As a hearing impaired person, I have long dealt with discrimination - all my news sources must come from the printed word, whether it's an article or a summary of a video or closed captioning. People think I'm either ignoring them or mad at them or rude because I don't always respond to their verbal cues.
And then, I have an uncommon service dog.
I'm used to being challenged almost all the time when Itzl and I go somewhere. They challenge because they don't believe I'm hearing impaired. Some have even told me I should be ashamed, taking advantage of deaf people the way I do when I'm simply hard of hearing. They challenge because Itzl is small and not the "accepted" breed for a service animal.
Dealing with vets has taught me a whole new level of discrimination. This is one I can take personal control over and protect Itzl from, but it's become almost so annoying that I want to do something larger and more permanent about it.
Yep - vets discriminate against small dogs because they assume automatically that all small dogs bite and are badly behaved and I've seen more small dogs hit by vet techs than any other size of dog.
I am pro-active with Itzl at the vet's and most of them have listened to me, so we've not usually experienced vet discrimination.
But this time around, when I was staying around the clock with Itzl at the clinic, I saw a lot of discrimination towards small dogs. I saw them grabbed from the owners, I saw them muzzled as a matter of course, I saw them flung around like toys, and I saw far more small dogs hit by vet techs - hit with flat papers, hit with rolled papers, flat handed, smacked, swatted.
This was all because they had it in their heads that small dogs are badly behaved dogs. That small dogs have to be "handled". They'll wait for big dogs. They'll tell big dogs what to do and wait for them to obey. But small dogs, they just grab and manhandle into doing what they want.
One vet tech tried that with Itzl, and I turned away from her, putting myself between her and Itzl, and saying, "He takes commands well, but not being roughly handled."
Then I set him on the scale myself and told him to sit. He did (of course), and the tech was surprised. She said small dogs generally jumped off the scales and needed to be swatted to make them stay in place. I asked her if she'd ever bothered to treat a small dog the same way she did a big dog, that I'd seen her coax a big dog onto the scales and praised the big dogs, but that she just grabbed small dogs and plunked them on the scales. It's no wonder the small dogs all struggled and tried to leap off the scales with that sort of treatment.
Then, when we met the therapist, she asked if I had a muzzle for Itzl because she didn't want to get bitten during his therapy. I told her that he was well trained and didn't need a muzzle. There were some rules she had to obey in dealing with him as he was a trained service dog - she couldn't pick him up off the ground and she couldn't take him from me unless I gave him a release command. I told her he'd obey a "sit" , a "hold", and a "stop" command from anyone. ("hold" means he freezes in the position he's in, "stop" means he puts all feet on the ground and waits). I also told her he will alert on sounds and will try to get to me if he hears something he feels he needs to alert on.
When he was done with his therapy, she said she was surprised at how easy he was to work with and how well he responded to things. But she's still convinced that all small dogs are difficult to work with.
And as I was leaving, I saw a vet tech swat a small dog that was panicking when it was grabbed off a slick exam table.
This discrimination against small dogs has got to stop.