The Emotional Support Animal Racket

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-emotional-support-animal-racket

33 37 2 years ago

rob74• 2 years ago

At the end of the day, most pets are emotional support animals (I mean, unless you use your dog to herd sheep or hunt, in which case I would say it's not really a pet either, or your cat to keep your barn free of mice). Why would you go to all the trouble of owning a cat or dog if having them wouldn't make you feel better?

gumby• 2 years ago

Sure, but some people suffer some small depression and recover and others more profound depression and need more extensive treatment. I think we can all recognize that these two situations are different.

So if there’s a pet ban for whatever reason it’s reasonable to extend an exception to help those with significant suffering while it would be unreasonable to extend the same to me.

hackernewds• 2 years ago

Better to get rid of pet ban :) most are impractical. Animals are our friends and often family

legitster2• 2 years ago

So if there’s a pet ban for whatever reason it’s reasonable to extend an exception to help those with significant suffering while it would be unreasonable to extend the same to me.

The difference is, if I have a space that's not good for people with disabilities (up a flight of stairs, narrow doorways, etc) I don't have to worry about them renting it (or they have a funding source to help make improvements).

If I have a space that's not good for pets people will still force a way to bring in their pets. At a certain point it's even a welfare issue for the pets! If they are in a tiny apartment of the 4th story of a walk-up and there is no lawn or anything, that's an inhumane place to keep a dog!

bena• 2 years ago

We joke that I'm the emotional support human for one of our cats due to the way he favors and hangs around me.

eyelidlessness4• 2 years ago

The author makes some interesting points, but when I read this…

But I’ve had patients with ADHD ask me to certify their snake. Sorry, I refuse to believe a snake can help you with ADHD

… I have more confidence in their class analysis than their clinical understanding of their own patients. I mean, I don’t personally have a snake, but I don’t see why it’s far fetched that having one would be helpful for managing my ADHD. It seems so obviously plausible that I don’t even know where I’d start trying to chip away at the refusal to believe it.

jkingsman• 2 years ago

But the process runs into the same failure mode as Adderall prescriptions: it combines an insistence
on gatekeepers with a total lack of interest over whether they actually gatekeep. The end result is
a gatekeeping cargo cult, where you have to go through the (expensive, exhausting) motions of asking
someone’s permission, without the process really filtering out good from bad applicants. And the end
result of that is a disguised class system, where anyone rich and savvy enough to engage with the
gatekeeping process gets extra rights, but anyone too poor or naive to access it has to play by the
normal, punishingly-restrictive rules.

What a fantastic point. Well put, and it rings true for so many systems I interact with in life.

drawkward• 2 years ago

Your emotional support animal in the [airplane|restaurant|movies] causes me stress and anxiety.

Why do your rights supersede mine?

ohnoitsahuman2• 2 years ago

Because the pitbull moms are a reliable voting bloc.

tengbretson• 2 years ago

My 4 year old requires an emotional support parent to travel, but unfortunately that has never gotten me a free ticket.

eadmund2• 2 years ago

The end result is a gatekeeping cargo cult, where you have to go through the (expensive, exhausting) motions of asking someone’s permission, without the process really filtering out good from bad applicants.

I am reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_of_clergy, which started out as separate courts for clergymen and ended up being a way for folks to escape execution for their first felony. Along the way, there was a whole time period where if one could simply read a passage from the Bible, then one was assumed to be a clergyman — so anyone literate could claim the benefit. Hardly the original intent!

sosuke• 2 years ago

I can see the author's perspective I think but the argument comes out like a little rant at the world and how things are than any real objection.

Places say no pets, which keeps out 99% of the pets, but then a more responsible or at least more determined 1% came up with a way to excuse their pet presence. They "earn" the ability to take their pet into areas otherwise restricted. Is that a class system? I wouldn't relate the two since it isn't something assigned at birth. However I know I'm woefully ignorant on these matters.

Pets are responsibility. They are entirely dependent on the owner for continued existence. I do not agree with relating them to Adderall prescriptions in any way shape or form.

------

Or! Can this be related to the viewpoint of "It is better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be convicted." and we just put up with all the bad actors for the good of the people who really need it. Given my bad experiences in medicine I'd side with this argument if nothing else.

nathan_compton• 2 years ago

They are entirely dependent on the owner for continued existence.

They are dependent on someone but an owner moving to a new apartment could theoretically find another person to take care of them.

giantg24• 2 years ago

"it combines an insistence on gatekeepers with a total lack of interest over whether they actually gatekeep."

This is more of less true of many laws and regulations requiring some sort of permit.

I had to get an electrical permit for some simple work. I had to pay a permit fee and the inspector would come out to check it. Of course it's rubber stamp approved by the secretary who has no knowledge of electrical work. Then the inspector came out and had no knowledge of electrical work (he didn't even know what questions to ask). All they cared about was the fee. I could have run 30 amps with 14ga wire and they wouldn't have caught it.

zer00eyz• 2 years ago

>> ... nobody has a rubric for this evaluation that makes sense. ... I’m saying that when you take out all the legalese, the executive summary is “think really hard about whether this animal really helps this person, then think really hard about whether it will cause trouble, and if it helps the person and won’t cause trouble, sign the letter”.

Shoddy, unreproducible, not backed up science... is not science. There are plenty of blind people, handycapped people, seizure dogs and all sorts of legitimate service animals out there...

Looking to fund a study "Do emotional support animals prevent their owners from being selfish, and entitled"

rovr138• 2 years ago

What about,

"Do emotional support animals cause their owners to be selfish and entitled?"

The fact a subset abuses something does not mean the whole set does and should be penalized.

legitster2• 2 years ago

This is a frustrating topic for me. Me and my friend were attacked by dogs as children and I still have a deep seeded fear of them (I'm mostly okay around them now). And then my own child had a bad experience with an "emotional support dog" at a young age, and is still deathly afraid of all dogs.

So I take this issue a bit more personally because I still get actively traumatized by dogs. But society has decided I don't get a choice in the matter so I was just forced to suck it up. Just try to telling an American in 2024 you don't like being around dogs.

Even I will still grant that some people really need them, but I think that arguing there should be no standard is selfish.

When we are talking about "service animal" status, we are supposed to be talking about animals getting certified to get special exemptions to go to places other animals are not because the animal's behavior was certified. For some reason it got twisted to certify the needs of the owner. I don't care if you do or do not need a pet alligator for support, but if I am going to sit next to it on a plane, I want to see it's certificate, not yours.

There is a strong need for a nation/international governing body with clear requirements. Once that is in place, we can work on providing cheaper, non-profit, or even insurance-covered options to comply. Unfortunately it's a wild west out there, where people are just exploiting the actual disabled in order to sneak their 80lb pitbull into an Airbnb without having to pay for it.

The Emotional Support Animal Racket

Related Stories