Man with service dog allegedly booted from cable car
Last Saturday, a man riding a cable car in San Francisco with his service dog was asked to get off. When he refused, pointing out that his pit bull Rosie was a service animal and thus allowed to be aboard the cable car, SFPD were called in.
Attorney Gina Tomaselli, who is not representing the man, shot this Facebook video of the incident once the police officer arrived.
The SF Examiner has the story:
Tad Tadesse and his service dog Rosie, a pit bull, skyrocketed to local fame after a video purportedly showing a Muni supervisor and San Francisco Police Department officer trying to remove the pair from a cable car surfaced Sunday.
But Tadesse and Rosie have been ousted from Muni vehicles more than 20 times, the dog owner told the San Francisco Examiner on Monday.
Read the rest of the story on Examiner.com.
Image from video shot by Gina Tomaselli
A service dog is highly trained to perform a specific function for someone with a real disability. It is not an emotional support animal- which is a different classification. The whole take your dog everywhere and call it a service dog is WAY out of control. Good for MUNI.
The only questions the law says others may ask is the following. Is that a service dog? What service does it do? Period!! The second question is almost never asked. So again is that a service dog? Guide dogs, psychiatric service dogs, SSig DOG (sensory signal or social dogs, seizure response dogs. If the pitt bull barked or showed any aggression or behaved poorly then yes this guy needs to be asked off. I don’t see that at all in the video, and the driver never specified what made him afraid. He said he is afraid of pitt bulls. That’s wrong and illegal. No matter what you want to think about this case, legally if he meets the test set by the law that is it!! Let’s not judge this guy…
Absolutely agree! People feel entitled to bring their dogs everywhere! I love dogs but there has to be a limit…
In SF, a dog without a leash is in violation of the city’s Health Code, so he should have been removed and cited accordingly, regardless if the dog was a service animal, or not.
That is incorrect. The ADA does require the animal to be under control of the handler. This can occur by harness, leash, or thether,
But if the leash gets into the way of the handler or service animal while doing its job having it off leash is allowed only and as long as the animal is under the handlers control by other means like voice control. I had to be schooled myself long ago after I assumed like you the leash law as mandatory. Info http://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm
We may call professionally trained dog as a service dog because they are well trained enough to assist their handler having any disabilities such a visual impairment, hearing impairment, mental illnesses etc. But it does not mean that any one can take their dogs to any place along with them. Loving an animal is a good but it is very bad to brake any rules for the animal we love. As they are animals not human being, so, there are certain limits for them where they can go and where they can’t. Yes, in emergency we can take our service dog with us but for fashion or other purposes we should not. So, every people should keep all these in mind and try to follow some rules while taking an animal with them.