First there were service dogs -- highly trained animals that were fully certified, and uncommonly seen for the most part. Now a sudden rise in emotional support animals everywhere has created skepticism around the legitimacy of the animals.
Aya Almasi is a Resident Advisor at USC's Parkside student housing. She has lived in the dorms with her emotional support cat, Kuro for two years.
Almasi says that her cat essentially saved her life and helped her overall mental health. "It was a good thing for me because I was struggling with depression and lack of motivation. Caring for something that needed me was really good for my mental health," says Almasi.
Emotional support animals are designed to help people who suffer from different mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety and post —traumatic stress disorder. They provide comfort, companionship and a sense of ease that is supposed to help their owners with their symptoms.
For some ESA owner's, having their pet with them is just as important as medication and therapy.
"I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that my cat saved my life," Almasi says. "It feels like she's my life partner. We just grow together, and we're there for each other."
Healthcare lawyer Erin K. Jackson, Managing Partner at Jackson LLP, said in a statement, "These animals play fundamentally different roles in supporting their owners' health."
An ESA "can help someone who otherwise feels alone in the world, in life, in their relationship — feel loved and accompanied," Jackson says. "This can dramatically improve that person's overall mental health and decrease the debilitating nature of their symptoms. It's so important when encouraging them to reengage with the world."
While emotional support animals may prove to be beneficial for owners who actually need them, for airlines and many of its customers, ESAs are becoming increasingly problematic.
There are very few rules governing emotional support animals, and there is no official registry, so it's hard to establish how many there are. To present a pet whether a dog, a ferret or a snake as an emotional support animal, all one has to do is provide a letter written by a licensed mental health practitioner attesting to the psychological benefit of that pet's presence.
Many of these "official looking" certification letters can actually be bought online for a relatively small fee. One of the most popular online companies, CertaPet, deems itself as top rated among online emotional support animal certification services. It lists "skipping an animal fee" when flying with your pet and "avoiding a pet surcharge in your apartment building" as two of the top three reasons to get an emotional support animal prescription.
With certification, an ESA gets two legal protections: the ability to fly with a person who has an emotional or psychological disability, and to qualify for no —pet housing.
Along with the relatively easy process of registering an animal as ESA, the incentive is also appealing to those who want to save money. This is especially true in instances where passengers on flights use fraudulent documentation to game the system, thereby allowing their pets to fly for free.
This year, United Airlines made efforts to reduce the number of ESAs onboard commercial flights, after facing a 75% increase of ESAs in one year, a drastic increase unlikely driven by legitimate usage alone.
The steady increase in ESAs along with the potential chance of this issue persisting has caused many airlines to make a change to their animal travel policies.
United Airline's new policy now requires customers to provide confirmation that the animal can properly behave in public and provide a health and vaccination form signed by the animal's veterinarian.
Additionally, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) published a national survey this month found that "61 percent of flight attendants" have seen an emotional support animal cause a disturbance midflight within the last two years. The survey was conducted among 5,000 flight attendants employed by 30 different airlines.
AFA spokeswoman, Taylor Garland, says that passengers and airlines alike have increasingly complained of animals on planes causing disturbances that are uncomfortable situations for everyone in the cabin.
"What we've seen most commonly are issues of defecation, or urination in the cabin," Garland says. "When you buy an airplane ticket, you don't necessarily realize that you may be sitting next to a dog, or a cat, or a pig, or hamster."
Garland acknowledges that there is "definitely fraud or abuse" occurring in the emotional support animal designation. She believes that passengers on flights are able to pass their dogs off as an illegitimate ESA because of the lack of regulation from the Department of Transportation.
"We believe that the DOT should regulate service animals and emotional support animals separately. The way they regulate it now is emotional support animals are under the service animal designation, which prevents airlines from really putting more policies in place."
However, there is an important difference between service animals and emotional support animals, says Julia Provonchee, a consulting dog trainer for The Pixie Project dog shelter. She trains dogs to become service animals, and is able to assess a dog's ability to be trained. "Emotional support animals are not required to be trained, which opens a lot of questions and concerns about public safety," she said.
The AFA has called on the Department of Transportation to take action and help regulate the abuse of 'emotional support animal' designation in the system.
Recent incidents include a dog that bit its owner's seatmate on a Delta flight and a child who was slightly injured by an emotional support dog during the boarding of a Southwest flight.
"This is not to say that all emotional support dogs or animals are badly behaved. Nor is it to say that all service animals are perfect, but they are trained to focus on their job, not on distractions," Provonchee continued.
Service animals also are evaluated for temperament before they undergo training.
"If something startles the service dog, it's OK to be startled," Provonchee said. "But if a wheelchair falls over and there is a sign of aggression, that is a clear indicator of not being an appropriate" candidate for the role.
Airlines say that many of these untrained pets posing as support animals are a "threat to passengers, crew, and even properly trained service dogs."
"I will you tell that, actually, some of our favorite animals are service animals," Provonchee said. "You wouldn't even know that they're there. They're trained to almost make themselves invisible and to give their owners the care and the guidance that they need. But these emotional support animals are not trained to be in these spaces."
Emotional Support Animals News Feature
Airlines are currently awaiting a response from the Department of Transportation to take action on this growing problem.
Emotional support animal owners are also hoping for increased regulation.
"It makes it difficult for people who truly need an emotional support animal to travel," says Almasi. "Everyone automatically thinks their fake and that you're just trying to scam the system."