And I find myself having a weird reaction to it - because I totally support the idea of mental/emotional disabilities as well as physical disabilities, and, furthermore, I'm very aware of how much comfort and support an animal can give.
But an emotional support duck? An emotional support goat? (As cited in the article) Let me tell you, I've been forced to sit next to a goat on top of a bus for more than an hour and it was not a fun experience, and it almost ate my jeans. (Yes, you laughed then and now, Mr.
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havenstone, but the goat wasn't gnawing on your clothes!) If I pay $200+ for a plane seat, I kinda feel I have the right not to have a goat in the seat next to me, no matter how comforting its presence is to the third person in the row. Now, if there were definite proof that the goat were fully trained and calm, maybe. But even then, what if the other person was allergic? It's a tightly confined space, airline seating. And lots of people are afraid of dogs. So yeah...I'm not really sure I'm willing to defend your right to take your emotional support duck on my plane. But maybe that makes me a bad person, or at least a selfish one.
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I'm sorry, but someone who is not emotionally stable enough to sit through a meal without their emotional support animal does not sound like they are being supported. They sound like they are addicted.
Goats are fairly trainable, in theory, but they'll still have trouble with stairs and I suspect they won't focus for long periods of time in the way that a working service dog will. I'm willing to accept service dogs in an airplane cabin, because they're trained to be minimal presences for other people. They're silent and trained to leave others alone; as you know, goats are pretty nosy animals.
See, I just remembered that I've brought hermit crabs on planes....
But seriously, I'm with
And I'm okay with emotional support animals going everywhere, even though I'm sceptical about using them that way, as long as they're as well trained as traditional service animals. But I think people who train service animals for the blind and disabled choose who gets the animals based on an understanding of what the animal needs in order to do its work well and be a good citizen. From their behavior, I think some of the emotional support cases don't show signs of understading how to be a good public citizen, and would not qualify. Blind _people_ have to train and pass tests to get service dogs, just like the dogs have to train and pass tests to be service dogs.
Dogs are mostly non-allergenic and trainable; a real service dog shouldn't do anything to make other people nervous. And those people who, like me, sometimes get nervous around large dogs for no real reason, should realize that it's their own problem and deal with it as best they may. :( (I've gotten a lot better with slow, calm dogs. But energetic ones still freak me out.)
Part of the issue raised in the article is that the definition of "trained" is getting stretched by these emotional support animals, who haven't been "trained" to do anything but make their owners feel better and haven't gone through the kind of extensive programs that service or even therapy animals have.