Happy Birthdays!
Happy Birthday to my wonderful grandmother! And also my dear friend, Erica! Hope that you both have an extraordinarily lovely day!
Department of Justice Proposes Vast Changes in ADA
Recently, the DOJ proposed some rather alarming revisions to Titles II and III of the Americans With Disabilities Act. These changes include:
- A new definition for service animals;
- A significant weakening of the readily achievable barrier removal requirement for public accommodations;
- A significant reduction of elements required to be accessible in state and local government facilities;
- An exemption for all existing facilities from the new recreation and playground rules;
- And many others!
IAADP as an organization has already made an official comment regarding the new service animal definition, emphasizing that the following changes be made:
- Eliminate the phrase “providing minimal protection” from the definition of service animal;
- Eliminate the phrase “do work” from the definition because it is redundant and the example of work given in the NPRM, grounding, undermines the Department’s goal of maintaining a clear distinction between specially trained service animals and those animals whose mere presence can provide emotional support, companionship or therapeutic benefits.
- Limit the use of other species only to animals which can be trained to meet the same standards for behavior and training that assistance dogs must meet to qualify for public access.
- Avoid placing a size or weight limit on common domestic animals such as assistance dogs.
Further information from IAADP can be found here.
These changes in the ADA, especially the service animal definition, heavily impact the disabled community and I urge everyone to please take the time to add your comments to IAADP’s official comments and/or add to the draft comments from Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF).
Please understand that even though these organizations (and others like them) have made comments that is imperative that DOJ receive your individual comments. We want to flood them with comments and we need the individual’s voice just as much as any large, faceless organization.
Tonks!
After much debate, I finally settled on a name for the adorable bundle of kitten I’m adopting: Tonks. Sandy informs me that not only is she eating quite well, but that she’s more than willing to eat dry food. Rather amazing for such a young cat! (Let us hope Yara will take a page from her book.) She assures me that Tonks will be more than ready to join our happy home by the potential arrival date of August 23. I’m beside myself with excitement.
Of Guide Dogs and Kittens
Sandy emails that the kitten is doing well, she’s already using litter and when introduced to food last week for the first time was the only among the three to eat. I replied to say that perhaps the little ragdoll can teach my GSD companion a thing or two.
Though, I must admit Miss Yara is doing so much better about eating. She’s pretty consistently eaten most, if not all, of her meals for the last week. I can’t really tell if she’s gaining any weight but let me assure you that she is pooping mountains!1 She is definitely in much better spirits of late, too.
On a somewhat related note, I was speaking with Patty the other day regarding some telling things about Yara. Specifically I was noting that I can always tell, based on her actions, how much she has eaten from a given meal. If she’s decided to completely ignore her food, she’ll camp out in the kitchen; usually right next to her food dishes, but sometimes she’ll curl up in a corner instead. If she’s been a good girl and eaten some of her food, but not all, she’ll come out of the kitchen and roll around on her bed or rub her face on the hall rug. But now if she’s been an exceptional little dog and cleaned out her bowl, she will hunt through the entire apartment to find me so that she can use any exposed surface of my body as her napkin!
Sometimes she’s really too cute to be real.
1. Seriously. I have several coworkers who can back me up on this.
WordPress 2.6
Just finished upgrading Gentle Wit to version 2.6. Looks like everything went smoothly, but as always let me know if you see anything funky going on.