After News Reporters Showed Up, Restaurant Owner Checked Law on Service Dogs?

Restaurant owner refuses entry for PTSD vet’s service dog
Panama City News Herald
Wendy Victora
August 12, 2017

“I don’t know how to verify that they are in fact a service dog, or how that plays out in a restaurant that serves food. What are my rights?” Papa Joe’s Hideaway owner pat Dougherty 

FORT WALTON BEACH — A disabled veteran who took her service dog to an Okaloosa County restaurant last week left after the owner confronted her about bringing the dog inside.

Brittney Healy and her service dog Grunt, visit the grave of a friend who was killed in Iraq. Healy worked in a morgue in Iraq for a year when she was in her late teens. She has been medically retired with PTSD

Brittney Healy received her dog, Grunt, in 2012, shortly before she was medically discharged from the Army with post-traumatic stress disorder. Over the past five years, she has become very familiar with federal laws governing her service dog.

“For a service dog, they can only ask you two questions legally: Is your dog a service dog? What is he trained to do?” she said. “That’s how it should be. You don’t know what that person is going through.”

But Pat Dougherty, the owner of Papa Joe’s Hideaway, isn’t as familiar with that portion of the Americans with Disabilities Act. What the longtime business owner does know is that in the past two weeks, one service dog bit a customer in the face and another threw up in the restaurant.

After talking to the Daily News, Dougherty planned to call an 800 number to learn more about the laws governing service dogs. She said she isn’t “anti-military” and that her son-in-law is active duty. But she remained frustrated with the encounter and with the laws.read more here