Emotional support animals an animal welfare risk?

[Catherine]

People have been taking their pets everywhere, claiming they are an emotional support animal. People do seem to be getting benefits from having their pet with them. So yes the idea is working from our side of the story.
But what about the animal? These are not trained service animals. Service animals are specially raised and trained to handle many different situations.
The average pet is going to be uncomfortable is many of the situations they encounter.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/j...lfare-risk

Studies are showing that the humans benefit from the situation, but the animals are suffering stress.
Maybe the guy did feel better having his peacock of the plane with him, but it is unlikely the peacock enjoyed the experience.
More study is needed to understand the effects, but clearly some animals are not meant to be emotional support pets. They are not going to be okay with the demands such a role places on them. The whole emotional support pet idea needs to be assessed and defined better. There need to be boundaries and guidelines.
Without them, some pets are going to have stressful unhappy lives.

[Libby]

I can't get the article to load at the moment but this is one thing I wish people would get through their heads, EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ANIMALS ARE NOT SERVICE ANIMALS!

The whole reason for an emotional support animal is for home companionship. It means if you are lonely you can get a doctor to say you need a pet and whoever you rent from HAS to allow that pet no matter the rental rules. They do not have the training to be out in public. In addition service animals can only be dogs and miniature horses. They have to go through hours of training and only 50% of dogs make it through training to become a service dog. I sadly don't have the horse stats memorized on how many make it through training. There aren't that many is my guess.

People who try to pass their emotional support pets (even regular pets) as service pets make it very dangerous for the real service dogs. I've seen so many incidents where a service dog was attacked by someone else's "service dog" only to find out that it was actually an emotional support dog or just someone's dog that wanted to take to the mall. It's a huge public risk.

[Catherine]

Quote:People who try to pass their emotional support pets (even regular pets) as service pets make it very dangerous for the real service dogs. I've seen so many incidents where a service dog was attacked by someone else's "service dog" only to find out that it was actually an emotional support dog or just someone's dog that wanted to take to the mall. It's a huge public risk.

You are absolutely right. Service dogs are trained. People just randomly declare something to be an emotional support animal and suddenly they think it is entitled to everything a service dog is entitled to. It is becoming a real problem. People are claiming peacocks and hamsters and anything else possible to be emotional support animals. I am sure there is someone out there claiming their goldfish as an emotional support animal. 

You hate to think of yet more regulations, but something needs to be done.
I hate to think of a hard working service dog being injured by a pretend service animal.