Emotional Support Animals

I’ve wanted to go over some basics of emotional support animals (ESAs) and service dogs (SDs) for some time now, as there are a lot of misconceptions about both categories. But they’re also incredibly useful for some folks, so I want to share what I know.

For a bit of personal background, my Boston Terrier, Karen, is an ESA and an SD-in-training. I’ll go over SD (including in-training) rules in another post. There’s just too much to cover to go over both types of animals in one entry. One note before we start: Therapy animals are not necessarily ESAs or SDs, although they can be. Therapy animal training is very different and therapy animals serve equally different functions, so just set those aside for now.

One more incredibly important note: There is no such thing as a “certified” ESA, or even a “certified” SD! Any and every place claiming to provide “certification” is lying to you. Period. It does not exist. People think it does, and so many times will ask to see the animal’s certification or even say, “My animal is a certified [ESA or SD].” With the former, they likely don’t know any better, and you need to educate them on how things actually work. With the latter, the person is likely either talking out their ass so they can get ESA/SD benefits, or saying it so that people who are going to cause a fuss if you “can’t show certification” will just shut up and let you on the damn plane.

What’s an emotional support animal (ESA)?

An ESA is an animal owned by a person with a disability, for the benefit of their emotional health. The disability can be anything recognized by the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), a certified psychologist or psychiatrist, etc. — mental or physical.

The main difference between an ESA and a service dog (SD) is that ESAs do not (though they may) have specialized training that helps with a specific need. This is often called a “task.” Tasks can run the gamut from turning on a light switch, to leading someone across a busy street, to staying still with a person having a seizure. I don’t want to get too much into what tasks are right now, since they’re exclusively for SDs and not for ESAs.

Instead, ESAs are there primarily or even completely for exactly what it sounds like — emotional support. There have been probably hundreds of quality research projects indicating that animals improve our mental wellbeing, and can even improve healing times and outcomes. Here’s some info on it from the Mayo Clinic, the #1 hospital in the country. Have you ever been sad, or mad, and you pet your dog or cat and felt better? That’s sort of like how ESAs work for people with disabilities: ESAs are there to improve the mental health and thus, in many cases, the physical health of its owner with a disability.

What rights do ESAs have?

ESAs have, compared to SDs, very limited legal protections. However, they’re not without any protections. ESAs are protected in these two areas and these two areas only: housing, and airline travel. One very important note before we move on is that ESAs technically only have these protections if you have documentation from your doctor saying you can benefit from an ESA (it’s also important to have the documentation say what kind of animal it is).

Ok, Let’s go over housing first.

Things landlords or any other housing leadership body must allow:

You can have an ESA as long as it does not pose a danger to the health or safety of the community (e.g. dog bites, or if you have a tiger…). This goes for any housing situation — apartment, condo, house, or even college dorm.
Your ESA can go anywhere that is not considered public property, and/or is part of the living community (e.g. your apartment, community party room).
Your ESA can theoretically be any kind of animal (mini horse, guinea pig, bird, cat, tarantula…) since the idea is that ESAs do not need to perform specific tasks for you. Although, obviously, as mentioned above, trying to argue that you should be able to keep a tiger or a walrus in your condo may lead to some legal battles…

Things your landlord cannot do:

Charge you to have or keep the ESA. Fees that they would otherwise charge, such as pet deposits or pet rent, do not apply to ESAs. You should be aware, however, that they can charge for damage after the fact (e.g. if you move out and lo and behold, your cat peed everywhere and ruined the carpet).
Ask you what your disability is — and they especially cannot require you to provide documentation listing your disability. They can ask for documentation from your doctor saying that you would benefit from your ESA, but it is super against the law for them to require you to “prove” your disability. This is particularly important for folks with mental illnesses or other “invisible” disabilities.
Ban certain breeds or even types of animals. The most obvious example here is dog breed discrimination: Most rental units, and even some cities, have outright banned certain dog breeds (usually pitbulls, and sometimes also mastiffs, shar peis, akitas, rottweilers, and others). Or, you may find that a housing unit allows cats, but not dogs. However, these rules do not apply to ESAs, period. The rule about the animal being “safe” still applies, but the landlord must make a case that this specific animal, this one right in front of me, is dangerous. So, for example, if your ESA is a pitbull, your landlord cannot keep you from having it unless it does something that indicates it, as a single entity and not as a breed, is a danger to the community.

So how about air travel? Most of what applies to housing applies to air travel as well, with a difference being: The animal needs to behave itself well — no pooping on the seat or barking at everybody (although really, your animal shouldn’t do this at home either). You should still carry documentation with you from your doctor saying that this is your ESA, but like with housing, air travel staff are not allowed to ask you what your disability is, and you do not have to tell them. They are also not allowed to charge you fees (like they would charge someone who wants to fly with their pet that isn’t an ESA), are not allowed to ban your ESA because it’s a “banned breed,” and are not allowed to make your ESA fly cargo.

Bonus thoughts

This post is getting long (we’ve covered so much, but there’s still a lot we haven’t gone over, too!), so I’ll wrap it up with a few tidbits to think about:

Having an ESA is cool. I mean, wow, you get to have a pet for free! No fees! This is why you hear stories about people bringing their dogs onto flights for free, and then the dog pees everywhere or barks the entire time, and is not “really” an ESA at all. I have literally sat next to people on planes who have told me, “Hahahaha! I told them my dog was an [ESA or SD] so they let me fly with her for free! Hahahaha I’m sneaky.” No, you’re an asshole. It’d be like parking in a handicap spot and saying, “Oh wow, nobody’s going to stop me! This is great! I get to park really close! It’s so easy to game the system!” If you have an ESA, that’s awesome, and I’m so glad. If you do not, or you only call your animal an ESA when you want something, don’t. It’s objectively wrong, and can and has made it harder for folks with documented disabilities to get the benefits they are legally entitled to. At the same time, you are also an asshole if you assume that someone who does not have a “visible” disability is “faking it.” It’s better to assume the person really does have a disability than to assume they don’t.
If you read this post and thought, “Hot damn, I have a disability! I would love to get a pet,” here are your next steps: 1. Go talk to a doctor. I know this isn’t very easy for many people because of cost, but having documentation is the safest way to go about having an ESA. You don’t want to risk getting yourself an ESA and having a future landlord take you to court because you don’t have a letter from your doctor. 2. Figure out what kind of animal you want. Because the animal doesn’t need to perform a specific task, think about what kind of animal best matches your emotional needs. 3. Once you get an animal, make sure it has at least moderately good manners. This will help you in the long run — landlords and air travel staff will be a lot less prickly if your animal is well-behaved than if it’s rambunctious.
If you are considering getting an ESA, and would like a dog, and you are an experienced dog owner or committed to taking your dog through guided training, strongly consider adopting a pitbull. Shelters are full of them, and they can be very hard to adopt out, since so many places have banned them. But you, as someone with a disability, looking for an ESA, have a great opportunity since landlords and air travel staff can’t ban your ESA based on its breed alone. Just make sure to get your pitbull (or any other restricted breed) trained up, to avoid people saying, “See? I told you pitbulls were bad!!” when your dog does something naughty. One bonus of getting a pitbull is that many shelters will actually provide extra resources to you, such as free doggy kindergarten, because they want their pitbulls to go out into the world and show people just how great they are.

Woof. (hehehe). That’s it for ESAs today. Happy animal-ing!