Friend lied about having emotional support dog.

[Otins]

A friend of mine has a dog. He is a pet. She loves him, but he is a pet. Nothing else.

She recently went on a day out to a stately home. Dogs not allowed inside.

She told them it was an emotional support dog and they let him in.

She thought it was really funny and clever to do this.

I told her that I didn’t approve - and we moved on, and it was fine.

But the more I think about it, the more it winds me up.

For transparency, I am not a dog lover (not a dog hater either) and the sense of entitlement I see from many dog owners annoys me, and I think dogs being allowed (emotional support or not) in cafes and shops is inappropriate.

Whatever happened to leaving your dog at home to snooze on the sofa while you went out?

AIBU

Yes - how does this affect you if she takes her dog into places when you’re not there.

No - she was wrong to deceive the stately home in this way.

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!

How pathetic!

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

I live in the US and even here, where EAAs are recognized, it’s very subjective.

I’m diagnosed with anxiety and I’m pretty sure that if I wanted to take my dog on a plane, I could say that he provides me with emotional support and get him on a registry or get a letter stating this, without much effort. Of course, some people really do have EAAs, but in my case, my dog is a pet and if I want to take him on a plane, I should pay for him.

A friend’s daughter had to share a dorm room with her roommate’s EA rabbit that liked to poo under her bed. I wish I was joking, but that’s what she told me!

Sorry, I meant to abbreviate to ESA ( emotional support animal), not EAA.

Agreed. My dd has a lot of mh challenges at the moment. Her dog is the only thing that calms her. He is NOT a legal emotional support dog. He is a pet.

I think having emotional support animals is cruel as it often seems to lead to animals being put in situations that they would find stressful (cats carried around in supermarkets, birds kept in captivity and carted about). It isn’t fair on the animals and the owners are clearly irresponsible as they aren’t thinking of the animal’s needs. I think having a suitable pet such as a dog for a companion is fine but only if the owner is up to looking after it properly. The owner is responsible for the pet, not the other way round.

About a year ago I was at work in a shop and a customer came in insisting her dog was an emotional support animal it clearly wasn't it went crazy it ran off pissed on the floor was barking and growling at all the customers. Considering the customer apparently needed it with her to help with her anxiety it caused such a scene she became the centre of attention and suddenly a good 50 people are at a standstill staring at her why she's chasing after her dog trying to grab it. It was actually really funny hopefully she learnt her lesson. 😂

She was wrong to deceive the home in that way. Emotional support animals are not thing in the UK as far as I am aware.
To me, all dogs offer emotional support to their owners, but not to the point they need to go with you everywhere because you can't cope without them. At that point of need, they should be highly trained with specific tasks in mind. There is already a system for such dogs.

However, YABU to insist dogs are left at home when their owners go out. I am off on holiday this weekend with my dog. I will have to take her in shops and cafes (and of course only in the dog friendly ones).

Your friend lying about her dog is wrong.

But in cafes and shops it’s entirely up to the business whether they let dogs in. If you don’t like it don’t go to dog friendly ones.

YANBU in that she shouldn’t have said that the dog was an emotional support dog.

However YABU saying dogs shouldn’t be allowed in pubs and cafes - that is up to the pub or cafe owner. A lot of pubs and cafes find that allowing dogs benefits their business- especially if they are in a walking area - so it’s great to be able to take dogs to these places. As an owner of a dog who doesn’t like being left alone this also makes life much easier - we would always choose doggy friendly places. If you don’t like it then you can choose to go to a different establishment - or sit in the no-dog area.

@Otins Going back to your OP, I wouldn't continue my friendship with this girl. She sounds like she'd happily lie to me about anything and that's the bottom line for me

There is no official proof.

Pisses me off!! We have an assistance dog for our ASD child with TS, she's in training (nearly there!) and we're really careful to take her training seriously and not be CF and abuse that privilege

Emotional support dog 😂 isn’t that why people get dogs?! For emotional support. If you just cared for it and got no emotion back in return then you may as well get a hamster.

Yanbu. I know someone who does this all the time, she even has a lead saying "assistance dog". She's a wheelchair user so no one questions it or stops her, but the dog is not a service dog, it's barely trained to the level.of a family pet to be honest. It's a snarly little thing that has sadly suffered trauma in the past. It's really unfair on those who actually rely on service dogs as people will start to question their validity.

Nope. You can need the dog and the partner, they could have been doing something else before so had the dog with them and so it would need to come in with them, they could have been separating after the shop so the dog needed to be there.
There are so many things an Assistance Dog can do for a person, please don't presume to know best.

Wasn't there a lady who took her "emotional support" hamster on a flight... she was denied having it there, so she flushed it down the loo,