A dog - not a support dog, but an untrained pet - made it all the way to the sanctuary this morning, with lame excuses. A few weeks ago a lamb was snuck in. Well, there are worse things that can happen to a church, but the lack of consideration is annoying. I was speaking about the matter with our Director of Christian Education* and suggested that such issues are going to become increasingly difficult, as unofficial support animals are becoming more common. Businesses can, and often should, restrict animals to official trained service animals. But churches? Hmm...
What is the most unusual "service" animal you have encountered in person, and which is the most unusual you have heard of. For me, that would be a ferret and a llama.
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Added to the mix is the category of Psychiatric service dogs with specific training (actions to ameliorate anxiety, distract from PTSD, alert to need for medication, etc.)
Just as with seizure alert dogs, when the human of the pair has no visibly discernible disability, the distinction between a Psychiatric service dog and an emotional support animal may not be obvious to greeters and onlookers. And people are very sensitive to perceiving disparate treatment against them, so admitting true service dogs while not allowing other animals can lead to bad feelings.
Our event training ADA consultants (not a church) say that we can ask "is this a service animal"; that we should not ask "what task is it trained to perform", and under no circumstances should we ask for any documentation of such training or anything about the disability that is aided by the animal. We are pretty much told that unless there's a practical difficulty (such as an animal that's just too large to accommodate or that demonstrates it is not house-trained) we're to let everything in where anyone answers "yes" to the "is this a service animal" question, in order to legally protect ourselves.
(This is a cause of great offense to the few long-tenured volunteer ushers who are dog-training professionals, as they're now regularly forced to meekly let in dogs that are very implausibly claimed to be service animals.)
I'll note that churches have broad exemption from the ADA -- but likely wish to minimize barriers to participation as much as they can practically do so.
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