Who knows. I chatted with one. A vet with PTSD who claims the dog helps him cope. It was a lovely, well-behaved English Mastiff. (So, hard not to notice.) I’m inclined to believe him. The other was a smaller dog, and I didn’t talk to the owner.
There’s no doubt a continuum of states of mind between being stressed as a normal part of life and being pathologically stressed. Yet for all other purposes than the current concept of “emotional support animal” we recognize that we must draw a formal line somewhere. An employer won’t usually let an employee skip work just because the employee claims to be feeling a little stressed, otherwise work attendance would probably drop 70%. But if an employee has a formal diagnosis of (say) PTSD, the employer will - must - take all reasonable steps to accommodate that.
The ADA and state laws on service animals and (to a lesser extent) “emotional support animals” have been drawn up in a well-meaning manner, with the intention that those with genuine need through mental or physical disability should not have to go through life under constant scrutiny. But it was doomed to failure through abuse of the system, just as any law that allowed you to skip work based on self-diagnosis would be doomed to failure. And if I were a person with a genuine need for a service or emotional support animal I’d be lobbying as hard as anyone for the laws to be changed to prevent abuse of the system, because it’s likely to engender a loss of public sympathy for anyone taking animals with them, and the trained bona fide service animals will be lumped in with that backlash along with the impostors, the untrained pets.
I think the vague notion of “emotional support animal” should disappear, and that genuine animals for this purpose should be called service animals too. (The others should be called “pets”.) There should be a requirement for a formal diagnosis from a psychiatrist, and similar training requirements, and meaningful fines for abuse of the system. I don’t think it would be too much of a hardship for genuine service animals to have an id card similar to a drivers’ license. And the fact is, if there were a crackdown on abuse of the system, it would make it far easier for people with genuine service animals even if they forgot to bring their animal’s id card, because I think people would by defaul be far more accommodating and sympathetic, people would assume they were genuine and waive any formal requirement to actually show the id card. At the moment, unless someone has an obvious physical disability, and unless the dog is obviously extremely well trained, my default assumption on seeing a god on someone’s lap in an inappropriate place is that they are abusing the system to bring the pet.
That was an interesting typo.
Especially since that usually refers to cats.
There are anxiety dogs that are trained to signal their owners, by a paw placed on their thigh, when it’s time for an intervention. The intervention could be taking a walk to break out of a catastrophizing loop or taking medication because they’re breaking through. They’re not called emotional support dogs by the groups that train them, but regular people might refer to them that way.
Dogs are not allowed on the New York City subway unless they’re in a carrier.
However, since the NYPD has essentially stopped enforcing the law on the subway (paying the fare is now pretty much optional, streching across a whole row of seats and sleeping is just fine, blasting a portable sound system at peak volume is A-OK wtih the cops, panhandling aggressively is apparently socially and legally acceptable behavior now), people travel all the time with their dogs. They don’t even have to claim that they’re emotional support dogs.
I see dogs, leashed but not in carriers, just about every single day on the subway.
The other day, there were two dogs in one car. They got into it, lots of noise and tussling ensued.
I hate this.
My local transit allows pet dogs except during rush hour, and even at rush hour no one (official) complains if you bring a small pet dog along. Unless the train is really really packed.
One of my more memorable commuting experiences is when a little dog in front of me lost its step and fell between the train and the platform. I lunged, and grabbed its collar, and somewhat awkwardly pulled it back up to the door and its grateful owner. It never occurred to me to complain that the dog wasn’t supposed to be there at all. (That was rush hour, so it wasn’t. I didn’t know that was the rule.)
There’s also a blind guy with a dog who often takes my train. That’s a real service dog, of course. But I feel like I see dogs somewhat frequently.