[nagdu] How to Take Your Pet Everywhere

[Aleeha Dudley]

This article is startling in many ways. I will paste the link to it at
the end of the text. It really illustrates the need for at least some
education of the general public and business owners. What is this
world coming to? This is ridiculous!! Here is the article. It is by no
means brief, so grab a cup of whatever beverage suits your fancy.



The author takes an alpaca to the drugstore. There’s a lot of
confusion about what emotional-support animals can legally do.Enlarge
The author takes an alpaca to the drugstore. There’s a lot of
confusion about what emotional-support animals can legally do.
Credit Photograph by Robin Siegel

What a wonderful time it is for the scammer, the conniver, and the
cheat: the underage drinkers who flash fake I.D.s, the able-bodied
adults who drive cars with handicapped license plates, the parents who
use a phony address so that their child can attend a more desirable
public school, the customers with eleven items who stand in the
express lane. The latest group to bend the law is pet owners.








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Our Local CorrespondentsOctober 20, 2014 Issue

Pets Allowed

Why are so many animals now in places where they shouldn’t be?

By Patricia Marx











2014_10_20



The author takes an alpaca to the drugstore. There’s a lot of
confusion about what emotional-support animals can legally do.Enlarge
The author takes an alpaca to the drugstore. There’s a lot of
confusion about what emotional-support animals can legally do.
CreditPhotograph by Robin Siegel

What a wonderful time it is for the scammer, the conniver, and the
cheat: the underage drinkers who flash fake I.D.s, the able-bodied
adults who drive cars with handicapped license plates, the parents who
use a phony address so that their child can attend a more desirable
public school, the customers with eleven items who stand in the
express lane. The latest group to bend the law is pet owners.








News


Culture


Books & Fiction


Science & Tech


Business


Humor


Magazine


Archive








Sign In
Link your subscription





advertisement
























Subscribe to The New Yorker









The New Yorker























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Our Local CorrespondentsOctober 20, 2014 Issue

Pets Allowed

Why are so many animals now in places where they shouldn’t be?

By Patricia Marx











2014_10_20



The author takes an alpaca to the drugstore. There’s a lot of
confusion about what emotional-support animals can legally do.Enlarge
The author takes an alpaca to the drugstore. There’s a lot of
confusion about what emotional-support animals can legally do.
CreditPhotograph by Robin Siegel

