This may just be a rant/vent...I'm toying with the idea of unfriending this person on Facebook. A little back history:

I met her through a support group on Facebook for service dog handlers. She did not have a service dog (I do) and she was looking for information on how to get one. She was also having troubles with her apartment complex with getting permission for the dog, which is covered under the Fair Housing Act (service dogs must be allowed in no pets housing under most circumstances).

Anyways, she caused some drama with the page's administrator and founder, and so she was removed from the group. I'm friends with the administrator, and while she didn't place an ultimatum on my friendship with this other woman, she did make it clear that she wanted no contact with her. Apparently, the woman had asked for a lot of advice and help from the administrator, but didn't listen to any of the advice or help, and then kept expecting the administrator to clean things up for her by doing advocacy work for her.

I will call this woman Mary for ease. So Mary asked my advice about adopting a potential service dog candidate. The dog was a shelter dog, not necessarily a deal breaker, but you have to be careful when selecting a potential service dog trainee. You have to do temperament testing and be sure that the dog is suitable for the work. This dog was clearly not suitable from the get-go, not just because of temperament but because the dog was already an adult, and had a lot of bad habits that needed to be untrained before any service dog training could begin. I advised her that this was not a suitable candidate, even as a pet for her. She has mobility issues and the dog was very energetic.

Of course, she ignored me and adopted the dog.

Then she calls me very upset because she can barely walk the dog because it pulls her every where and she has shoulder issues and can't hold onto the dog. She gets dragged everywhere by the dog. She wants to know if there is a kind of collar or lead that she can buy that will help her while she trains the dog to heel. I send her links to two different kind of "Easy Walker" leads that I have found very successful in strong pullers that are also easy to use, unlike prongs collars that have to be used very carefully or otherwise can harm the dog. Apparently the local store did not have the harness I suggested, so instead she bought another harness, which I had specifically advised her against. And instead of ordering online and buying the correct harness, she bought a harness that I had specifically advised her would create MORE pulling, not less. Traditional clip on back harnesses actually give the dog more pulling power because they allow the dog to pull from their shoulders. I explained this to her. She ignored me, kept the harness, and the very next day tore her rotator cuff when the dog pulled her across the street after a squirrel. She had to have rotator cuff surgery to repair it.

At that point she decided to rehome the dog, knowing it could never work as a service dog, at least not without serious training that she was not qualified or prepared to do.

Then, afterwards, every time she saw I was fostering any puppy, Mary would ask me if it was a suitable service dog for her. The first puppy, could have possibly been an service dog, as could have the second. But I felt like with her mobility problems that raising a puppy and consistently training the dog was not something she would responsibly do, so I lied and told her that neither were good prospects.

She would frequently send me pictures of dogs she found on Craigslist or a shelter's website to ask what I thought of the dog for a service dog candidate. My answer was typically either the dog was too old OR she needed to have a trainer go and temperament test the dog IN PERSON. She never liked this advice.

So finally, a few days ago, she send me pics of a "service dog" that someone was rehoming on Craigslist. This person who was rehoming the dog bought fake papers through one of the many fake online registries for service dogs out there (they are all scams; the ADA does not require any kind of registration or licensing of a service dog). The current owner claimed the dog was task-trained. (Let's not even examine the fact that a trained service dog is worth thousands of dollars and you don't rehome a REAL service dog on Craigslist.) Well fine, except that service dogs are task-trained to help a particular individual. Their tasks aren't necessarily immediately transferable to another disabled person. You can't take a diabetes alert dog and give to a blind person and expect it to be a guide dog all of a sudden. It's not trained for that. Even my service dog, who does psychiatric alert, would not work for someone with the same disability, because he is specifically trained to alert to MY symptoms, not someone else's.

And to top it off, the dog is SIX years old. Consider about a year to retrain, and in another year, at 8 years old, she'd be needing to find a puppy to start training to take its place when she retires it at 10 years old, since it takes 2 years, at least, to train a service dog.

I advise her against adopting this dog. I don't believe he's a task trained service dog in the first place, but even if he was, he's not some miracle answer that's going to solve all her problems.

I know this sounds like a tedious process, but that's because it is. 90% of service dog trainees are washed from training because they are not compatible with the job. i have had to wash and rehome three dogs that I have tried to train to eventually replace my retiring service dog. They became great pet dogs, very highly trained, but just not the focus to work as a service dog.

But she's impatient and wants her dog NOW. So of course, she goes to meet the dog, doesn't even take time to think about it, and adopts the dog immediately.

Now she's sending me questions about what kind of bones to buy and if peanut butter is okay for dogs, and just all sort of questions and I just feel like unfriending her.

I'm really annoyed that she is always asking for advice and then always ignoring it and then always asking me how to fix the problem she creates when, if she had just listened to me, she wouldn't have the problem in the first place.

I won't say she's been a bad friend or anything. Like a week ago I was really upset and asked if she had time to chat, and she was very sweet and listened to me and validated me and was very kind.

I honestly just want her to lay off all the dog questions. Mostly because I feel like she asks me stuff and then ignores my answer. Like, if I told her that onions are bad for dogs, she would go ahead and feed her dog onions, even though they can kill the dog. Because she thinks she knows better? I don't know.

Normally I love talking about dog stuff, as the members here who visit the chatrooms know very well. But the topic is so tedious with her because she just wont' listen.

I don't know how to handle this.

Seesaw