a little ADA advocacy, and I thought I'd share that here.

The trainer that I occasionally work with referred someone to me for advice about access problems with Amtrak. Apparently, this woman had a self-trained mobility-assistance dog, and had called Amtrak's customer service to ensure that there would be no problems with taking her dog on a previously-scheduled trip.

The customer service agent at Amtrak told this woman that she needed a doctor's letter, special identification for the dog, and training certifications. Naturally, this stymied the woman, and she wasn't sure what to do.

This didn't sound right to me, since both Title II and Title III of the ADA cover rail service. In addition, I'm fairly sure that Amtrak falls under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, since they receive federal funding. And while some states still require special certifications for guide dogs, that wouldn't apply in this case even if the federal laws didn't supersede such regulations.

I suggested that this woman had received bad information from the customer service agent, and that she should call back and insist on speaking with a supervisor to clear up the issue. I further suggested that she use the following language to avoid confusing the issue:

I spoke to a customer service agent earlier, and believe I was given some incorrect information regarding Amtrak's policies regarding travel with service animals. I want to ensure that there won't be any confusion at the station or problems boarding the train, and would appreciate your help in clarifying the issue.

I told her that if they insisted on documentation of some kind, that she should ask the supervisor to identify the source of that policy, since it clearly isn't required under federal law. When issues like this arise, it's usually best to gather as many facts as possible before deciding on a course of action.

I told her that, if they didn't resolve the issue to her satisfaction, I'd be happy to advocate for her in my capacity as a private citizen. I didn't think it would come to that, though, and I was right.

When she called Amtrak back, she had to insist rather firmly on speaking to a supervisor, but once she reached one the issue was dealt with easily. The supervisor told her that she had indeed received incorrect information, and that he would note on her ticket that she was traveling with a service dog so that there wouldn't be any further issues.

I just love happy endings, don't you?

I mentioned my Access Challenge Cheat Sheet in my last blog entry. I thought I'd say something about why I put it together.

I'm on a lot of mailing lists, and I'm frequently appalled at how many times folks on these lists are completely flummoxed by an access challenge of any kind, whether it's a legitimate routine inquiry or a case of blatant discrimination. Most people are not adept at self-advocacy, and end up disappointed when the system doesn't seem to work for them.

The system can work, but it requires effort on the part of those most affected. I've learned a few hard lessons in my life; one of the most important is that no one cares more about my problems than me. So, if I want a crusade against injustice, I need to lead the charge, not march at the rear; no one will fight my battles for me.

Being willing to fight for yourself is indispensable, but sometimes knowing how is just as important. So, for those willing to stand up for themselves, but who need a place to start, a bit of direction, or just a way to keep things on track when things get tense, I've provided an initial framework.

Everyone needs to decide for themselves how far they're willing to go to carve out a little justice in their lives, and no one can do it for another person. But then again, no one says we can't give one another a leg up whenever possible--and this is my attempt to do just that.