What a wonderful time it is for the scammer, the conniver, and the
cheat: the underage drinkers who flash fake I.D.s, the able-bodied
adults who drive cars with handicapped license plates, the parents who
use a phony address so that their child can attend a more desirable
public school, the customers with eleven items who stand in the
express lane. The latest group to bend the law is pet owners. Take a
look around. See the St. Bernard slobbering over the shallots at Whole
Foods? Isn’t that a Rottweiler sitting third row, mezzanine, at
Carnegie Hall? As you will have observed, an increasing number of your
neighbors have been keeping company with their pets in human-only
establishments, cohabiting with them in animal-unfriendly apartment
buildings and dormitories, and taking them (free!) onto
airplanes—simply by claiming that the creatures are their licensed
companion animals and are necessary to their mental well-being. No
government agency keeps track of such figures, but in 2011 the
National Service Animal Registry, a commercial enterprise that sells
certificates, vests, and badges for helper animals, signed up
twenty-four hundred emotional-support animals. Last year, it
registered eleven thousand. What about the mental well-being of
everyone else? One person’s emotional support can be another person’s
emotional trauma. Last May, for instance, a woman brought her large
service dog, Truffles, on a US Airways flight from Los Angeles to
Philadelphia. At thirty-five thousand feet, the dog squatted in the
aisle and, according to Chris Law, a passenger who tweeted about the
incident, “did what dogs do.” After the second, ahem, installment, the
crew ran out of detergent and paper towels. “Plane is emergency
landing cuz ppl are getting sick,” Law tweeted. “Hazmat team needs to
board.” The woman and Truffles disembarked, to applause, in Kansas
City, and she offered her inconvenienced fellow-passengers Starbucks
gift cards.
In June, a miniature Yorkie caused a smaller stir, at a fancy
Manhattan restaurant. From a Google review of Altesi Ristorante:
“Lunch was ruined because Ivana Trump sat next to us with her dog
which she even let climb to the table. I told her no dogs allowed but
she lied that hers was a service dog.” I called the owner of Altesi,
Paolo Alavian, who defended Trump. “She walked into the restaurant and
she showed the emotional-support card,” he said. “Basically, people
with the card are allowed to bring their dogs into the restaurant.
This is the law.”
Alavian is mistaken about that. Contrary to what many business
managers think, having an emotional-support card merely means that
one’s pet is registered in a database of animals whose owners have
paid anywhere from seventy to two hundred dollars to one of several
organizations, none of which are recognized by the government. (You
could register a Beanie Baby, as long as you send a check.) Even with
a card, it is against the law and a violation of the city’s health
code to take an animal into a restaurant. Nor does an
emotional-support card entitle you to bring your pet into a hotel,
store, taxi, train, or park.
No such restrictions apply to service dogs, which, like Secret Service
agents and Betty White, are allowed to go anywhere. In contrast to an
emotional-support animal (E.S.A.), a service dog is trained to perform
specific tasks, such as pulling a wheelchair and responding to
seizures. The I.R.S. classifies these dogs as a deductible medical
expense, whereas an emotional-support animal is more like a blankie.
An E.S.A. is defined by the government as an untrained companion of
any species that provides solace to someone with a disability, such as
anxiety or depression. The rights of anyone who has such an animal are
laid out in two laws. The Fair Housing Act says that you and your
E.S.A. can live in housing that prohibits pets. The Air Carrier Access
Act entitles you to fly with your E.S.A. at no extra charge, although
airlines typically require the animal to stay on your lap or under the
seat—this rules out emotional-support rhinoceroses. Both acts
stipulate that you must have a corroborating letter from a health
professional.
Fortunately for animal-lovers who wish to abuse the law, there is a
lot of confusion about just who and what is allowed where. I decided
to go undercover as a person with an anxiety disorder (not a stretch)
and run around town with five un-cuddly, non-nurturing animals for
which I obtained E.S.A. credentials (one animal at a time; I’m not
that crazy). You should know that I am not in the habit of breaking (I
mean, exploiting) the law, and, as far as animals go, I like
them—medium rare.
The first animal I test-drove was a fifteen-pound, thirteen-inch
turtle. I tethered it to a rabbit leash, to which I had stapled a
cloth E.S.A. badge (purchased on Amazon), and set off for the Frick
Collection. “One, please,” I said to the woman selling tickets, who
appeared not to notice the reptile writhing in my arms, even though
people in line were taking photos of us with their cell phones. I
petted the turtle’s feet. “Just a moment,” the woman said. “Let me get
someone.”
“Oh, my God,” I heard one guard say to another. “That woman has a
turtle. I’ll call security.”
“Is it a real turtle?” Guard No. 2 said to Guard No. 1. Minutes
passed. A man in a uniform appeared.
