Emotional support animals are an important part of everyday life for some people. Support animals do not require much training as opposed to service animals who are required to be trained, for example, to guide or be someone's ears for them. Support animals main jobs are to offer companionship, emotional support and are a comforting force to their owner or handler. These animals are not taught to support full disabilities like a service animal. The owner with the support animal may be in some way mentally or psychotically challenged, but not completely handicapped and therefore the animal is not dealing with the complete weight of a disability. Meaning they are still able to perceive many things, but may not be able to handle it somehow. That is where the support animal is important in keeping their owner "grounded", I guess you could say.
In order to get a support animal however, the person is required to have a note of referral from his or her doctor suggesting that they should get a service animal. They must then go through a matching process so as to match the owner and animal as best as possible.
Unfortunately, support animals are not granted the same access as the service animals are. That is unfortunate because these animals are just important to their owners as service animals are. They are there to help their owners, and it seems almost as if, because they are not trained as rigorously as service animals, that they are not to be trusted as much. I think they should be trusted. Just because they lack the strict training of service animals, does not mean that they are not trained. In fact, the Canadian Service Dog Foundation trains all their dogs and cats to behave properly and support their owner before they are matched, therefore there is a small chance of anything going wrong. All the information provided here can be found at: Emotional Support Animals.
I think emotional support animals are pretty awesome, to be honest. That being said, I can understand why they may not get as many "privileges" as service animals. Training makes a huge difference, and at least State-side, I've heard of a few people who've just claimed their animals as emotional support to be able to bypass "no-animal" policies in various apartments and such.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad there's an organisation for it, though, and that they actually make an effort to match the animal to the owners!