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Location: Orkney Islands, Scotland
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 4,963
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Completely fake!
Went to the local farmers' market yesterday, with both dogs - I had Kali, Mrs S had Snorri. At one point, they dogs were about 15 yards apart, and Snorri started a howling match with his brother. He shot out to the end of his lead (he only managed it because Mrs S has just had fairly serious surgery on her leg). Anyway, an old crone with a walking stick walked in front and collapsed theatrically, near him. Mrs S took Snorri back to our car; I went to the stall of a friend. The woman shot up from her seat, bent over the wrong dog and told him he needed shooting. I started to explain and apologise, but she wasn't listening at all. When she caught on to the idea that Snorri is epileptic (which makes him just a little more excitable), she said "All the more reason to shoot him, then!". I'm afraid I didn't really advance the cause of dog ownership (it would have made no difference, anyway) - I told her to f*** off and that I'd had enough of her, then walked away.
Having been reliant on a walking stick to get about, for over 4 years, I have done a fair bit of falling over things, more than enough to recognise a fake fall when I see one. Snorri didn't touch her, nor did his lead. Not only did she fall too easily, she managed to land very, very comfortably on her skinny a**e. My experience of tripping over dogs (and I do have some!) is that I go down flat on my face with no chance of landing on any soft bits. If you are disabled, it's fairly easy to detect someone faking it (you'll have to take my word for it!).
If there's one thing I hate, it's seeing a disabled person (if she was, which I doubt) giving the rest of us a bad name. To try to say that this was Snorri-dog's fault is, IMO, the same as blaming the dog for one's own breaking wind at a dinner party.
The stall-holder friend has asked me not to bring the dogs back (and I won't), because he's afraid that this woman may try to claim for her fake accident. If she does, it's FRAUD, pure and simple. And both Mrs S and I will not hesitate to say so to the insurance people.
NB - both dogs were on leads at the time, and nobody was either bitten or bashed into. What bothers me is that others who saw it may have been fooled by the fall, and blame my Snorri, but, of course, they saw it with the eyes of able-bodied people: it may have been good enough to fool them, but not to fool me!
It may well be that she gets Disability Living Allowance (as do I), but the speed with which she stood up to slag me and Kali suggests that, if she does get DLA, she shouldn't. I'm an ex-fraud officer for the DWP, I know the standards only too well, and I've seen every trick in the book (and some not in the book!).
Beware of this sort of
fraudulent accident!
Snorri