Repairing the Yard and Pie in Home Depot

As I've said my yard is small and I have more than one or two dogs so the urine burns the grass. I decided to pull up the dead spots and plant new grass there.

The bare spots with New soil and grass seed added.

I'm also trying to confine the dogs to a smaller section of the yard when I'm not home during the day. They have access to the whole downstairs (minus the kitchen) and the backyard. Since they have full access to the backyard the urine spots are all over the yard. I put up fencing to keep them in just one section of the yard. I'm not sure if this is a good idea since that grass will die faster but hopefully the rest of the grass will be preserved. The idea is when we are outside enjoying the yard together they will have the whole yard to play with. The downside is the poodles definitely run around chasing each other during the day and with the smaller yard maybe they won't run as much or the exercise won't be as good. I'm not sure if the smaller size of the yard would discourage them from running. Probably not since they seem to run around to the house just fine.

I fenced off about 1/4 of the yard for the dogs to use during the day

I pulled the dead grass up, put down topsoil then seed and then more topsoil on top of that. The grass along the back section in the reach of two of the sprinkler heads has been dead for some time due to lack of water and not urine. I knew as soon as the landscapers put the sprinklers in the flow wasn't sufficient to reach that area.


Since I was making an effort to revitalize the lawn I decided to replace those two sprinkler heads. I stopped in at Home Depot after Kip's agility class. Since I had all the dogs and Home Depot let's you bring in pet dogs I decided to take Pie in.

Not an amazing picture but I was trying to be discreet so I wasn't the weirdo taking pictures of my dogs in Home Depot. While I was trying to figure out what sprinkler head I wanted to buy Pie stayed down and waited so nicely

I had a frustration with a fake service dog on a guide dog harness with a velcro patch saying guide dog. I mention the patch in case you think I mistook a guide dog harness for a Mobility harness but it said right on the harness "guide dog."

I believe the dog to be a fake service dog since his owner was reading the small print on the labels of different products. I know not all people that use guides are 100% blind and some of the people have pinhole Vision which means they probably would be able to read the small print but I would think they would at least pick the object up to make positioning the small print within their pinhole of usable Vision more easy. However if that was my only evidence I would have kept my suspicions to myself. Nope. The evidence it was truly a fake service dog was the guide dog harness was the only equipment on the dog. There was not an additional leash attached to the dog's collar. Furthermore, the owner was not even holding the harness and when I went down the aisle the dog was already a good ten feet from the owner! It left the owner and came to sniff Pie and the owner didn't even realize his dog wandered halfway down the aisle until I said something. Not surprisingly the dog did not come when called and the owner had to come physically take control of the dog. People with real service dogs do not allow their dog to wander all over the store, off-leash.  And most (of course it should be all but there are exceptions to every rule) legitimate service dogs are too well trained to do that even if their owner did lose concentration and at the same time not have the leash in their hand.

I know fake service dogs are becoming a bigger problem and I know many people do it because they want to take their dogs places pets are not allowed and because they have this desire they think that is a good enough reason to break the law. Obviously the people breaking the law are wrong but what I don't know or understand is why you would fake a service dog in a store that already allows your pet to come in.

There many people with hidden disabilities but there are also many people faking service dogs. Due to the provisions of the Americans with Disability Act taking any kind of action against a suspected fake service dog (other than asking a disruptive dog to leave a store) is not allowed. Those Provisions are there for a reason. What if a store worker justb didn't want your service dog in the store and they thought you were faking it because you weren't in a wheelchair? If people could arbitrarily throw you out of a store anytime they thought you had a fake service dog then the people with disabilities would have a hard time gaining access anywhere. But on the other hand nobody can come up with a good way to stop the fakers.

If I was truly going to write everything I feel about fake service dogs this post would be even longer. Most people in the know can spot a fake service dog based on the behavior of the dog and the Handler. If a dog is not paying attention to the Handler it's most likely not a service dog. Some service dogs are actually trying to scan the environment around the Handler. I would not call that not paying attention to the Handler. The dog does not have to be looking at the Handler to be paying attention to them. But if they are at the end of the leash sniffing or peeing on something then they are not working when they should be and it probably not a service dog. If you have your service dog on a flexi leash in a store it's probably not a service dog. If you have your service dog on the end of a six-foot leash and it is dragging you through the airport on the end of that six-foot leash is probably not a service dog. If you have a little dog in a bag it is probably not a service dog. How is it going to be a service to you if it is in the bag? If my 6 month old puppy is better trained than your service dog it's probably not a service dog. The more patches and collars and tags attached to a service dog the more suspicious I become.  Most service dogs don't go through life with a driver's license sized laminated cards hanging off their collar proclaiming them a service dog, complete with the dogs picture on it. That is something you buy right off of "fake service dog tags dot com" as advertised on Facebook as "take your pet dog anywhere, get him a service dog tag!". Ugh! For a post that was supposed to be about fixing my lawn it escalated quickly into a rant about fake service dogs.

My closing thought is if you're going to break the law and have a fake service dog, the very least you can possibly do is at least hold on to the leash.

The setting sun made for a better picture in real life. And after griping about fake service dogs off-leash I will note that pie had her leash on, it was just tucked behind her and I did set it down for the picture but I made sure nobody was around to be upset that I was not holding her leash. And also of course she was a foot from me and I was paying close attention since I was taking her picture. Hopefully it wasn't hypocritical of me to complain about a fake service dog and then take a picture of my dog without the leash in my hand. If I had known I was going to post the gripe in the same blog post as this picture I probably would have just held on to the leash so I didn't have to make this big caption defending myself against possible claims of hypocrisy.

Turns out the type of sprinkler head I have is the type that does not accept the universal fitting. The smaller hardware store down the street does have the brand I need so I will try again over the weekend. Stay tuned for updates on that Quest.