Spot on!
I know I’ve seen shows and read articles about it. It’s generally people with severe trauma or autism-like conditions.
But since Karen is going to use it to get Mr Fluffles in a seat next to her, despite Mr Fluffles getting air sick and shitting himself in protest…
Edit:
Honestly the fault for all this lies on the service animal industry in many ways. The fact that literally anyone could claim any animal as a “service animal” and there was no verification process is 95% of the problem. I could take my cat on an airplane and claim it was a service animal. Or my dog. Hell, my parents had a well trained dog they called a service animal even though she wasn’t (they never took her on planes, but they got into other ‘no pets allowed’ areas with her).
A fair point, but sometimes that isn’t an option. Also they can still use dogs. So… I hope your support animal is canine cause then it’s fine?
Maybe if you can’t handle being on a plane without an animal, you should drive a car.
I think our vets should be able to get some sort of written exception, directly from the military.
Sure, I’ll make an excuse for a soldier with PTSD.
The airlines we dealt with (I’m a travel agent) generally had very specific guidelines regarding emotional support animals, passengers had to provide proof in other words. Caused a lot of friction, lending me to believe they just wanted a pet to travel for free. Also there was a case where the pet was allowed on board (i believe this was settled out of court )and then bit another passenger which caused a lot of problems as well as emotional support animals aren’t necessarily trained, unlike service dogs. So yeah, they can shit all over the place. Sucks for those who really need one, but I am of the opinion that this is long overdue.
Both are true, imo.
“This is why we can’t have nice things,” sort of scenario.
I think you should be able to bring a support animal on the flight, but only if you can get written buy-in from every single other passenger.
Or maybe they should have special flights for people who want to bring animals on board.
Somewhere between 10-15% of people are allergic to dogs (and more are allergic to cats.) Many people, especially small children, have phobias of dogs, and there’s no way to verify an animal’s training, nor easily control it if it becomes distressed. They don’t belong in a small metal tube cramped in with 200 human passengers for hours. If you need a support animal to be with you 100% of the time, you just can’t fly commercial airlines.
Well I’ll say this for the concept of Smaug as an emotional-support-crocodile: if he’s on your plane and a fellow passenger is stressing you out, Smaug will deal with the problem. Along with all the other tasty problems on the plane as well. (And his owner if he’s hungry enough.)
I’d like to see them try and stop him. And anyway, you’ve got it the wrong way around, I’m pretty sure you’re Smaug’s emotional support animal.
If I was on a plane with my dogs I’d be their emotional support animal. Lots of pets hate to fly, and I’m not sure why their owners put them through it.
Well that’s the thing. True emotional support dogs are trained to provide actual support to their owner during those times. It works.
What actually happened was people used the lax rules to get their pets on planes for free.
The actual support animals are typically very, very well trained. The ones going crazy on the planes are usually just house pets.
It’s not just the abusers though. If airlines stopped killing pets, some of the pet owners might stop trying to lie about why their animal is there. It’s probably easy to forget because of one disaster after another with this industry, but the way they sometimes handle pets has been pretty tragic.
This is an excellent point and probably what has driven passengers to take advantage of the lax rules in the first place.
Or maybe leave your pets at home?
Not every trip is a… vacation.
I wonder what the statistics are on pet injury/death during airplane cargo transport. We obviously hear stories here and there, but I wonder if those are tragic one-offs or statistically high occurrences.
Statistically, it wasn’t high but…
I mean go look at our pet topic and ask yourself which pet deserves to suffocate to death. I think what makes some of these especially hard is the ones that make the news, they sound so preventable, and yeah if they had been with the owners, they likely wouldn’t die. It’s hard to tell someone not to hold their cat where they can soothe and calm them, know there is breathable air, and it’s temperature controlled to throw them into that space with the other cargo instead.
And no, not everyone is taking their pet on tropical paradise vacations and refusing to leave them behind in some shelter which… have problems themselves. There are valid reasons for people to travel with their pets, and I think many pet owners who could afford it would choose a safer option than throw them in with cargo but not next to the guy with dog allergies… if there was actually an option for that.
But the problems with the emotional pets, I mean it was not good. It would be a tough call for me to take my pet screaming for hours on a plane or traveling days in a car. I wouldn’t lie about it, but even if I bought a seat for the carrier it would be miserable. I don’t envy anyone making those choices, and purse dogs suddenly seem more viable when it comes to travel.
Thanks for the link. That’s statistically really low. The info on certain breeds of dogs being much more susceptible is interesting.
One of the general issues with “emotional support animals” is that there has never been any official certification or training for them. You just tell your doctor that you need it, and they write a prescription for it, which usually amounted to nothing more than a vague note. Other folks figured out that there was no real governance, so they just started naming whatever they wanted as their ESA. There are zillion scammy sites that say they will “officially register” your ESA, which confuses the issue for people.
On the flipside, the fact that businesses are afraid of of being sued so they usually restrict their employees from even questioning things hasn’t helped matters.
- When it is not obvious what service an animal provides, only limited inquiries are allowed. Staff may ask two questions: (1) is the dog a service animal required because of a disability, and (2) what work or task has the dog been trained to perform. Staff cannot ask about the person’s disability, require medical documentation, require a special identification card or training documentation for the dog, or ask that the dog demonstrate its ability to perform the work or task.