Noticing increasing number of "Service" animals!!!

[NLH Arizona]

About ESAs: A girl I worked with about 8 years ago suffers from severe PTSD after a brutal sexual attack. She does have a dog you could call an ESA. BUT, she does have letters from her therapist with regard to her PTSD. She doesn't dress him up in "service animal" attire. The dog is small, but is well-trained, like a larger service animal. I know that she would not be able to leave her apartment and try to live as normal a life as she does without that dog.

The lady's dog is considered a service dog under the ADA regulations:

 

Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.

I glad that she is being helped by her service dog.

[chengkp75]

nuf sed

 

Leave determination of who needs service animals up to the professionals (such as members of the APA), and try to practice a bit of consideration for others by acknowledging your admitted limitation and accepting that you don't know other people's circumstances well enough to know whether the use of a service animal is needed.

 

No one that I've read on this thread is debating who needs a service animal, or why. Even the APA, as you cite, differentiates between psychiatric service animals and emotional support animals. Yes, there can be psychiatric service animals, for handicaps that are not visible, and these animals are covered under the ADA (as far as that goes aboard a foreign flag cruise ship), but they also must exhibit the behavior required of a service animal when in public. The ADA, and the APA agrees, that "misbehaved" service animals can be ordered to leave public spaces. If you google "APA and service animals" you will find many hits, from prestigious journals like Psychology Today on the increasing scamming of the emotional support animal requirements.

 

It appears that you believe that emotional support animals should be treated exactly as service animals are, and if that is the case, then you need to bring this to Congress' attention, not debate it here on CC, because only one of those two forums will be able to change the current law to what you wish.

[mnocket]

At the risk of beating a dead horse...... I've noticed a fair amount of misinformation here regarding service animals . In case anyone is interested in the rules straight from the horses mouth, here ya go. https://www.ada.gov/regs2010/service_animal_qa.html