This blog has ended. My commentary has moved to Facebook, where you can find it at http://facebook.com/henry.kisor.

Our first interview

In the Chicago Tribune online edition Nov. 14, here's an interview:

On the promotion trail . . .

A brief 'mention in dispatches'

Traveling with Service Animals has snagged a nice little notice in Midwest Living magazine. It may not seem like much—it's not exactly a review—but this small item will catch a lot of eyes.

Midwest Living, one of the mighty Meredith Corporation's many regional magazines, has a circulation of more than 960,000, chiefly in heartland America's small towns and suburbs—dog people country.

Co-author Chris and I are heartened.

"A winner," Booklist says

Booklist, the American Library Association's review organ and one of the top four advance review media in the United States (the others are Library Journal, Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews), is making nice on Traveling with Service Animals in its upcoming Sept. 1 issue. Today we saw the uncorrected proof of the notice. It follows:

"The number of trained service animals (not including therapeutic and emotional-support anmals) has exploded in the U.S. and Canada, and many of these animals' handlers are avid travelers. But how does one approach a vacation with a service animal? In wonderfully practical language, Kisor and Goodier, both of whom use hearing dogs, walk the reader through all forms of travel with their partners. Mainly concerned with travel within North America, the book covers airline travel, long-distance trains, automobile and bus trips, cruises, and what documentation is required and/or advisable. Each chapter discusses the basis, such as how to ticket the service animal, choice of seats, when and how to toilet the animal, and concerns such as passing through TSA checkpoints, travel needs on cruise ships and trains, dealing with Uber and Lyft, and how to address the inevitable meetings with other animals. The final chapter on required and recommended paperwork is extremely thorough. Enlivened throughout with first-hand anecdotes of the authors and other service animal handlers, this long overdue handbook is a winner.—Nancy Bent"

Heartening.

Our first media review

Library Journal's verdict on Traveling with Service Animals: "A highly recommended resource for anyone who travels with a service animal, as well as for anyone who works in transportation, hospitality, or any business with public accommodations."

We won't post the link to it, because Library Journal is a subscription-only review publication for library professionals, and you wouldn't be able to see the entire review. (We can't, either, but when the full review appears, we'll see if we can post it.)

We're heartened.

Getting shut of encumbrances

We'll soon be moving into a two-bedroom apartment in a retirement village called Three Crowns Park in Evanston, Ill., and are having to downsize once again.

The new digs are a third smaller than our present condo, whose square footage was in turn smaller than that of our old three-bedroom house. So it's crunch time for excess furniture and stuff, most of which we'll give away to charities.

We got a head start last spring with my papers, accumulated over a 56-year career as a journalist and author. For weeks I rearranged the messy pile and then donated it (24 bankers' boxes) to the Newberry Library, which hosts a large collection of papers and memorabilia from the old Chicago Daily News.

Now the library has organized everything into neat boxes on shelves and has posted a guide to the material.

They say old journos are praised at the wake and forgotten after the grave. I hope my legacy, such as it is, might hang on a little longer.

We're Number One!

Quick, click on this link:

And scroll down a couple of pages.

The University of Illinois Press's fall 2019 catalog is out, and guess what book occupies the coveted No. 1 spot?

Traveling with Service Animals, of course.

Why?

Because dogs.

The actual subject matter may not sound crowd-pleasing in the extreme, but everybody loves dogs, and so we think it's a smart marketing move to lead off a roster of mostly very scholarly books with something that just might send turnstiles clicking in bookstores (if bookstores have turnstiles).

That golden retriever is irresistible, isn't it?

We have hope.

At last, the jacket

The hardcover dust jacket and paperback cover for Traveling with Service Animals is at last done. It's by Jennifer Fisher, one of the crackerjack design artists at the University of Illinois Press, and Chris and I think it's a handsome beast indeed.

Note that the golden retriever, perhaps the most popular dog in the United States, is looking directly at the camera, making eye contact with potential readers. Note that the colors of both dog and book title are the same, a clever bit of creative marketing.

