I’ll have to make sure my SO doesn’t hear about this. She hates flying and loves extremely large fluffy dogs. I’m going to end up having to buy an extra ticket for a Burmese mountain dog or something.
Nitpick: Bernese. As in, Switzerland. Burma doesn’t have too many large fluffy dog breeds.
Ditto
Let me think to the last time I saw someone bring a monkey, or a horse into a store, let alone a plane, that would be never.
As far as I know, persons who have a disability can utilize a trained psychiatric assistance dog…in the same manner other disabled persons can
I dont see this as becomng some type of issue
If a person has for example a severe anxiety disorder, and the use of a trained assistance labrador retriever or whatever , gives them the ability to function in certain settings it is valid and hurts nobody
I don’t like the idea of a comfort animal from a purely psychological perspective because in cases of anxiety it seems like a classic safety-behavior. It reinforces the person’s anxiety and increases avoidance behavior to the point that the individual will become even more anxious when they don’t have the animal to rely on. It is likely to make them worse and less capable of coping with every day life.
But in my personal preference, I wouldn’t mind an animal on a plane or something. It would probably be a fun distraction.
A friend of mine is doing his thesis on these animals and to me it’s very sad - having a pet can be therapeutic, in that you have to get out of bed since the dog is counting on you, but it’s NOT therapy.
There is nothing that the “specially trained” dog can do for you that a shelter dog with some obedience training can’t. To me that is tragic because people end up paying thousands for a dog, when they could have spend a few hundred and given a needy animal a home.
That’s exactly it. We’ve raised guide dog puppies, and there is a massive amount of training that goes into the program. And half the dogs get career changed. If a guide dog in training makes even the slightest aggressive move, it is out of the program instantly. In fact at activities at GDB you have 100 dogs in a small space and nobody barks.
Dogs can be valuable in giving emotional support. But people don’t want to put the training effort in.
BTW, with regard to airplanes, the dorm at GDB has a few airline seats set up in a room to help train dogs and blind people in how to behave on planes. There is a long list of guidelines, include what to feed or not feed the dog before the flight. I rather suspect the average support dog owner has no clue about how to do it right.
I used to do in-home support care for a woman with assorted physical and psychiatric diagnoses. She managed to manipulate her way into getting a “service dog” collar tag for her Chihuahua mix, whose only real training in anything was being house-broken, specifically so she could take the dog where she pleased.
I’m sure there are legitimate needs for service animals other than seeing-eye. I’ve heard of seizure-detecting dogs, for example, and I certainly don’t begrudge the disabled a truly needed accommodation. It’s just that it seems a bit too easy for the simply selfish to game things to take a barely-socialized spoiled-brat animal everywhere.
One thing I wonder about: why can’t police K-9 officers get the same legal accommodations as service dogs as far as being able to go into businesses? In hot weather where I live, I’ve several times seen police cars left running in parking lots while the human partner got lunch, so the canine partner could have air-conditioning to keep the car at a safe temperature. Seems like it would be better to allow the dog to join his/her partner in a restaurant, especially since police dogs are vastly better-trained than a lot of “service animals” I’ve met.