{"id":62426,"date":"2015-10-24T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=62426"},"modified":"2015-10-23T19:40:37","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T23:40:37","slug":"phony-service-dog-will-get-you-jail-time-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=62426","title":{"rendered":"Phony service dog will get you jail time in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to News 13<\/a>, Florida has made it a crime to identify your animal as a service animal when that’s not true;<\/p>\n

For guide dog owners like Richard Darrington, this new law could help discourage imposters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it will cause people who are on the fence to think before moving forward with the decision,\u201d Darrington explained.<\/p>\n

He said that\u2019s important because he is constantly asked whether his dog, Malcolm, is certified and trained.<\/p>\n

Darrington is legally blind and needs Malcolm, who was trained for two years to be a guide dog to help him get around.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m questioned all the time, \u2018Is this a real guide dog?\u2019\u201d Darrington said. \u201cI know part of that is because there are others out there that are masquerading and that hampers my ability to do what I need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the dog is found to be wearing false identifiers, and isn\u2019t properly trained then the owner will go to jail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The bill “Requires public accommodation to permit use of service animal by individual with disability; provides conditions for public accommodation to exclude or remove service animal; revises penalties for certain persons or entities who interfere with use of service animal; provides penalty for knowing & willful misrepresentation with respect to use or training of service animal.” <\/p>\n

The punishment really isn’t “jail time” as the article title suggests – it’s 30 hours of community service that has to be performed within six months – the same punishment for interfering with a person who requires a service dog. As the article states, the Americans with Disabilities Act makes it difficult to protect real service dog users and business owners from the phonies.<\/p>\n

Of course, the law has to be tested by the courts, and I know just the person to test it in Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to News 13, Florida has made it a crime to identify your animal as a … Phony service dog will get you jail time in Florida<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}