The four international travel icons across the top are also a nice touch, and Jennifer is planning to tie them into the interior design.

Soon we'll see a few examples of that, and not long afterward the page proofs.

On August 15 the book will officially be published.

Service dog emojis are here

As a longtime word worker I haven’t been using emojis in my social-media communications, although some of this visual shorthand is often cute when it's not being trite. Smiley faces, for instance, have become so commonplace that many of us hardly notice them anymore.

Other kinds can be useful if one wants to issue a quick and unmistakable opinion on something. For many of us the turd emoji 💩would be the perfect reaction to last night’s State of the Union speech.

For those who like to use emojis, fresh new ones are needed. Yesterday the emoji people issued a whole new bunch, many dealing with disabilities and including several depicting service dogs.

Maybe I’ll use one of those now and then.

'Traveling with Service Animals' hits a milestone

Publishing a book with a university press has a gestation period almost as long as that of an elephant. It takes about a year from acceptance of a manuscript to issuance of a finished book. (Nine months is normal with a commercial publisher, less if it's a book on a hot topic.)

Five and a half months after it was accepted at the University of Illinois Press, Traveling with Service Animals—written with coauthor Chris Goodier—has reached the end of copyediting and has gone into the jacket and interior design stages. Recently the press shared with us the proposed jacket and catalog copy, and here it is:

"This book is one of a kind. Detailed, easy to read, and well researched."

--Toni Ann Eames, cofounder and president of the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners

"Traveling with Service Animals prepares those traveling with service animals to answer the call with confidence when far off horizons beckon. These well-traveled authors share their experiences, best practices, travel tips and in depth travel information to assure every journey with a Service Animal becomes a stress free, pleasurable experience. This book is a must to have to get there!"

--Sheila O’Brien, President of the North American Region of Assistance Dogs International (ADI)

“The boom in trained service animal use and access has transformed the lives of travelers with disabilities. As a result, tens of thousands of people in the United States and Canada enjoy travel options that were difficult or impossible just a few years ago.

“Henry Kisor and Christine Goodier provide a narrative guidebook full of essential information and salted with personal, hands-on stories of life on the road with service dogs and miniature horses. As the travel-savvy human companions of Trooper (Kisor's miniature schnauzer/poodle cross) and Raylene (Goodier's black Labrador), the authors share experiences from packing for your animal partner to widely varying legal protections to the animal-friendly rides at Disneyland. Chapters cover the specifics of air, rail, road, and cruise ship travel, while appendixes offer checklists, primers on import regulations and corporate policies, advice for emergencies, and a route-by-route guide to finding relief walks during North American train trips.

“Practical and long overdue, Traveling with Service Animals provides any human-animal partnership with a horizon-to-horizon handbook for exploring the world.

“Henry Kisor is a retired book review editor and literary columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. His books include What's That Pig Outdoors? A Memoir of Deafness and Zephyr: Tracking a Dream across America. Christine Goodier is a freelance travel writer.”

Those two jacket "blurbs" from two of the most prominent people in the service dog field are heartening to us.

Now we’re eagerly awaiting the cover design.

My 31st (I think) trip on the California Zephyr

Debby consults with attendant Michelle on the best places to pee Trooper.

I am just back from a fascinating week’s round trip on the California Zephyr from Chicago to Emeryville, Calif.

One purpose was to gather information for the upcoming 25th anniversary edition of Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America and also scout out the best stops to relieve a service dog for Traveling with Service Animals: By Air, Road, Rail and Ship Across North America, to be published next August by the University of Illinois Press.

Another purpose was just to have fun. I’m a rail buff, after all.

My takeaway: Not much has changed aboard the train since the 2015 edition of Zephyr. Crews are almost uniformly good. Diner cuisine—quick-frozen sous-vide dishes reheated in the galley—has actually improved, although as always some desirable entrees on the menu can be unavailable. Timekeeping has fallen behind, partly because of heavy freight traffic, partly because of awful weather, and partly because locomotives and cars are getting long in the tooth and sometimes unreliable.