“No, no, no. You can’t take in an animal,” he said.
“It’s an emotional-support animal,” I said.
“Nah.”
“I have a letter,” I said.
“You have a letter? Let me see it,” he said, with the peremptoriness
you might have found at Checkpoint Charlie. Here are some excerpts
from the letter, which I will tell you more about later, when I
introduce you to my snake:
To Whom It May Concern:
RE: Patricia Marx
Ms. Marx has been evaluated for and diagnosed with a mental health
disorder as defined in the DSM-5. Her psychological condition affects
daily life activities, ability to cope, and maintenance of
psychological stability. It also can influence her physical status.
Ms. Marx has a turtle that provides significant emotional support, and
ameliorates the severity of symptoms that affect her daily ability to
fulfill her responsibilities and goals. Without the companionship,
support, and care-taking activities of her turtle, her mental health
and daily living activities are compromised. In my opinion, it is a
necessary component of treatment to foster improved psychological
adjustment, support functional living activities, her well being,
productivity in work and home responsibilities, and amelioration of
the severity of psychological issues she experiences in some specific
situations to have an Emotional Support Animal (ESA).
She has registered her pet with the Emotional Support Animal
Registration of America. This letter further supports her pet as an
ESA, which entitles her to the rights and benefits legitimized by the
Fair Housing Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It allows
exceptions to housing, and transportation services that otherwise
would limit her from being able to be accompanied by her emotional
support animal.
The Frick man read the letter and disappeared, returning with another
uniformed man, to whom he said, “She has a letter.”
“Can I see it, please?” the new man said. He read the letter, then
looked up. “How old is he?” he said.
“Seven,” I answered.
The Frick does not admit children younger than ten, but evidently the
rule does not apply to turtles, because the man gestured welcomingly,
and the turtle and I went and had a look at the Vermeers.
“Big for seven, isn’t he?” the man said.
I wouldn’t know. Turtle (her actual name) is a red-eared slider who
lives in Brooklyn, the property of a former mail carrier who was kind
enough to lend her to me for the day.
On her inaugural visit to Manhattan, Turtle and I also made stops at
Christian Louboutin, where she cozied up to a glittery $6,395
stiletto, and I, trying to snap a photo, was told, “Turtles are
allowed, but no photography”; E.A.T., the high-end delicatessen, where
I had a bowl of borscht and the turtle hydrated from, and also in, a
dish of water provided by our waiter; NK Hair Salon, where a
manicurist agreed to give Turtle a pedicure for an upcoming bar
mitzvah (“You’ll have to hold her toes down under the dryer”); Maison
du Chocolat; and the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, to inquire
whether I could pre-pay for the turtle’s burial. “But it will outlive
us all,” a sombrely dressed representative said in a sombre
consultation room. Why didn’t anybody do the sensible thing, and tell
me and my turtle to get lost? The Americans with Disabilities Act
allows you to ask someone with a service animal only two questions: Is
the animal required because of a disability? What work or task has the
animal been trained to perform? Specific questions about a person’s
disability are off limits, and, as I mentioned, people are baffled by
the distinction between service animals and emotional-support animals.
Len Kain, the editor-in-chief of dogfriendly.com, a Web site that
features pet-travel tips, said, “The law is fuzzy. If you ask one too
many questions, you’re in legal trouble for violating the Americans
with Disabilities Act and could face fines of up to a hundred thousand
dollars. But, if you ask one too few questions, you’re probably not in
trouble, and at worst will be given a slap on the wrist.”
If you want to turn your pet into a certified E.S.A., all you need is
a therapist type who will vouch for your mental un-health. Don’t have
one? Enter  “emotional-support animal” into Google and take your pick
among hundreds of willing professionals. Through a site called ESA
Registration of America, I found a clinical social worker in
California who, at a cost of a hundred and forty dollars, agreed to
evaluate me over the phone to discuss the role of Augustus, the snake,
in my life. To prepare for the session, I concocted a harrowing
backstory: When I was six, I fell into a pond and almost drowned.
There was a snake in the water that I grabbed on to just before I was
rescued by my father, and, ever since, I’d found comfort in scaly
vertebrates.
“Now, let’s talk about your problems,” the therapist said, in the sort
of soothing voice you might use when speaking to someone who has one
day to live. “What’s your snake’s name?”
“Augustus,” I said.
“How does Augustus help you with your problems?”
“How far back should I go?” I asked, itching to tell my story about the pond.
“Just the last six months,” she said.
“Um, he provides unconditional love, and I feel safe when he’s
around,” I said. “He’s a good icebreaker, too, if I’m feeling shy.”
“You want to have more ease outside the house,” the therapist summed
