The airlines were trapped. The ADA prohibited doing anything about any animal, almost no matter how outrageous. If it wasn’t actively biting people, our hands were tied. And ADA further prohibited the airlines from asking for any proof of anything. So of course your precious pet can fly for free when you tell us it’s an ESA; pets we could charge for, ESA’s must be accomodated for free.
The industry lobbying organization and the industry labor unions has been pleading with and battling with HHS, DOT, FTC, & FAA about this for years. Trying to get the problem to be viewed as important enough for these agencies to stop turf-warring, blind-eyeing, and work together for once to craft a solution that works for the honest passengers, not the entitled liars.
What you all are just learning about is the product of several years of concentrated lobbying and in depth intergovernmental negotiation. This was not some wild hair idea some Deputy Undersecretary of Pointless Rules came up with last Tuesday while bored on a Zoom call.
Until DOT stepped up and said “We and HHS have reached an agreement to carve a small hole in the ADA that addresses the issue of pets and ESA’s mislabeled as ‘service animals’ on airliners.”, there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about this friggin’ mess.
Why yes, I’m really frustrated with how long this took and how partial the “solution” is.
I really wish there were some way to verify that a service animal really is a service animal * but is that the only way in which you see the solution as “partial” , or is there something else?
although in my particular experience, people who try to sneak pets in as service animals do a very poor job of it
We’ve trained guide dogs, and so has my daughter. Real service dogs come with documentation.
My daughter has taken her dogs on airplanes many times. They are trained to lie under the seat - the dorm at Guide Dogs for the Blind has a mockup airplane cabin for practice. People with real service dogs won’t mind showing their documentation at all. I think those of us who have done the work in training dogs hate this emotional support crap more than the average person.
This is great news. The difference between a service dog and a fake emotional support animal, e.g. pet, is that service dogs who aren’t up to the rigorous demands of being a service dog get what they call career changed. A dog in training who shows the slightest hostility to anything gets career changed right away.
It helps that the dogs we trained are bred from many generations of the best service dogs. I went to a guide dog puppy get together. Over 100 dogs there, with their partners, and none of them barked. Let’s see your emotional support animal do that.
I did have a ‘service dog’ moment tonight that made me think twice about all this. Or maybe it was a coincicence. Anyway. I can post about it. Violoates rules and stuff
This is part of America’s corporate “the customer is always right” culture problem. The business (airline) is so afraid of the PR blowback from a hissy and tantrum-throwing customer who posts on social media, “The airline DENIED me my licensed emotional support animal!” that they just cave in.
Because they may not want to share the details of their personal medical and psychological issues with everyone and then defend the challenges that will follow when the asker deems their answer insufficient.
I’m talking about licensing and documentation for trained bona fide service animals, not their owners. Why would anyone with a genuine trained service animal oppose the idea that documentation should be required, so that fake service animals don’t abuse the system?
By your reasoning, we should not have disabled badges to authorize parking in disabled spaces. We should just trust that anyone who parks there is entitled to be there. How do you think that would work out?
In a survey of one, the legally blind woman in my building with a properly trained guide dog despises the yappy pets-disguised-as-emotional-support-animals entirely due to all the extra shit she and her dog have to put up with from businesses tired of dealing with yappy pets underfoot in areas pets are prohibited.
Because it is price prohibitive to lower income Americans. A disabled person can adopt and train their own service animal without having to jump through hoops and massive red tape. Don’t forget that a person with an unruly “service animal” can be kicked out if their animal does not behave as a real service animal would.
The reason disabled parking spots require documentation is because there are limited spaces and should be saved for those that actually need it. Having a service animal doesn’t take away from another person that has a service animal.
People can train them any way they choose. The animals could then be assessed for licensing to some minimal standard of behavior, with no charge.
Passing off an untrained pet as a trained service animal in places where - for good reason - animals are not usually permitted most certainly does have an impact on other people.
In my experience, this is not the case. Business are extremely reluctant to take action against poorly behaved animals that their own claim are service animals because of the ridiculous way the ADA is written.
You are correct that having a service animal doesn’t take away from other people having service animals. But it’s also true that disabled parking placards/hangtags are not always for parking in designated disabled spots - in my city, there are few disabled street parking spaces, but those placards exempt the holders from paying for the meter, from time limits and from obeying street cleaning rules. Those placards require documentation not because disabled parking spaces are limited but because we don’t want to give one to every person who decides to say “I need a disabled placard”
It’s a similar situation with service animals - I am 100% fine with someone training their own animal. But I don’t want the current situation, where a business owner can only ask two questions
Is the dog a service animal required due to a disability and
what service does the dog perform?
Because right now there is nothing to stop me from claiming that my pet is in fact a service animal trained to detect when my blood sugar is dropping - even if neither of those things is true and I am not even diabetic.
I believe these types of stories are rare, but the media places a huge spotlight on these fringe cases because it’s not sexy to write about how people are actually benefiting from these animals.
This is just another roadblock and and a way to deny access to those that are most vulnerable. Why don’t we all get a voting ID so that we can “stop the steal”? Examples of fraud are rare and the majority of people do not commit fraud in order to have an assistance animal or vote.
I agree with this sentiment and I wrote that businesses can and should remove unruly “service animals”.
This is purely anecdotal. How many times have you seen this happen? Maybe once, twice, thrice even? Yet it sticks in your brain as the majority of your experiences. How many times have you not noticed the well behaved animal by their owner’s side? Probably a lot more, but you don’t count them in your head.