I wrote “almost uniformly good” because, as always in a service industry, there can be exceptions. The one on this trip was an officious and unsmiling conductor who apparently did not like dogs. She appeared in the doorway of our bedroom and fixed a gimlet stare at my service dog Trooper. Such gazes can make dogs uncomfortable, and Trooper whined in protest.

Trooper in the lounge car.

“You cannot bring that dog to the dining car!” she said. “He’s grouchy. You’ll have to eat in your room.”

Then she added: “People don’t like dogs in the dining car.”

That last was a blatant violation of the rules of the Americans with Disabilities Act. One cannot deny a service dog access to a public venue just because someone might object to its presence.

I did not demur. Conductors can throw you off the train if they think you're being disruptive. “Okay,” I said. “You’re the boss.”

Afterward, my sleeper attendant—a dog lover to whom Trooper took an immediate shine—seemed appalled by the incident. “He’s just fine,” she said.

After the conductor left the train at the next crew change stop, the dining car crew warmly welcomed our presence at all meals and even treated us—me, Debby, and Trooper—as a party of three, giving him plenty of room under the table.

On the trip back, another conductor knocked on our door early in the morning. “We’ll be at Green River (Utah) several extra minutes,” she said. (We were actually running ahead of time.) “Would you like to take your dog off for a potty break there?”

We said no, but with thanks. We’d already peed Trooper at Salt Lake City not long before, and planned to take him off a couple of hours later at Grand Junction, Colo.

“That’s fine,” said the conductor with a bright smile, and she went on her way, leaving us feeling further gratified that Amtrak personnel were watching out for us.

Back in 2015, female engineers, conductors and on-board service crew already were old hat—but we noticed that on this round trip they seemed to make up at least half the Amtrakers we encountered aboard the train. Our national passenger railroad is nothing if not diverse.

Another big change since 2015 is the refurbished Denver Union Station, which has become the place to be for millennials who work downtown. The swooping canopy over the arrival and departure tracks is a sight to behold.

As for the best places to relieve a service dog enroute, we found the choicest were Galesburg, Ottumwa, Omaha, Fort Morgan, Denver, Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, Salt Lake City, Winnemucca, Reno and Sacramento—mostly crew change or smoke stops. We did not have to ask once for the train to stop and wait at a remote station while Trooper transacted his business.

A very late eastbound Zephyr meets an on-time westbound Zephyr.

Not all these places have grass, which young service dogs generally prefer for their toilette. Trooper, however, is now four years old and has learned that sometimes he has no choice. So long as a sturdy post is available for a target, he’s fine.

Both trains were very late. The westbound trip arrived in Emeryville 7 1/2 hours behind schedule, thanks largely to the plow on the lead locomotive being knocked out of alignment early in the trip. It took Amtrak several hours to work out what to do, and the decision was to cut the locomotive off and make the trip with just one unit to Denver, where we picked up a second engine for the pull over the Rockies and Sierras.

Oddly, the westbound Zephyr of the day before had suffered the same plow problem in almost the same spot, and was also late getting into Emeryville.

Our eastbound return went swimmingly until Denver, where we were late leaving because the locomotive computer had to be reset, causing us to run into freight traffic just outside town and stop for an hour. The oncoming polar vortex resulted in some slow running thereafter, and we were just a couple of hours late into Omaha.

Then—you guessed it—it happened again. Just east of Mendota the train stopped. The lead locomotive’s plow had been knocked out of alignment. (Things apparently do happen in threes.)

Almost two hours passed before the train, minus its original lead locomotive, started up again—and stopped scarcely half a mile later. A freight train in front of us, the conductor said, had struck a car that slid on the ice through a crossing, and there were injuries. Another two hours passed while the ambulance arrived and the authorities cleared the wreckage and allowed the railroad to open again.

