An Australian man who has an assistance chihuahua has won £4,700 after his local pub wouldn't let the dog inside.
Raymond Matthews has enjoyed being a regular at his local The Woombye Pub in the Sunshine Coast, Australia, especially since he lives just down the road from the place.
Dropping in a couple of times a week for a chicken parmi and a beer, the pub was a staple part of his life until it was taken over by new management.
Raymond's assistance chihuahua Coo-ee, which has medical approval from a doctor, was refused entry into the pub and had to stay outside, where the poor pooch 'almost got run over one night'.
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Making plea after plea to bring his Chihuahua inside, he was instead barred from the pub for a month and says he was 'made out to be the bad guy'.
Raymond told 7News he'd tried in vain to explain his situation and how important Coo-ee was, but reckons his repeated attempts to convince the new owners probably 'sounded like a broken record'.
He said: "I’d been to the doctor to get the dog signed off as an assistant.
"What she does is she introduces me to myriad people – the amount of hurdles I’ve got over because of the dog, just breaking the barriers down that normally exist with bureaucracy.
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"I take the dog with me and it just brings people down to a level playing field and you can speak with them, you can get along with them, you’ve got a common denominator and the dog, I feel, is the one that does it."
After three years of not being allowed to take his dog into the pub he finally decided to launch legal action, and that's netted him a £4,700 win after a tribunal found that the pub broke anti-discrimination laws.
The pub has also apologised to Raymond for not letting his assistance chihuahua inside for all those years.
When it comes to dogs in pubs it's a bit of a controversial subject, some people wouldn't want to go in if they couldn't bring their dog, whereas many others would rather go somewhere else without dealing with dogs.
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Certain dog lovers adore their pets so much that they'd 'rather starve' than head into a pub without their pooch.
Wetherspoons banned dogs in their pubs back in 2018, though they'd really had an unofficial ban for decades before that.
The popular pub chain finally decided to fully enforce the ban after getting sick of some customers not cleaning up after their dogs.
Topics: Animals, Australia, Dogs, Food And Drink
Joe Harker