Friend lied about having emotional support dog.

That’s very specific. So not for autism/ diabetes / PTSD etc?

My friend does the same and bought a photo card online to claim he is. Mainly incase she breaks down and he can travel in the recovery vehicles. He’s not an emotional support dog, she is worried about being separated from him. I personally don’t like this kind of thing and would never do it with my dog. I think it should be guide / hearing / epilepsy only as so many people lie.

A dog which is trained to do tasks to help the owner is an assistance dog and not an ESA.

I have a huge dog phobia and this stinks of entitlement. She is a bare faced liar and making places inaccessible to those of us who cannot be around dogs. Trolls- if a place is dog free am I not allowed to go? Guide dogs are very well behaved. Liars emotional support dogs are not.

There are a couple of great charities that do as your friend is doing. One, Dogs For Good, train full assistance dogs, but also realised they could never help enough people, so they offer a free course for families with autistic kids to train pet dogs to do some of what the fully trained assistance dogs do.

That's miles from, "my fur-baby needs to be with Mummy so Mummy isn't so anxious."

I love dogs. They can indeed soothe and reassure. But that's not the same as thinking the world should have to legally accommodate this in the way that an autistic, or blind, or deaf person may genuinely badly need. Unfortunately, it's a grey area right now in legal terms and some muppets are taking advantage.

I hate when people take dogs places they shouldn't any way as if there are any assistance dogs it can interfere with their work.

Obviously in an ideal world all assistance dogs would be iron clad and unwavering, however even though they're selected and trained for their traits and abilities, they are dogs.

I have a friend who has an assistance dog for her diabetes and had been trained to alert her handler if they can smell any issues before they start to cause illness and also find her handlers med pack and bring it to her. This dog is a lhasa apso, so not the sort of dog you'd assume was a service dog.

Friend was on the school run, when another mum comes carrying a chihuahua in her arms even though there are about 5 no dogs except service dog signs, and this chihuahua would not stop yapping, and it was a massive distraction for my friends service dog. At this point in time, friend felt fine, however by the time she, her child and her dog had got back to the car she felt too unwell to drive home.

We have been looking at the autism dogs service dog scheme for my son and had a few back and forths about it as it would benefit my son greatly to have a service animal that can mitigate self injurious behaviours, help prevent eloping, put space between him and others in public spaces when he needs it, but I keep circling back to this incident with my friend and think it would be no good to my son if he needed space because it was too loud and there were other dogs yapping at his dog because they're in places they shouldn't be. It would make it 100 x more dangerous, and sadly people are selfish so the risks outweigh the pros on this one which is really sad, as for the right person they're a wonderful tool to have.

That site is basically a scam where you pay £50 to get a badge saying your pet (including non domestic animals)is an ESA. An ESA needs no training, so you could put any animal on this fake register no matter how badly behaved it is.

Numerous universities and councils require registration of non-traditional animals such as birds, ferrets, gerbils, rabbits, snakes, lizards, hamsters, rats, and more, through ESAUK for accommodation purposes.

I have a friend who is training her dog to be an autism assistance dog since it costs 10s of thousands to buy one. The dog is going through various behaviour training and will move onto training it to do specific tasks to help her.

How pathetic!

Unofficially my dog is my emotional support dog as I'd be lost without her this past year but I'd never pretend she was an official one! I'd be questioning what else your friend has done that is out of order. Is she usually so <words fail me>?

Entitled maybe?

@SherlockHomies Yes there is proof. 😂
Of course you could say no! Just reject the booking.
Claimed/ pretended same thing!

I think there needs to be a designated lanyard available with Access cards or (again) DLA/EHCPs. Sunflowers can indicate support is needed, that's all fine, but the controlled one could indicate verified high needs.

It also bugs me that you can just buy a radar key for accessing disabled loos without checks, too. How is that sane?

There already is. You can't access flights from the UK without the assistance dog being accredited by ADI. It's only US internal flights that have this.

It's not the law for venues though, no. And in fairness, ADI dogs have waiting lists that stretch on forever, or you have to find £15,000, so my kids, one of whom badly needs one, won't get one.

Meanwhile, people like the OP's friend squander the already pretty limited sympathy the public have for disabled people by increasing suspicion that it's a grift.

@sleeponeday I was furious because my son has a disability that requires support in public places and they just saw it as a way to jump the queues. I don't know what the answer is, but the lanyards shouldn't be easily accessible to people who don't need them.

That really upsets me. We have 2 kids with complex needs, and adaptations like this make things possible for us that otherwise would not be. I hate the hassle of securing Access cards, or the cinema ones (not that one of mine can ever go to the cinema anyway, due to the APD and SPD) but reading this, they should ask for equivalent, I think, everywhere - or at least for evidence of an EHCP or DLA, where checks are pretty rigorous.

Completely agree that these people are cunts. They make it less likely that people who need the adjustments will be regarded sympathetically.

Thank you for caring about it. We need more people to be as angry as you, to protect the access where it's genuinely needed.

I knew someone who bought their whole family sunflower lanyards and cards and used them to get through the airport quicker/use the disability lanes. They said one of the children was autistic and put down others as caring for that person. None of it was true.

It makes a mockery of a system that's been put in place to support vulnerable people and anyone who fakes a disability to get ahead is a cunt.

If there was an actual a psychological need for a dog, then presumably the CF would have had a prescription to show. Of course she can't, because as people have noted, there is no such thing as an emotional support pet. It's all made up by (mostly) American narcissists.

One might even say that people "self-ID" as needing an ESD, so that everyone else feels that in order not to cause offence, they have to pretend that it's true. But that might open a can of worms.

Fortunately the US airlines are starting to notice that people are taking the piss. The next thing would probably have been someone with an emotional support suitcase that happens to weigh 35kg.

Or an alligator! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6py05vv81vo

👍

Yes it is a joke and should not be a thing. Allergies trapped in a plane with someone’s dog.

wth is an emotional support dog? The dog relies on the person, not the other way round. If someone has a mental illness, why should other ppl have your smelly, hairy, barking or worse dog anywhere at all but particularly a plane or food provider because someone thinks a dog will support their ‘emotions’!

This pisses me off. I know someone who does this too.
It's about time there was some kind of paperwork for genuine, trained assistance dogs. You don't have the correct piece of paper with you, the dog doesn't get into the venue.
If too many people take the piss with this, venues will crack down and that ends up with people who genuinely need an assistance dog possibly also being denied access.

I might be over the top but I honestly think I'd struggle to stay friends with someone who thought it was ok and even funny to do that. Massive piss take and makes a mockery of anyone who needs a genuine assistance dog.

Because why do you need your dog and partner? Surely the point of the dog replaces the partner?

@Allfur A man in our village was in the military and has complex PTSD. He gets terrible flashbacks and panic attacks. He has a mental health dog who is trained to respond to an MH crisis by pressing him to sit down and then lying on his legs to keep him safe until he “comes to”. This could be needed just as easily in a stately home as in Asda.