Dear Porky and Buddy,
I was in a grocery store the other day and a man came in with his dog on a leash. I love dogs, but I thought that was a little unusual, so I watched them.
The dog was wearing a vest that said “Therapy animal – Please don’t pet me.”
I know not to interfere with service dogs, so I just observed from a distance.
To be honest, it was horrifying to watch.
Unlike most service dogs, this dog appeared to know nothing about basic manners. He was sniffing at food displays, jumping up on people and he even stopped to pee in the middle of any aisle.
Nobody in the store did anything. What’s up with that?
Eric
Dear Eric,
You are right about service dogs. They are highly trained to perform specific tasks to help people with significant disabilities and a big part of their training includes manners in public.
Therapy dogs are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act and they have the right to be in most public places.
There is however no formal “certification,” so business owners have no clear way to tell whether such a dog is legitimate.
We suspect that the person in the grocery store bought the vest from one of many dubious internet sites that sell such paraphernalia all while making completely bogus claims about their legitimacy.
There are two other categories of “helping” animals that come into play in figuring out what is real and what is a scam in these kinds of situations – emotional support animals and therapy animals.
They are very different, but the problems with them are similar.
An emotional support animal is a pet (usually a dog but it could be a different species) that provides therapeutic support to a person with a mental illness.
To be recognized as an emotional support animal, the pet must be prescribed by a licensed mental health professional for a person with a diagnosed mental illness.
The prescription must specify that the person has an impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities and that the presence of the animal is necessary for his or her mental health.
People with emotional support animals do not have the same rights to public access as those with a service dog.
They may only accompany their owners in public areas without the permission of the business owner.
They may travel with their owner on an airplane and live with their owner in locations covered by the Fair Housing Amendments Act even if there is a “no pets” policy. That’s pretty much it.
We are all animal lovers and we all get “emotional support” from our pets. That’s a good thing.
But there are unscrupulous people who basically fake a mental illness in order to obtain a phony “credential” certifying their pet as an emotional support animal, primarily in order to get them in the cabin of a plane for free.
The same dubious businesses that we mentioned before sell these meaningless certificates and also arrange for an over the phone mental illness diagnosis.
They abuse an important service depended upon by people with real disabilities.
That’s not a good thing.
Then there are therapy animals.
They provide affection and comfort to people, usually in institutional settings such as hospitals, retirement homes, libraries, and schools.
These are individual pets, not working animals like service dogs.
But they have a special aptitude for interacting with members of the public and enjoy doing so.
Therapy animal owners volunteer their time to visit with their animal in the community.
There are great national organizations that recruit, evaluate, and train therapy animals and their handlers and organize volunteer opportunities for them.
Petpartners.org is just one of them and it has a local affiliate, petpartnerscny.org that does great work all over Central New York.
A therapy animal has no special rights of access, except in those facilities where they are welcomed.
They may not enter businesses with “no pets” policies or accompany their handler in the cabin of an airplane no matter what their therapy animal designation is.
But you can go online and for about $59 buy yourself a silly kit with a certificate verifying that your pet is a therapy animal.
Therapy animal programs are great programs and you should check them out if you have an especially mellow and friendly pet of any persuasion.
But don’t waste your money on a kit.
Donate it to an animal organization instead.
The Oswego County Humane Society provides spay/neuter services and assistance, fostering and adoption of animals in urgent need, humane education programs, and information and referrals to animal lovers throughout Oswego County.
Located at 29 W. Seneca St., Oswego, NY.
Phone: 315-207-1070.
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.oswegohumane.org
Because People and Pets Are Good for Each Other.
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