Debby catches up on her needlepoint in the lounge car.

Meanwhile, the vicious polar vortex of January 2019 had shouldered its way south and by the time the Zephyr tied up at Chicago Union Station 4 1/2 hours late, the temperature outside had dropped to minus 5 degrees with a biting wind chill of 20 below. Late as we were, I was almost sorry to leave our snug sleeper room.

A splendidly warm Uber met us just outside the station and had us home in half an hour.

At my advanced age, I'm still doin' writeups for the news papers

This article appeared in the September 18 issue of the Ontonagon Herald, an Upper Michigan weekly with a circulation of about 2,000. The photo shows Trooper jumping up on me as Debby (behind the camera) calls my name.

Genuine service dog or not?

This morning I had the following message from a friend who runs a major musical venue:

"I have done much research and followed your postings about service dogs and feel that I have a good understanding of the laws and the need and importance that the dogs have in people's lives.  On the other hand, we have many people wanting to bring their dogs [into the venue], and in the back of my mind I am often skeptical when I see people with dogs, wondering if they are just sneaking them in.  

"There was a man at the venue with a large dog in a harness, and he was walking with him all over the grounds.  At times the man was drinking.  I had convinced myself he had probably snuck the dog in, but accepted that there was nothing I could do about it except to obey the law. It nagged at me every time he walked by.  On Friday I saw the dog lie down by a child, and I could see the man talking to the child and a parent and I thought they were petting the dog.   

" 'Service dog, my ass,' I was thinking again. Then, on Saturday evening when our headliner was on,  I saw the man walk by with the dog and a beer in hand. I leaned over to the security volunteer next to me and said to him sarcastically what I had been thinking all weekend: 'Yeah, that's a service dog. Sure it is.'  

"This I will never forget. The security volunteer looks at me and says, 'Diabetes. The dog is trained to detect low blood sugar. Did you hear what happened?'

"To which I said, no I had not. He went on: 'The guy was walking by a child and it performed its service dog task. [Presumably the dog smelled a chemical change in the child's breath and nudged with his nose.] The man asked the parents, "Does your child have diabetes?" To which they replied, "Yes.'" He told the parents, "Give him something. His sugar is low." Sure enough, it was.'

"Shame on me for my thoughts and snarky comment. This was a real eye-opener and one I will share with my staff when we have our next meeting. 

"That is exactly the reason we are only able to ask the permitted questions ["Is that a service dog?" and "What task does he do for you?"] and not make our own judgments.  I was ashamed of my negative thinking and will never do it again. Big lesson learned.”

Yup. It's nearly impossible to tell a genuine service dog from a fake, especially on first sight. Some disabilities are invisible. Best thing to do is just go along and assume the dog is kosher.

Pub date set

We have a publication date for Traveling with Service Animals!

It will be August 15, 2019, exactly one year from now, says our acquiring editor at the University of Illinois Press. Just in time for the holiday travel season.

At a university press, the production schedule is more leisurely than it is at commercial publishers, who bring books out in eight or nine months—or even less, for hot topical books such as Omarosa's. University presses are exceptionally painstaking, and they want to make sure they get things right.

But the gestation period for a university press book is not quite as long as it is for an elephant. That's 22 months.

Woof.

Final title, we think

It started as Places We Have Peed: Navigating Service Dogs Across North America.

Too clever by half, said the folks at the University of Illinois Press. The keywords in a book title needs to be searchable, and "Peed" would attract mostly people with urinary problems. Be literal, not ironic. This is not a literary novel but a travel guide.

So we tried Journeys with Service Dogs: Navigating Assistance Animals Across North America.

"Journeys" sounds like an episodic narrative, not a travel guide, said the committee with the final OK for a proposed manuscript. What about "Traveling"? That would work.

And how about "Support Animals"? said the sales department. That would broaden the audience.

