In honor of National Pet Week and Walmart’s recent service animal policy change we’re declaring Saturday May 9th “Bring Your Pet to Walmart Day”. The new policy makes it much easier to bring a service animal (or any other animal for that matter) into a Walmart. “What is a service animal?” you ask. Well according to Walmart’s policy:

Service animals are individually trained to work or perform tasks for individuals with disabilities. Service animals are not always dogs; other animals may assist people with disabilities. Service animals come in all breeds and sizes, may be trained either by an organization or by an individual with a disability, and need not be certified or licensed. Service animals do not always have a harness, a sign, or a symbol indicating that they are service animals.

The new policy only allows Walmart employees to ask the owner a single question, it can be asked only once, and according to the policy that question is:

Is this a service animal required because of a disability?

Not only can the question only be asked once, but the only employees allowed to ask that question is the Greeter, the Manager, or (if the manager is not present) an Assistant Manager. So, if you can slip past the 84 year old man at the door, you might never hear that question at all.

Here are a few service animals you might want to bring along to Walmart:

Translator Parrot – Mine speaks Mandarin.

Helper Monkey – He can grab things from high places, flip light switches and rub your feet when they’re sore. (Homer Simpson can tell you all about it in the video at the bottom of the page.)

Pack Mule – For those that have a fear of shopping carts, bring along your mule to handle your purchases.

Golden Retriever – For the lazy, this will retrieve your merchandise from the aisles for you, while you wait at the McDonald’s.

Sanitation Dog – As a germaphobe, you can’t really trust the paper towel dispenser, wiping your hands on your dog as you exit the bathroom is a requirement.

Stress Relieving Seal – Anyone who has ever spent any time in Walmart can understand the need for a little clubbing.

Ribbit Alert Frog – Mine emits a high pitched shriek when THE SASQUATCH! is approaching, that guy freaks me out.

Lactating Cow – For the lactose deficient.

Security Tiger – For those that are unable to protect themselves against white trash with shopping carts.

And anything else you can come up with…

You might argue that those aren’t service animals because those aren’t disabilities, but Monolingualism, or living life in debilitating fear of the THE SASQUATCH!, sound like disabilities to me.

Walmart changed this policy due to a lawsuit brought by the United States Government over violations of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). This looks like another case of a big company doing something wrong and then the courts (in this case the settlement) trying to correct the problem, but going a bit too far. “Contents may be hot” anyone?

We’ll see you all at Walmart on Saturday, I’ll be there with my seeing eye cats. Let us know in the comments section what service animal you will be bringing.