I try to investigate certain types of Facebook posts before I Share them; like missing person's notifications. I find many to be erroneous. I often Share missing person's reports with a link to updates that show them found, etc.
So, this morning, I did a quick search about companion animals to verify whether or not such a designation as emotional support companion animal actually exists. It does. And, like other companion animals, they can be registered and there are laws about how companion animals and their owners must be treated. For example, I'm a librarian by profession. I've worked mostly in public libraries for most of my career. Pets are NOT allowed in libraries, for what most people would understand is a policy for obvious reasons. In case you don't see the obvious reasons here are a couple: You can't have animals running around pooping and peeing on the floor; you can't have animals running around biting people. That's just a couple of reasons.
If you work in public service and experience hundreds of individuals walking in off the streets daily and their behavior, you'd understand how many more reasons there might be.
Companion animals for the blind and physically disabled are allowed and they are usually easily recognizable from obvious needs of their owners. However, I'm quite sure that, if the owners are unable or unwilling to control their animals, they can be asked to leave. It's important to know laws that might affect you more than occasionally.
So, apparently, there are Emotional Support Companion Animals. The first agency's site I found had substantial information about the criteria for the designation, the registration process, what such animals are exempt from, etc.
I posted the link to that site, then was asked a question by a Facebook friend and did a little more looking and discovered several other "agencies" and their sites. I'm now confused about the "official" capacity of these agencies. I'm not going to bother looking into the all of this; it doesn't directly affect me. What I do know is that laws can be federal or state or a mix. I don't know what laws exist about companion animals; I'm not going to investigate but I am going to contact my state and federal reps and ask them to.
I did just a link that says that Emotional Support Companion Animals are protected by ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) which is a federal law.
One of the functions of government, as I probably learned it and certainly think of it, is to protect and intervene for us and to control flim-flam, sham and dishonest enterprises that misrepresent themselves in order to scam us out of our money. I don't know if the evidence of these multiple "agencies" to certify and register companion animals is about that or just no standards. There are, if you are or aren't aware, multiple companies that can register a domain name (web site address) for you. I initially thought there was one and I see no reason why I need any company to do it for me if I could get through the maze to the "agency" that maintains the database. I digress.
Another purpose of government, as I understand and wish it to be true, is setting standards. If there are federal and/or state laws concerning companion animals, there have to be criteria (standards) so designating them. Therefore, there have to be agencies, legally designated agencies to certify companion animals; otherwise everybody could and would just say their pet is a companion animal. By the way, setting standards, at all levels of government, has fallen by the wayside.
The following are links to the "agenies" in the U.S. that I've found, so far, that register/certify companion animals:
Service Dogs of America
NSAR - National Service Animal Registry
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