Zoo's are Nasty

I hate the Zoo
Current mood: angry

I don't know what's more embarassing getting dirty looks because your autistic child is tantruming or getting kicked out of a zoo filled with home schoolers because your autistic child has a service dog.

Why were we kicked out? Because this zoo has a NO Pets policy! NO Dogs allowed. We have a dog. He is a "service dog" not a "pet". He wears a service dog in training vest. He can't wear it as a "pet". he isn't a "pet" He isn't a "therapy dog". He tends to be damn good at predicting seizures or episodes with dd. He helps her to distinguish what's real and what's not. He helps her to be able to go to places like the zoo.

In a nut shell: the zoo felt justified in kicking us out for not having Federal disabled papers, not having Federal Service Dog papers, Not having proper photo Id (it didn't have a diabled label on it so how could they be 100% certain we are disabled?), not having our medical records with us defining exactly what the disabling medical conditions we have are, not having a doctors not saying we need a service dog, not having the dogs vet records with us, not having a rabies certificate with us so they could compare the tag with the certificate, not having a city license certificate again to compare with the tag he wears, (Hello a simple phone call could have done that) not having given them 72 hours notice 1st that we were coming, not having agency paperwork saying we could have a service dog, not having a city/county certificate saying that our service dog is a legit service dog.I'm probably missing a lot of the papers we are to have but that's the highlights.

So in order for the kiddos to participate in a home school function... We had to send the dog home. Now because of that... When my dd ran into problems I was on my own. I had no helper, I had no dog to alert me that she was having an issue. I had no zoo "staff" to help me either and no other visitors in the area. My dd had an incident. I couldn't leave her for help because no child under the age of 15 is to be left unattended by an adult.. meaning she couldn't be alone. nor could her and my son be left alone. I couldn't send my son for help again because of the no child thing. I also couldn't leave her for help becuase of snakes, animals, areas she could have fallen from, water, and other safety issues. The zoo literally put me in a bad spot that I wouldn't have been in had i been allowed to have both my helpers with me.

Sure we could have stayed at the main gate until our helper returned but then we were told we couldn't loiter there either.

Can I just say I hate the zoo?