Winston-Salem, NC (WFMY)
wltx.com
James Gilbert
10/26/2009
Tim Hull says he's suffered from quiet
seizures for years, until now. And he thinks it is all due to
Bella the ferret.
The ferret, he says, isn't his pet. It's his service
animal.
"'It's a ferret, it's an animal. It's a pet, it's a
rat.' That's basically the first thing I feel that people think when
they come across her. They look at her, and she's in a buggy, they
think 'Well, that's just a pet and they are spending money on that pet'," said
Tim Hull when he described the usual reaction to his service animal.
Hull insists the calm that Bella brings him prevents
his seizures. He and his wife also says Bella can detect when
a seizure is coming.
"She senses his seizures, his sugars, and calms him
down to where he doesn't have it," says Leann Hull, Tim's wife.
Leann Hull says when a seizure episode does happen,
Bella alerts her, "She'll start making a sound like, 'cuh, cuh.'" Leann
says Tim's seizures are
silent, and without Bella, she wouldn't know
if he was in trouble.
But none of that mattered when the couple went to the
mall recently. Tim and Leann said Hanes Mall management asked them to
leave when they couldn't produce proof that Bella was a service animal.
Hanes mall declined to comment, but says it has rules
about bringing animals onto mall property. Service animals are
allowed.
The Hulls say it was a violation of their rights when
mall workers asked for papers proving Bella's abilities.
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act a
service animal is a dog or other animal individually trained to do work
or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability. According
to the ADA, a person with a disability is not required to carry registration
or proof that his/her animal is a service animal.
Last year the U.S. Department of Justicetried
to define exactly what is and isn't a service animal.
The new revisions would exclude snakes, reptiles, rabbits,
farm animals, amphibians, rodents, wild animals including monkeys, and
ferrets. The Obama administration
delayed the implementation of the rule until the new civil rights team
was on board. The revised ADA regulations are expected by
the end of the year. |
