The owners of a Thai restaurant in Adelaide are in trouble for discriminating against gay canines.

A sign at the Thai Spice restaurant’s entrance says ‘Guide Dogs Welcome’, but when blind man Ian Jolly entered with a female companion and his seeing-eye dog Nudge, staff thought she said the pooch was a ‘gay dog’, not a ‘guide dog’, and turned them away.

“The staff genuinely believed that Nudge was an ordinary pet dog which had been desexed to become a gay dog,” said the owners when Jolly complained to South Australia’s Equal Opportunity Tribunal.

The Tribunal found in Jolly’s favour and forced the restaurant to apologise and pay $1,500 to him.

The incident had embarrassed Jolly: “I just want to be like everybody else and be able to go out for dinner, to be left alone and just enjoy a meal,” he told the Sunday Mail.