Absolutely not, Chris (my co-author) and I said. Our book carefully separates genuine trained service dogs (and miniature horses) from emotional support and therapy animals. The presence of emotional support dogs, often fraudulently represented as real service animals, has been a thorn in the side of the service dog industry. We do not want to encourage the fakes to travel, we said.

Okay, said the press. How about Traveling with Service Animals: By Air, Road, Rail and Ship Across North America?  That subtitle, they said, works better and is snappier than "Navigating . . ."

All right, we said. Let's go with it.

Now that the book has gone into production at the press, we think that'll be the final title.

Moving target

A few weeks ago Chris Goodier and I submitted what we hoped would be the final manuscript of JOURNEYS WITH WORKING DOGS to the University of Illinois Press. We had hoped there wouldn't be any more work to do on it before the copy editors had their way with it.

Sadly, we'll have to alter a small passage in the book because this week Delta Airlines "upgraded" its service dog policy—and the other airlines tend to follow in lockstep. No "pit bull like" dogs allowed, Delta has declared, even as trained service dogs.

Of course the service dog industry is up in arms about this edict, because pit bulls—and dogs that look like them—have made excellent service dogs, and banning an entire breed and type is, the industry says, unfair and unrealistic.

Many service dogs are rescue animals—and pit bulls are the most common dogs to be found in shelters. There are a great many pitties and pittie-types working already for people with disabilities, especially those who must deal with PTSD.

What's more, the U.S. Department of Transportation is presently working on revamping the Air Carrier Access Act with considerable input from the service dog industry and may issue new rules at the end of the summer. One strong possibility is making the ACAA service dog rules identical with those of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which forbids breed discrimination.

Chris and I do not take sides in the book about the breed issue (although I personally love pitties, having had Hogan, a half-Lab, half-pit bull, who was a fine pet and companion).

But we have to wait until the entire drama plays out before we can fix that passage in the book. Our "final final final" deadline isn't until October 1, so we have time.

Writing a travel book is a sweaty exercise of keeping one's eye on a moving target.

I've been busy

It has been a while—a long while—since I posted to this blog. For good reasons:

1. Putting the finishing touches on JOURNEYS WITH WORKING DOGS; NEGOTIATING SERVICE ANIMALS ACROSS NORTH AMERICA. There was a lot to do once the basic manuscript was done—gathering interview and photo releases from all the service dog partners Chris Goodier and I interviewed for our book, making sure copyrights were clear, and the like. We’re on track for the University of Illinois Press to publish the book next spring.

2. Getting the macular degeneration in my right eye stabilized. I found a wizard retina specialist who knew exactly what to do, and his treatments seem to have not only slowed the spread of the condition but also might just possibly have halted it. Too early to tell, but I have high hopes. My vision in that eye, corrected with glasses, is still 20/20.

What’s more, his eyeball injection technique is the least painful of all the retina specialists I’ve been to. Postinjection irritation is the least, too.

Nobody, however, seems to like the joke I concocted out of the experience. Those shots in the eyeball are of Avastin, a drug originally formulated to treat rectal cancer. Every time I have a shot, I say, everybody looks like an asshole. Nobody laughs. I don’t know why. I think it’s brilliant.

3. Having some major reconstruction of my lower spine. On May 3 a veteran spinal surgeon agreed with me that even though I was not yet in agonizing pain, I was getting there, and at 77 was still healthy enough to recover well from surgery. If I waited until the pain was unbearable at age 84 or 85, I might be too old to have the surgery. And so in a nine-hour operation on May 3 the surgeon fused together vertebrae L2, L3, L4, L5 and S1 (the sacrum). I’m now recovering well with outpatient physical therapy and although I’ll never be able to touch my toes again, I can look forward to a decade (maybe more) without a great deal of lower back pain. The trick will be to keep my trunk and upper back strong and limber so that the disk at L1-L2 stays healthy.

Soon I hope the surgeon will release me to drive again so we can head north to Ontonagon for the rest of the summer. (June 22: He did! And now I have to practice for the written and road DMV tests.)

