employees-abuse-disabled-veteran-and-his-service-dog

[smkie]

Please view this video and help it go viral. There is no excuse for this kind of treatment to a Veteran and his dog, to ANYONE. THe employees involved should be kicked and insulted themselves.
http://www.lifewithdogs.tv/2012/07/airlines-employees-abuse-disabled-veteran-and-his-service-dog/

 

[smkie]

So no thoughts or opinions? I was outraged by his treatment and the treatment of his dog. Not that I would get the opportunity to fly anywhere, but if I did, I would have a personal ban on this airline because of this. I hope he gets some kind of apology by the airline. I know his story was long getting out, but he sure has a right to tell it. I can understand his need to not be too outwardly angry, I can not handle conflict at this time in my life either, and let a lot slide because the cost to my health would be too great, anger just eats you up. He and his service dog are in my prayers. Anyone kicked one of my dogs, I don't know if I could have handled it as he did, I might have sent them flying.

I truly get his not being able to read under stress. WHen Hyia was missing in the woods for 8 hours with another girl, I got to the point where I couldn't give a phone number, or string 2 thoughts together. Everything had shut down. I couldn't even cry, that came after they were found. How heartless of the employees that treated him this way.

 

[AdrianneIsabel]

I just saw this on FB, I was furious.

 

[release the hounds]

i would be outraged or furious if i trusted the source. as it stands, i know nothing of the situation other than somebody claimed some people did this too him.

my experience tells me that although employees can be rude it's more rare that they get to the point of calling people morons and get get out right insulting. My experience tells me, some people go out of their way to draw attention to themselves and can make up quite the stories. But let's just say it happened.

It would then be increasingly rare that an employee would start kicking a dog so hard it lifts it off the ground and makes a service dog cower in the corner for a day.

Then couple that with the fact that these two things supposedly happened to the same guy, by employees from the same company and he sat there for two days???

Maybe it did happen, i'm guessing if it did, the little article referenced is leaving out an heck of a lot of details, so no, i'm not going to get outraged.

 

[Kaydee]

Unfortunately people with service dogs don't get the respect they deserve sometimes. There's a book called "Until Tuesday" about a vet who has a dog for PTSD. The dog had the vest and paperwork and bus drivers etc would still argue with him like hey you're not blind and that dog can't ride on this bus...ridiculous, there should be an official badge or card someone can flash and the owner doesn't get hassled.

 

[smkie]

I saw this through the Canines for Service org on Facebook. He didn't sound like he was making it up to me, in fact I thought he was pretty darn fair about who did help vs who didn't. I believed his story because of the way he told it. I might be wrong, but it sure seemed genuine.

 

[lizzybeth727]

I'm more outraged that the man had to sit in the airport for two days because the airline kept screwing things up.

Honestly, it sounds to me like he had a really crappy experience with an airline, and he's using his dog to get the story out there.

Because, really the only time the dog comes into the picture is when he says that the dog was kicked twice. I've been training service dogs for five years now, and have had MANY long conversations with service dog owners about their experiences with their dogs, and I can't remember one time when an employee of ANY public place maliciously kicked a service dog. There are dozens of examples of when an employee accidently kicked the dog, tripped over him or whatever; I've experienced several myself. IME, this is more likely what happened.

He does say about the second kick, “(He) kicked her so hard on the rib cage, that she flew into my lap… He said he was afraid of dogs.” Now, this is a large dog. From the pictures on the man's website, she looks to be at least 60 pounds. IMO, it's highly unlikely that any person would have the strength to KICK a 60 pound dog flying, much less several feet into the air onto a person's lap. It is much more likely that the employee tripped or maybe even nudged the dog, scaring the dog and making her jump into the man's lap.

The man's credibility is lessened more when you consider that he just founded his own service dog training organization less than 2 years ago and I'm sure is working really hard on marketing and such. I know firsthand how hard it is to fundraise for a service dog training organization, especially in the first few years before you have a lot of working dogs out there.

So my opinion? He had a really bad airline experience. He would've had almost just as bad an experience if his dog hadn't been there. He perceives that his dog was mistreated, and since he's so focused on marketing and publicity, he decides to talk to the press about his experience.

IMO, it would've been much better if he had talked about how his dog helped him while he was in such a stressful situation, since that's supposedly what she's trained to do.