At the end of March I blogged that we had to file a HUD complaint against the Condo due to conditions the Condo Association was trying to force on us as a condition to them allowing a service dog to live with us. Of course the very next day I blogged about the fire which wiped out our motorhome….and Skruffy seemed to be on the back burner. However, she was not. We filed our complaint around March 24th. By mid April our lawyer, who is really a real estate lawyer, asked if he could back out of the Service Dog issue, and we agreed…..if we needed a lawyer for this, we would hire one which deals with Service Dog issues, and I had one picked out if we needed to go that far….but we did not wish for this to go that far.
April 29th I finally was asked by HUD to provide more information….copy of letter from the Doctor, dates, issues, etc. I sent my response that day, and receipt was acknowledged. There was also a small blurb about “back log” and “don’t know how long it will be before we get to it”.
On June 27th in steps “Bob” from the Florida Commission on Human Relations. What a SUPER NICE guy Bob is. After an initial request for some more information, we schedule a “phone interview’' for Monday, June 30th. In that phone call he reveals that he had already talked with the Condo Lawyers, and they “sounded as though” they might want to resolve this before it goes any further. (My first thoughts….why did they not contact me a few months ago before it got this far?) He said that it sounded like the only issue was the “waiver” that they insisted that we sign which included a whole bunch of rules and ignored our rights before they would agree to us having a service dog. Bob, who had to remain neutral did point out to the lawyer that one item they were asking us to sign was for Skruffy to keep quiet, yet the Doctor said in his letter that one of the things the dog would be used for is to alert Marcia that someone is at the door by barking. Bob asked that I write up what in their agreement was unacceptable, and if I wanted, to write up an acceptable waiver.
So I took their waiver, did a “red line” through all of the items we did not agree with, and in “Green Print” the reason we did not agree with what they issued. I also rewrote their waiver so that it did not look like a set of rules, but instead did the following:
- Acknowledged the needs of the individual who requested the use of a Service Dog
- Acknowledged that the dog could fulfill those needs, and that the dog could go anywhere the person who needed the dog could go
- Finally, an agreement that the person requesting the service dog would keep it under control, clean up after it, and be responsible for any damage done directly by the dog.
It sure put that smile back on their faces…. ours too.
