Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/19/it-wont-be-as-easy-as-it-use.html
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Our new dog has teeth very like your jackal.
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But can your new dog clear three rows of airline seats for your comfort?
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Eh, it feels like this whole premise is being abused. I get it people love their pets, but I still question the status of some of them being used as medical necessities. Clearly there are people who do benefit from them for various reasons. But people abusing this system are going to jack it up for those people.
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I can see the need for a dog for disabled people, but anything else? If you can’t fly without some random animal for a nebulous non-medical reason, maybe you just shouldn’t be flying on an airplane with other people.
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I look at that support duck and think: Daniel loves to fly, and it shows.
Ginger ale please.
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Is calling a hyena a jackal some clever joke I’m missing on?
On the other hand, you probably could sneak a jackal on, saying it’s some weird dog breed.
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It was a mistake to try to pass my pet hyena as a jackal on BB. I’m embarrassed and it won’t happen again.
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Well as long as you don’t take it on an airplane. Bad things happen to you if a TSA agent gets caught in jaws that can probably snap an elephant’s femur.
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Isn’t this already the case? My friend had to get all kinds of documentation when she brought her support animal to Hawaii.
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On a number of domestic flights, I’ve seen flight attendants totally blindsided by the arrival of comfort animals with no seating provision
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Due to its isolation, Hawaii is a animal quarantine area.
She’d have some trouble trying to bring her animal on most islands in the Galapagos as well.
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Comfort Badger, anyone?
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While there are people who can and should have service animals, there are far more people who are bringing untrained and uncontrolled animals into places where they have no business being, mainly because they think they should be allowed to. Their abuse of the program is a slap at anyone who has gone to the effort of training themselves and their service animal to work together. It is a sore spot with me.
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“Beginning March 1, passengers must provide a letter signed by a doctor or licensed mental-health professional attesting to the passenger’s need to travel with the animal”
Big fewkin deal.
Go to your search engine of choice and type in
“emotional support animal certification online”
You’ll find pages full of places which will give you such a letter for a small fee.
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To be clear, as of March 1, passengers must provide, 48 hours in advance:
• A veterinary health form or vaccination record
• A letter signed by a doctor or licensed mental-health professional stating the passenger’s need for the animal
• A signed letter stating the animal is trained to behave without a kennel.
Yes, all of that is fairly easily obtained for various fees. But right now anybody can literally walk into an airport with any animal and wave some bogus paperwork around about “emotional support”, and they can’t stop them from getting on board with their support duck or support purse-sized poodle. This makes it much more of a hassle and forces people to jump through more hoops. People with legit service animals will have no problem providing that info on demand.
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I don’t know anything about any of this stuff.
I can say that I find my dogs of great emotional support.
I’m sure I don’t know what I would do without them.
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And unfortunately there are also people who not only travel with untrained, uncontrollable critters, they aren’t even service animals. I know people who pretend their pets are service animals just so they can take them everywhere, even though they’re a hazard.
Helper monkey. Dogs (and possibly some other animals) can detect when someone is about to have a seizure, for example. Comfort animals that allow people to leave the house without having panic attacks, etc. (but here, of course, it starts getting reeeeeally nebulous). But yeah, it’s easily abused and there are a whole lot of animals that shouldn’t be getting carried around.
Having had a pet duck, I look at that support duck and think: I hope Daniel is wearing a diaper, as otherwise he is going to shit everywhere. (Apparently he is.)
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