‘Emotional support dogs’ on planes are more scam than therapy – Orange County Register

More and more people are passing off their pets as therapy animals and taking them on airplanes for free.Tom Tackett with the Patriotic Service Dog Foundation says this harms those who legitimately need the dogs to survive. Photo illustration location courtesy of ACI Jet. (Photo Illustration by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

There’s not much that scares former Army Delta Force operator Josh Collins: not seven combat tours in in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, not getting seriously wounded.

But when it comes to the increasing numbers of so-called “emotional support” dogs on planes, Collins — along with more and more airline passengers and workers — gets worried.

“It doesn’t matter how good a dog is at home,” warns Collins, who suffers from PTSD and has a service dog named Big Charlie who meets strict Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines. “It only matters how reliable a dog is.

“If a dog lunges at my dog, I don’t want Big Charlie to get bit or hurt.”

Unlike Big Charlie, a Labradoodle, emotional support dogs needn’t be trained to do much more than make their owners feel good.

“That makes every dog an ‘emotional support dog,’ ” says Collins, a wounded warrior with brain injuries who also served as a Green Beret and Army Ranger. “That’s why they are called ‘man’s best friend.’ ”

The culprit for the escalating numbers of dogs on planes is a 2015 Department of Transportation act that trumps the ADA. The DOT regulation allows “emotional support” pooches — most any animal for that matter — to fly free.

Service dogs are highly trained for specific tasks and are considered “working dogs” by the ADA, which does not recognize any other type of dog. Transportation department regulations, however, have a larger fence and cover service dogs, emotional support dogs — also called “comfort animals” — and “therapy dogs.”

The definition of therapy dogs, however, is especially murky. Most dog accessory vendors and many dog owners often don’t differentiate between emotional support and therapy dogs. But most canine and institutional professionals usually do differentiate and require weeks-long courses for therapy dogs that will visit hospitals and schools.

Passengers need only tell the airline they have something like, say, a sleep disorder, anxiety or stress and that they need their dog for emotional support.

For backup, the Transportation Department advises — and some airlines require — that passengers with dogs arrive with what is an astonishingly easily obtainable certificate. Yes, you can get one from “a health professional” if needed.

I went online, registered my childhood dog, Pal, added my column photo instead of Pal’s — yes, a picture of a human being — and, presto, my long-deceased dog looking exactly like David Whiting became officially registered as an emotional support dog with the “official ESA Registration of America.”

While free flights for Fido are a boon to doggie accessory merchants as well as passengers who want to avoid flight fees for their animals, the downside includes people who suffer from allergies, fearful passengers and incidents with larger dogs.

“It is literally becoming a dog and pony show onboard,” says Bob Ross, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants. “In some cases the passenger’s comfort animals are making the passengers around them uncomfortable.”

Just last week, Collins, who recently paddle-boarded his way from Corpus Christi, Texas, to New York, a distance of 3,600 miles, flew from LAX to his home in Miami with Big Charlie.

After 18 months of training, the flight marked graduation for Collins and Big Charlie from Tom Tackett Service Dogs school in Murrieta, an outfit that Tackett has overseen first in Orange County and now Riverside County for four decades.

Tackett says the lax rule covering emotional support dogs “is absolutely absurd, and it’s a serious problem for the entire service dog industry.”

“We have to abide by DOT regulations,” American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein explains, and that means allowing support animals onboard. He says there even have been therapy pigs and therapy turkeys.

The charade gets worse.

As if airline gatekeepers are dog whisperers, the Transportation Department states that officials can determine if the dog is a true emotional support animal by observing its behavior.

But a dog in an airline lounge can be very different than an animal at 30,000 feet with food going up and down the aisle, strangers heading to restrooms, cabin pressure changes.

Incredibly, the Department of Transportation Act goes so far as to state that dogs on planes — emotional support dogs or otherwise — don’t have to be on leashes. Even the ADA requires service dogs to be on leashes.

Oh, yes, if you want Fifi to fly free it also helps — and I am not making this up — to have one of those ubiquitous therapy vests for your dog that sell for as little as $21.99.

The Department of Transportation actually advises flight officials who doubt a dog’s temperament to look “for physical indicators on the animal (e.g., harnesses, vests).”

But wait! Why stop with just the vest? Online stores advise customers to get “deluxe kits for only $199!”

Two hundred dollars buys you an online and paper certificate, two ID cards, two emotional support dog tags, and an “official” leash, collar and vest.

At least pitches like that make the mockery of the system transparent.

“It has become clear that the current system provides the potential for abuse,” says Ross, of the flight attendants association. “We feel that there needs to be better and stricter oversight.

“That may include some pre-screening and certification process, a size restriction, a list of approved species, or maybe a combination of several approaches.”

In August, Diedre Hughes, a Fullerton College professor, and her 13-year-old daughter, Frances, were boarding a flight out of Chicago when Frances started having difficulty breathing.

With a daughter diagnosed with allergies and asthma, Hughes discovered there were four emotional support dogs on the plane. One dog was a Doberman with spikes on the collar, another was a cocker spaniel.

“My daughter,” Hughes told flight officials, “is really allergic. I’m nervous about this.”

“Well,” Hughes says she was told, “if your daughter’s allergic to pet dander then she can’t be on this flight.”

Hughes recalls the ordeal as hurried and hectic. “They basically wouldn’t let me on the plane.”

Professor and daughter ended up being put up in a hotel courtesy of American Airlines, were given meal vouchers, a $200 airline voucher and flew out the next morning. Still, Hughes missed an important conference presentation.

Hughes says she and her daughter have no problem with the occasional service dog and reports that attendants always find faraway seats. But, she says, the influx of emotional support dogs is different.

“Where’s the priority?”

Now repairing his boat in Miami after Hurricane Irma, Collins has never met Hughes and doesn’t know about her daughter’s predicament. Still, he happens to agree about their rights on airlines.

“If I was allergic to animals and someone had an emotional support animal and they had this fuzzy dog,” Collins says, “well, that’s not fair to the other passengers.”

I wonder if my official emotional support dog registry photo ID guarantees me free flights? Woof.

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