That damn paperwork

Trooper and partner at Cabo San Lucas, where they knew his name.

Preparing to cruise with a service dog in the Caribbean and off Central America can be a right pain in the ass.

You have to obtain, and carry, a thick pile of documentation attesting to the state of your dog’s health. Different countries require different certificates, different tests and different immunizations, and that makes the paperwork infinitely more complex. Some require import permits. Mexico requires not only that everything be computer-printed, not filled in by hand, and that everything be spelled out on the documentation—no abbreviations—and will reject those that say the animal is “3 yrs. 4 mos. old.” 

This is partly because in the Western Hemisphere, only the United States and Canada recognize special legal privileges for service dogs. All other countries treat them as ordinary pets and therefore prime targets for bureaucratic minutiae.

And so for our recent cruise with Trooper through the Panama Canal, we had to go to our veterinarian to get various health certificates filled out for the Bahamas (which also required a pet import permit), Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico, where we were going ashore. (We decided not to go ashore at the Nicaraguan and Guatemalan ports, because we’d been there before and wanted to lighten the documentation load a little, so we didn’t get papers for those countries.) Then we had to drive  to the local U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office to get some—not all—of the documents countersigned by a government veterinarian.

The rub: On previous cruises with Trooper, nobody wanted to see his papers—except the cruise line, of course. But you never know what’s going to happen.

Came embarkation day at Fort Lauderdale. When we stepped through the metal detector at the cruise terminal, a uniformed guard called us over and asked to see Trooper’s papers. At his desk he riffled through them until he came to the import permit for the Bahamas—and put his finger on the official Bahamas animal and plant department stamp.

“That’s what I was looking for,” he said.

Even if you don’t plan to take the dog off the ship while it’s docked or anchored in the Bahamas, you must have an import permit if the dog enters Bahamian waters. The ship won’t allow you aboard without one. If you haven't done your due diligence, your vacation could be ruined.

On this voyage we had to present Trooper for examination three times. The first, which we hadn’t expected, was at Cartagena, Colombia, where two officials—one from the government and one from an import-export company—came aboard when the ship docked. They examined Trooper’s papers and politely ruffled through his ears and fur to make sure no parasites jumped out. 

The exam was decidedly perfunctory and the fee was US$25. Colombian laws say an incoming animal has to be officially received by a government-approved import-export company. The $25 went to the representative of the latter, who simply glanced at Trooper and gravely handed us a receipt for the fee.

The ship’s port paper officer assured us that the procedure was standard at Cartagena and the fee was not a shakedown.

The night before we arrived in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, the port officials there said they wanted to examine Trooper. A few hours later they said they didn’t. We went ashore without incident.

The next episode was at Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. The night before our ship called there, the port paper officer told us that the Guatemalans had asked for Trooper to be present for inspection even though we had no health documentation for that country for him and planned to stay on the ship instead of going ashore. That made us a little nervous. Should we have obtained paperwork for Trooper specifically for that country? What would happen?

A pleasant surprise, that’s what. Two amiable officials from the Guatemalan Ministry of Agriculture sat down with us in a ship’s lounge, cooed at Trooper, warmly ruffled his ears, remarked approvingly about his calm demeanor, and examined all the documentation we had brought for other countries. Satisfied that he had had all his required immunizations, the officials invited us to bring him ashore and issued us a permit to do so. And so we did. 

Next was Puerto Chiapas, our first port call (of two) in Mexico. “We never know what’s going to happen there,” said the port paper officer. “Sometimes they want to see the dog, sometimes not.”

This time they wanted to. A dour agricultural officer came aboard, took a quick peek into one of Trooper’s ears, and OKd his presence ashore. No baksheesh involved, however.

Two sailing days up the coast, we arrived at Cabo San Lucas on the tip of Baja California. We were not told that an official wanted to meet us ashore. We figured the approval at Puerto Chiapas would be good for the rest of Mexico.

