Service animals are truly a wonderful thing. They come in four different categories: Physical service animals that are for people with physical disabilities and undergo more stringent requirements and training. These include dogs and miniature horses. Then there are emotional support animals which are for emotional disabilities and do not require any specified training other than behaving well in public and being non aggressive. These can include any pets, such as dogs, cats, rabbits, turtles, even birds or fish. Psychiatric service dogs are for mental disabilities and are only dogs. Finally, therapy animals, primarily dogs, cats, and mini horses, travel with their handler to hospitals, nursing homes and many other places in an effort to help the mental and emotional well-being of the patients and tenants.
My cat Growly, who was the picture on my first two articles, is registered as my emotional support animal. I suffer from social anxiety and OCD, which I take medication for. While the medicine is incredibly helpful, I still have bad days. So I went through the process of talking to my doctor and getting a recommendation as to how I would go about getting him registered. I found the NSARCO, which came highly recommended. To my surprise, despite the fact I had gotten a diagnosis, advice, and medicine from my doctor, the website did not require any actual proof of disabilities. On one of the pages of NSARCO, it even lists the more common physical and emotional disabilities that might require service animal registration. Yet, you do not have to provide any documentation of a disability you might have.
This piqued my interest, so out of curiosity, I did some further research and found out that I am allowed to take my service animal into stores and even restaurants, given that he is well-behaved and clean. By law, the establishment is not allowed to ask me what the animal is for or ask me to demonstrate the animal's ability to do his job. I cannot be refused service or housing and I cannot be charged pet fees as long as the animal is clean and well-behaved. Finally, my animal is allowed to fly with me rather than being forced to be stowed under the plane. All of these benefits to having a service animal seem fair. Unfortunately, since registration requires no proof of disability, anyone can register their animal. Who doesn't want to take their awesome dog with them everywhere? My only problem with this lack of registration requirements is the potential for abuse. I don't take my cat to stores 98 percent of the time and when I do, he has his vest on, and stays laying down in the baby seat the whole time. My primary reason for actually registering him was for the ease of travel as well as the housing advantage. My concern is if this is so weakly supervised, what's to prevent abuse of system and eventually the system getting removed or so stringently monitored it is basically useless? A potential solution to this problem is to put in place a simple proof of disability. This is not to discourage people from getting help, but rather encourage people to get professional help rather self diagnosing and treating.
I love my tubby Growly. He has done so much to help sooth my anxiety and compulsions that were at one point crippling. Coupled with medicine and/or therapy, service animals are a wonderful supplement to keeping everyone's mental health right where it should be.
