The two emotional support dogs I’ve met were accompanying men, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most accompany women.
And Arctite, they weren’t “just pets”. The ones I’ve seen were on public transit, where pets are allowed, fwiw.
Of course, they are also pets. I was talking to a woman the other day who has a service dog who is supposed to alert her to some heart condition that he can sense before she can. But she was telling me how much she enjoys his company, and how happy she is to have this dog as a companion, quite beyond his value as a service animal.
Which is it: “no one” needs an emotional support animal, or “most people” are faking it?
Also, it’s not just about being able to have the animal in order to fly, but being able to travel with it. Airlines do generally permit pets in the cargo hold, but it’s not the safest place for them, and there’s no law stopping them from banning pets entirely, unless they’re designated as ESAs. As to your claim that there’s no basis in psychology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5800290/
I see the issue as being similar to medical marijuana. There’s a small subset of people with specific health problems that are best managed with this unconventional treatment. Then there’s a huge group of people who don’t really qualify as disabled, but who can still derive some benefit–even if it’s just enjoyment. The question is, what is the cost to society of just accommodating everyone, and if the cost is too high, how to distinguish group 1 from group 2? For marijuana, I think we could just legalize it and accommodate everyone; who cares if you have glaucoma or you just want to get a buzz? For emotional support animals, though, who tend to defecate everywhere, can trigger allergies, and sometimes bite people, I do think we need a better way to sort out those who are actually disabled and need that support from those who simply like having their dog around.
Emotional support dogs tend to be very well trained. My mom is terrified of dogs, and hates to interact with them in pubic, but she admits that the service dogs (including emotional support dogs) are usually fine.
My impression is that “emotional support animals” aren’t considered an answer to “flight anxiety” per se, but that owners believe the constant companionship they provide in their daily lives cannot be interrupted by travel, whether it’s for recreational purposes or some imperative reason.
Some of the abuses could be curtailed by requiring people with these creatures to have an ongoing relationship with a therapist in their community who provides the letter to the airline, not somebody at Support-Letters-R-Us who has never interacted with the patient in person.
Not that I’m terribly affected by people who drag their animals on commercial flights. I’d rather travel with a support Shetland pony than the average screaming child, even if horsie takes a dump in the aisle.
How do you know they were emotional support animals if pets were allowed? “Emotional support animals” have no “official” status whatsoever. There is no law defining their role, no professional society or registry which organizes or keeps track of or designates them. If it was because they were wearing harnesses or tags, anyone can buy official-looking harnesses or tags online.
I don’t understand why you think that’s a contradiction. No one “needs” an emotional support animal in the sense that a blind person needs their guide dog to find their way around. Many people are flat-out gaming the system, cajoling their doctor into writing a letter so they can take Spot on vacation. Some people genuinely believe they “need” to drag a pet into public spaces where pets are not normally allowed in order to function, but this is not a valid belief.
That article reviews studies of the effects of pet ownership on mental health, not of “emotional support animals.”
As Telemark points out, emotional support animals are not a subset of service animals. They are two completely different things. “Emotional support dogs” tend not to be trained at all, because they are simply pets. The only thing making them “emotional support animals” is the presence of a letter written by a doctor or therapist saying “so-and-so’s dog is an emotional support animal.”
Last year I watched one take a dump in the mall food court. I’ve had the opposite experience of your mom; they mostly seem to be mostly poorly trained and overly coddled.
The only real difference between an emotional support animal and a pet is that the former assists those with mental health disabilities. The article uses the term “pet” to avoid creating the presumption it’s designed to test.
According to my relative whose son has autism, an emotional support dog belonging to a person with autism is automatically elevated to the level of service (or therapy?) dog. Unfortunately this puts their large, badly trained pet dog into the same category as a well-trained service dog for purposes of flying in the main cabin, which is the only reason they pursued it - the kid isn’t particularly attached to the dog other than it being the family pet.
As I understand it, unless the dog is trained to perform a specific service, it’s not a service dog. Emotional support is not a service as defined by the ADA.
And there’s no such thing as being “elevated” to a therapy dog- therapy dogs have no special rights on planes or anywhere else. These are the dogs that visit hospitals and nursing homes or assist in physical therapy at a rehabilitation center.
I wasn’t aware that an “emotional support dog” had any formal training requirement at all? It’s not the same thing as a service animal.
I think if I were a bona fide user of a service animal (and I’d include genuine emotional support animals in that, when formally prescribed by a psychiatrist) I’d be strongly in favor of changing the ADA to permit much more stringent certification and identification procedures. The way the laws were written may have been well meaning, but it was pretty obvious that it was always going to be massively abused by selfish people who just want to bring their (untrained) pets with them.
Yes, I was sloppy with my words, I meant to distinguish between emotional support dog and service dogs. I’m aware they are different. It is nonetheless my experience that emotional support dog tend to be well-trained.
Yes, they were wearing harnesses declaring them to be emotional support animals. Yes, you can buy those on line. My point was that the owner didn’t put that harness on the animal for the purpose of getting them on the train, because pets are allowed in the train. The harness must have meant something to the owner, or why bother?
And, unfortunately, in all too many cases, the only real difference between a person with mental health disabilities and a person who experiences a normal range of moods, is that the former believes themselves entitled to some special consideration, and has found support for their belief.