At our VA clinic, where many patients have comfort animals (most of us call them "our pets") the guideline is that you can bring a comfort animal with you if it is a dog, but if it barks at any person or other animal, or if it relieves itself, you have to take it out.

Different government agencies have different definitions of "service animal". HUD allows almost anything in government subsidized housing, and this started the trend, I think - people for years have come to their doctor begging for letters so that they could move in to government-subsidized housing with their cat or dog. The VA defines a service animal as "usually a dog that has been trained to perform specific tasks to help a disabled patient". Just because you go online and buy a vest and nice laminated card does not make your animal a service animal.

I know Jeff Bezos is a billionaire, and Amazon isn't perfect, but it's pretty good, especially where returns are involved. I bought two items that weren't as good as I had expected. After a minute or two online, I had the label printed and the box sealed. UPS sent it one day, and I had a refund the next.

On the lighter side, I was looking for a cuckoo clock, and I saw one for $15, so I ordered it. In knew was not currently available, but for that price, I was willing to wait. That was in November. I looked up the clock online and saw that it had a list price of over $400, so I was hopeful Amazon would deliver my order. Wishful thinking. Last night, I received an email from Amazon saying that clock was no longer available.

I did get a nice wooden electronic cuckoo clock for around $100, but there's no way to adjust the number of cuckoos it does on the hour. When I was a kid, real, wooden, mechanical cuckoo clocks were available everywhere for $29.95. "The times, they are a changin'."