So, I work in the field of property management. The company I work for has sixteen mobile home parks. Roughly four hundred homes. We allow pets in the pre-owned, older homes. We don’t allow pets in the brand new homes that we’ve just purchased for $48,000 and spent another ten grand trucking in and setting up. If you’re paying cash, financing through a bank or whatever for the full purchase price of the home up front you can have pets in any home.
Because of insurance issues, since the company owns the land the homes are on, we do have size and breed restrictions on dogs and all animals have to be up to date on rabies vaccinations, etc. They have to be walked on leashes, and cleaned up after. We don’t allow outdoor kennels or tethers because dogs will sit out there barking all day and annoying the living daylights out of the neighbors. The homes are not an acre apart.
So, what’s been happening A LOT lately is that someone will move into a new home and within a month or two what do we see? A dog. Outside. Unattended. Usually a Rottie or something equally as big (way bigger than the size restriction we have). Or we’ll hear barking inside the house when we walk by. So we call or send a letter saying they are not allowed to have animals in the house. And what do they come back and say?
“It’s a service dog! You can’t discriminate!”
They JUST moved in. Their application says they have NO ANIMALS. We’re only allowed to ask certain questions about service animals, like, “What tasks is the animal trained to do that helps you with your disability?” We’re not asking about the nature of the disability, just what tasks the animal is trained to do. Because SERVICE ANIMALS are TRAINED. And there IS NO REGISTRY. If you’re going online to one of those websites and “registering” your dog for free or for a one-time fee and buying “registration certificates” for the dog IT IS NOT LEGIT. We have NO PROBLEMS with ACTUAL service animals.
When they can’t answer the task training question they change to, “It’s an emotional support animal”, which is something entirely different. Those are animals that are not necessarily trained to DO anything, but a mental health professional has “prescribed” the dog. How does it work when you go to your GP with a symptom? You see the doctor, the doctor makes a diagnosis and then you FILL the prescription. Only these folks want to bring in a dog, then claim that they have a medical need for the dog and scramble online to find some generic letter they can cut and paste and give us. Meanwhile the hundred pound dog hasn’t had rabies shots yet, has zero training, isn’t housebroken and is tearing up the house and terrorizing neighbors.
STOP IT.
Every idiot who does this makes it THAT MUCH HARDER for someone with a legitimate physical or emotional disability to bring a pet into a home where they need to get some leniency from a landlord. I saw this on One Man’s Junk just a couple of weeks ago – a guy was looking to re-home his hundred pound Rottweiler because the landlord had discovered he had a dog in a No Pet apartment building. I couldn’t believe the number of people who posted that he should just go online and get the dog “registered” and then screw the landlord, they couldn’t do anything!
I just had eviction court this week for TWO people who were doing this. And guess what? They’re looking for new homes now. Yes, during the “pandemic”.
I’m getting a new sign for my door that says DEPARTMENT OF GET OUT.
Tracy Petry 