When Debby and I tendered ashore with Trooper at Cabo, a customs agent stopped us at the pier and said, “Papers for the dog, por favor.”  I started to fish them out of a shirt pocket.

“Is that Trooper?” called another agent, from a nearby desk.

“Yes,” Debby said, astonished. How could they . . . ?

“Let him in,” the second agent quickly told the first. “He’s OK.”

Later we speculated that the Cabo authorities had studied the documents—which carried not only Trooper’s breed mix but also his name—that had been faxed to them by the port paper officer the day before. Presumably the Puerto Chiapas people had added their OK to the pile. At any rate, somebody on shore decided that Trooper was good to go. 

Whew. Cruising to Alaska and Canada with a service dog is easier. All you need is a rabies  certificate and (just for the ship) a veterinarian-issued international health certificate that doesn’t have to be endorsed by a government vet.  A lot easier.

Refused entry

Yesterday Trooper and I were refused entry to a north suburban park district gym facility where we had gone to watch my grandson play age group baskeball.

 "No dogs," said the park district cop. We tried to explain the Americans with Disabilities service dog laws to him, but he was adamant.

 So we went home and I immediately composed and sent the following letter to the park district boss and commissioners:

 "Sirs:

 "At 2:20 p.m. today, February 24, I was refused entry with my service dog at the [redacted] Center, where I had gone to watch my grandson play basketball in the park district’s local age-group league.

 "I am totally deaf and use a trained hearing service dog. He wears a bright orange vest with the patches of his trainer, Dogs for Better Lives in Central Point, Oregon. The patches declare his status as a 'Certified Hearing Dog.' His vest also carries a patch from the State of Michigan Division of Civil Rights attesting to his status as a registered service dog in that state.

 "A park patrol officer who gave his name as [redacted] refused us entry, saying that 'children might be allergic to dogs.'

"My wife and I explained that the Americans with Disabilities Act gave service dog teams full access to all public venues, but Officer [redacted] would not accept that statement. He cited a 'No Pets' sign on the front door of the [redacted] Center (attached) as justification for his act. We told him, to no avail, that a working service dog is legally not a pet.

"We asked to speak to an administrator in charge, and Officer [redacted] said he was in charge of the facility for the day.

 "I felt embarrassed and humiliated by Officer [redacted]'s actions. In my two years as a service dog handler, I have never been refused entry to a public venue.

"Witnessing the event was [redacted], a staff member at [redacted] Center, and Conan Kisor, my son.

"Just half an hour before, we had watched my granddaughter play basketball in a Park District league at [redacted] Recreation Center, where my dog and I were accepted and welcomed.

"Inasmuch as I believe education when possible is preferable to litigation, I am asking you to review the Americans with Disabilities Act regulations concerning service animals and to inform Officer [redacted] as well as all Park District staff of their legal obligations toward people with disabilities who use service animals.

"A useful source of information is https://www.ada.gov/regs2010/service_animal_qa.html

"I look forward to your speedy response."

 And it indeed was speedy. Within half an hour one of the park district commissioners personally arrived on our doorstep with an apology and the explanation that the reason for our refusal was honest ignorance.

Shortly later the following email arrived from the executive director of the park district:

 "I first want to personally apologize for [your] being refused entry to the [redacted] Center. We never want our customers to be embarrassed when coming to one of our facilities. I have talked to all of the supervisors that schedule employees at our facilities and have notified them of American Disabilities Act regarding service animals. They are now aware that service animals will be allowed in all Park District facilities. What happened today is not consistent with our standards and policies and your experience was clearly not what we would have wanted for you. Again, I’m sorry this happened, if there’s anything else I can help address, please do let me know."

And there, so far as I am concerned, the matter ends.

I have redacted the names because the park district's response was so swift, civil and satisfactory there is no point in public shaming.

 Now Trooper and I are looking forward to visiting the same facility next week to watch that basketball game.