After three years of trench warfare over a service dog – yes, an actual service dog, not a pet boa constrictor or a chainsaw – I have finally received my first cheque.
It’s a very modest cheque. In fact, if you squint, you might mistake it for a grocery coupon. But it’s symbolic – a receipt from the universe confirming that, yes, I was right, and, yes, this whole mess really did happen.
Would I have preferred to spend these three years sipping coffee on my balcony, decorating my first home in Canada, or – radical idea – actually getting to enjoy my property? Absolutely. But instead, I got to become the unwilling protagonist in a never-ending soap opera titled:
“As the Bark Turns” – A Tale of Bark Logs, High Rushes of Water, and Other Works of Fiction by the Condo Aristocracy.”
Now, to those of you wandering the halls and whispering, “We had to pay $2,000 because of you,” I’ll happily respond:
“I had to pay twenty times that – and I’m still standing.”
Twenty times your $2,000. That’s the price tag on fighting for the right to have a service dog without being treated like I was smuggling in a small nuclear device. And unlike your $2,000, which apparently caused a biblical-level crisis in your personal finances, mine was worth every cent – because this battle wasn’t just for me. It was for every person in Ontario who will one day need a service dog and deserves to be treated like a human being, not a storyline in someone else’s gossip network.
So yes, when you sidle up to me in the laundry room to deliver your whispered “I had to pay $2,000” confession, I’ll meet it with my own public service announcement:
“I had to pay twenty times that, and I still think it was a bargain.”
Would I do it again? Absolutely. In fact, I will do it again – because injustice, like bad wallpaper, has a way of coming back until you rip it out at the root.
And no, this is not over. I will be pursuing every legal avenue to recoup my costs. If all goes well, I might even have enough left over to buy my dog a gold-plated water bowl – just so we can both enjoy those “high rushes of water” everyone’s so fond of talking about.
Because here’s the thing: I invest in joy. And my dog brings more joy in a single tail wag than this board has managed in their entire reign of cardboard and clipboards.
Disclaimer: This post is satire and opinion. Read full disclaimer.
