Service and Guide Animals Policy

Effective August 1, 2024

Fluent Registered Massage Therapy (the “Clinic”) recognizes that patients may have medical reasons that require service and guide animals to access our services. The Clinic must also balance obligations to maintain a safe, hygienic workplace, and to ensure that the Clinic is equally accessible to those patients who have medical reasons why they cannot encounter animals in the workplace. Taking these considerations into account, the Clinic’s policy pertaining to service and guide animals is updated as follows.

Service and guide animals will be permitted to attend the Clinic with a patient, so long as the patient is able to:

1. advise Clinic staff at the time of booking of the need, or potential need, to bring a service or guide animal to the Clinic;
2. advise Clinic staff upon arrival that the animal is a service or guide animal;
3. demonstrate that they have a medical need to be accompanied by that service or guide animal, by providing the Clinic with service or guide animal certification or related medical documentation, as requested in the circumstances; and
4. ensure that the service or guide animal is properly trained, not disruptive, and not a danger to the patient’s assigned massage therapist, or other staff or clients at the Clinic.

If an animal is not medically necessary for a patient to bring to the Clinic, we ask that patients do not bring them into the Clinic.

If a patient with pet allergies has an appointment scheduled and another patient who must be accompanied by a service or guide animal requests to book an appointment time before the patient with pet allergies, then the patient with the service or guide animal will be notified and the Clinic shall work with them to find a new day and/or time. This shall also work in reverse: if the patient with pet allergies requests to book an appointment that is after a patient appointment with a service or guide animal, then the patient with pet allergies will be notified and the Clinic shall work with them to find a new day and/or time.

The Clinic welcomes feedback from its patients with respect to this policy. Any questions and feedback can be directed to Mark Finch at appointments@fluent.ca.

Sincerely,

Management