It’s something we’ve all seen- you’re out in public somewhere, and someone has a “service animal” vest on an animal. And, from its behavior, it’s clearly not a service animal. Chances are, it’s actually that person’s ESA (emotional support animal). But why is it important to make the distinction between the two, and how is conflating one with the other harmful?
I have an emotional support animal.
Her name is Lady Ophelia, Thing of Evil, and she’s a rabbit. More specifically, a Flemish cross. So she’s a big girl with a lot of fluff and even more sass. She loves to aggressively headbutt me or bite my ankles if I’m late feeding her, or kick me in the face if I don’t wake up early enough to give her fresh hay. If I’m sitting on my bed, chances are she’ll start biting me until I move, just so that she can sit where I was sitting. If she’s misbehaving and I tell her no, she’ll look right at me, and then slowly and deliberately do the thing.
That being said, she makes a wonderful ESA. Whenever I’m having a rough mental health day, she’ll paw at me until I pick her up and give her a nice good hug for a couple minutes. Whenever I’m really sick, she’ll hop up onto the bed and turn into a rabbit loaf on my chest. She’ll only get off to eat, drink, or use the litter box until I’m feeling better. And we all know how I can get sick all the time, thanks to my immunodeficiency. As evil as she can be, she’s a very good ESA. So why am I not saying she’s my service animal, when she so clearly provides me a service that benefits my health?
Well, that’s because she isn’t one.
So what is an ESA?
An ESA is an animal that provides emotional support. That’s basically it. It’s not trained to do a specific task or tasks, it’s not licensed, it has very few legal protections. Basically, in order for something to be your ESA, you need a note from a mental health professional saying something along the lines of “having this animal will benefit my client’s mental health.” The only legal protections they usually have is housing, within reasonable limits. Almost anything else is up to the discretion of the individual establishment.
By “reasonable limits” that means more or less that it needs to be something that realistically fits in your house or apartment. So, something like a cow or a horse would be straight out. It can’t be a disturbance or a threat to other tenants. So, while dogs are generally okay, if it’s a very loud dog, or a very aggressive dog, if you’re a renter, your landlord is well within their rights to say you can’t have it there.
Your ESA doesn’t have legal protections in public like a service animal does. A note from a doctor or an online registration (which are all scams) can’t make your ESA a service animal. They’re two totally different things.
Okay then, but what’s a service animal?
A service animal is an animal specifically trained and licensed to do a specific task or series of tasks. The service animals that you’re most likely to be familiar with are seeing-eye dogs. Most service animals are going to be dogs. But there are service dogs for all sorts of varieties of disabilities. There are dogs trained to help wheelchair users, or alert and aid those with seizure disorders or diabetes. There are even service dogs to help veterans with PTSD and people with autism.
The point is, they’re highly trained animals that are specifically licensed to do a specific thing. They’re not a pet, they’re a working animal. Are they working 24/7? Not usually, no. It’s perfectly normal for someone who has a service dog to have their animal be partially or even entirely “off-duty” when they’re in a safe and familiar environment, like their home.
You can’t treat a service dog like any other dog you’d see walking down the street. Even if it has the most pet-able face ever, you don’t interact with someone’s service dog. It is their assistive device, and them being distracted can get in the way of literally life and death situations.
Even for those who don’t like dogs, there’s no reason to be trepidatious around a service dog. These are dogs that were specifically selected for obedience and a mild-mannered temperament, and then spent the first two years of their life in rigorous training to ensure they’d put their job and the safety of their handler above all else.
So why is saying an emotional support animal is a service animal an issue?
Well, it makes life a whole lot harder for those who actually have a real service animal when emotional support animals get labeled and treated as service animals.
While establishments can’t to turn away service animals, that’s something that’s difficult to enforce. But it’s not uncommon for people to bring their poorly trained ESA to an establishment and take advantage of the fact that service animals can’t be turned away or questioned. And when that happens, those places will start to cause problems for people with actual service animals.
And why wouldn’t they? If someone comes in with their dog, wearing a service dog vest, claiming it’s a licensed service dog, you can’t really do anything. But then that dog starts running around and barking at everything. Starts nipping at anyone who walks past it. Generally causes a ruckus and is an issue. You’re going to be a little more suspicious next time someone comes in with a dog wearing the vest. And the more it happens, the more suspicious you’ll be, until you start saying “No, sorry, we can’t have your animal here.”
Part of the problem is that anyone can buy fake licenses for service animals online, as well as fake service animal vests. And too often, people will buy them for their precious pooch because they either don’t understand the ramifications of doing so, or simply don’t care because they think they’re special.
Another way it’s a problem is how other people are allowed to treat the animal.
If someone is out and about with their ESA, disguised as a service animal, chances are they’ll let other people interact with the animal. Most people want to pet the cute doggy they see. And why wouldn’t they? Dogs are frickin’ adorable and are easily the second-best thing to pet (behind, of course, rabbits).
But then people who don’t know better will get used to being able to interact with a dog in a vest. They’ll see an actual service dog and think it’s alright to interact with it. And as we already established, distracting a real service dog can result in life-or-death situation. If you’re relying on your service dog to notify you of an oncoming seizure or diabetic crash, and someone is distracting your dog, you could very easily die. If a blind person doesn’t know where the sidewalk ends and the street starts and someone is distracting their dog, they could walk right into oncoming traffic without realizing it.
While a distracted emotional support animal doesn’t result in severe consequences, a distracted service animal can.
So what can we do?
Well, for one, we can make sure there’s more education around the matter. The more people who are educated about the difference, the more likely the average person will know how to handle a given situation properly.
We can crack down on distributors of fake service animal vests, for those who think the rules don’t apply to them, and they and their darling doggy are special. Because the rules exist for a reason, and people who think they’re above them or that they’re the exception are the root of a lot of the problems.
Yes, I have an emotional support animal. But you’ll never see me take her out in public and act like she has legal protections, and you’ll never see me refer to her as a service animal. Because she’s not one, and the difference is important.
Until next time.
-Nick
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