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Pine Tree owners apologize to veteran

January 2, 2020

We wish to take this opportunity to respond to an incident that occurred on our Christmas tree farm Nov. 30, 2019, and to issue a public apology. On Nov. 30, 2019, a customer, Brenden Leets, arrived at the Pine Hollow Christmas Tree Farm that is owned and operated by us, Fred and Shelly Sposato. (Our farm is not affiliated with Sposato Landscaping.)

Mr. Leets was accompanied by his wife and a dog, which was presented as a service dog. At that time, Mrs. Sposato informed Mr. Leets that the farm had a long-standing policy that no dogs were permitted beyond the parking lot of the property, because dogs had previously posed a threat to the health, welfare and safety of our patrons, and had caused damage on the farm.

Unfortunately, and we say that with the utmost sincerity to Mr. Leets and his family, we were not aware of the specific requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Delaware Equal Accommodations Law, both of which require the admission of trained service animals to places of public accommodation.

As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20, and in retrospect, we sincerely regret that we did not handle the situation to the best of our ability. We are human. Sometimes things go wrong, despite our best intentions, and in this case, it was never our intention to hurt anyone. That is not who we are. We certainly did not intend to hurt or offend Mr. Leets and his family, and we sincerely apologize to Mr. Leets for the incident.

To be clear, we respect and appreciate all veterans and first responders who have sacrificed and given so much.

Since the incident, we have educated ourselves about the specific legal requirements for service dogs, and we wish to make it clear that we have a thorough understanding of the legal requirements to accommodate service dogs and their owners. We also wish to make it clear that any and all trained service dogs are welcome on our farm.

We strive to be a customer-oriented company, and we try our best to serve our clientele. We regret that we did not meet that standard to provide Mr. Leets and his family with a positive experience. While we cannot change the past, we intend to treat this situation as a “learning moment” going forward, so that we can make something positive come from this experience.

To that end, we are not only issuing this public apology to Mr. Leets and his family, but we are making a sizable donation to an entity that trains service dogs specifically for disabled veterans with the goal of assisting a disabled veteran who will benefit from the important service provided by service dogs in the future.

Fred Sposato
Shelly Sposato
Pine Hollow Christmas Tree Farm

 

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