In July, Maine's new service dog laws took effect. The major thing those with service dogs must know is that in order to get your dog license fee WAIVER, you must fill out with your doctor (or other qualified professional) the Service Dog Verification Form. This is not mandatory unless you want your dog license fee waiver. If not, then you do not need to fill out the form. If you have chosen to do the form, you bring it to your town office/City Hall clerk and hand it in. The clerk will keep it on file and you will not need to fill another one out for as long as you are using that service dog. A benefit is that you will be adding more to your trail of evidence to help prove that your dog is a service dog. Your service dog license will have your dog checked off as a special/service dog. This whole process is the state's way of helping city/town clerks to tell which dog is a real service dog and which one's are not. Therefore, Maine will be sure to get all their money from the maybe .05% of fakers out there (figuring about 2% or less who are disabled and legally utilizing a service dog) when 50% of the State's dog owners still don't bother to license their dog at all. It makes me wonder what the real reason is that we license our dogs, because I don't think it was so Maine can take in lots of money. Wasn't it a good reason... something that benefitted the dogs or something?? Anyway, for now, the Maine goverment is done trying to squeeze money from its disabled citizens. Maybe now Animal Welfare can figure out how to get the people who don't license their dogs at all.
You can copy the Maine Service Dog Verification Form from the Department of Agriculture's website in PDF format. The link is the following:
No comments:
Post a Comment