up. “Now I want to do a generalized-anxiety screening with you,” she
said. “In the last fourteen days, have you felt anxious or on edge
nearly every day, more than seven days, or less than seven days?”
“I’d say around seven,” I replied. Using the same parameters, she
asked me to rate my worrying, trouble relaxing, ability to sit still,
irritability, and dread that something awful might happen. The next
day, I received the following e-mail:
Hi Patricia:
It was my pleasure to speak to you today.
Attached is your ESA letter.
Enjoy the benefits of having your dog (sic) with you more now.
All the best,
I’d better come clean. This was the only time I was evaluated. On my
other outings with animals, I brandished a doctored version of the
original snake letter. (If talking seems too last-century, you can
consult thedogtor.net, where getting your E.S.A. certified is “only a
mouse-click away.” You fill out a seventy-four-question medical exam
online and receive your paperwork within two days, for just a hundred
and ninety dollars.)
So I was off to SoHo to be put at ease by a Mexican milk snake named
Augustus, which I borrowed from a friend. With his penchant for
coiling all thirty inches of himself around my neck and face, he felt
less like an animal than like an emotional-support accessory—say, a
scarf. He is the diameter of a garden hose, as smooth as an old
wallet, and gorgeously marked with bands of yellow, black, and rusty
red. As I walked down Wooster Street, Augustus tickled my ear and then
started to slither down my blouse. (Men!) His owner had warned me, “He
is good for parting the crowd on a busy midtown sidewalk,” and she was
right.
“Look, a snake,” I heard a young woman say to her boyfriend, as we
passed on our way to an apartment open house on West Broadway. A
moment later, I heard a yelp and a splat, and turned around to see
that the startled fellow had dropped his can of soda. The real-estate
agent, by contrast, went on about the granite countertop and the home
office that could be converted to a nursery, but ignored the snake,
which had got stuck in my hair tie. Maybe a serpent is one of those
things that it’s best to put up with when you’re trying to sell a
$5.2-million three-bedroom. Here’s what happened at the Chanel
boutique: “Hello. I’m looking for a pocketbook that will match my
snake,” I said to a salesman. “Maybe something in reptile.” I shuffled
Augustus from one hand to the other as though he were a Slinky.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, I have a thing against snakes, so let me get
someone else to assist you,” he said, as if he were telling the host
at a dinner party, “No dessert for me, thank you.”
A colleague appeared. “Wow,” he said, leading me to a display case.
“We do have snakeskin bags back here. Is he nice? Does he bite?” The
salesman handed me a smart, yellow python bag marked $9,000. “I think
this would work the best. It’s one of our classics. I think yellow.
Red makes the snake look too dull.”
The welcome wasn’t as warm at Mercer Kitchen, where a maître d’
responded to my request for a table by saying, “Not with that!”
“But it’s a companion animal,” I said. “It’s against the law not to let me in.”
“I understand,” he said. “But I need you to take that out.”
Over at Balthazar, once the woman at the front desk confirmed with her
superior that snakes could count as emotional-support animals, I was
able to make a lunch reservation for the following week. (“So that’s
how you get a table there,” a friend said.) An hour later, I learned
that the Angelika Film Center does not require you to purchase a
separate ticket for your snake, and that the Nespresso coffee bar is
much too cold for an ectotherm.
“I’d like to get back to the city before the leaves turn against us.”
Buy or license »
To think that animals were once merely our dinner, or what we wore to
dinner! Fifteen thousand years ago, certain wolves became domesticated
and evolved into dogs. One thing led to another, and, notwithstanding
some moments in history that dogs and cats would probably not want to
bring up (like the time Pope Gregory IX declared cats to be the Devil
incarnate), pets have gradually become cherished members of our
families. According to “Citizen Canine,” a book by David Grimm,
sixty-seven per cent of households in America have a cat or a dog
(compared with forty-three per cent who have children), and
eighty-three per cent of pet owners refer to themselves as their
animal’s “mom” or “dad.” Seventy per cent celebrate the pet’s
birthday. Animals are our best friends, our children, and our
therapists.
“I hate all of these people,” Jerry Saltz, the art critic for New
York, told me, referring to pet owners “who can’t be alone without
their dogs or who feel guilty about leaving their dumb dogs home
alone.” He went on, “A few years ago, my wife and I were flabbergasted
to see a smug-looking guy sauntering through MOMA while his ‘comfort
dog’ happily sniffed the paintings, as if to pee on one. I ran up to a
guard and started yelling, ‘That guy’s dog is about to pee on the
Pollock!’ She looked at me and said, ‘There’s nothing we can do about
it.’ ”
Why did the turkey cross the road? To get to the Hampton Jitney. How
did the twenty-six-pound fowl get across? With me hoisting him by his
“Emotional Support Animal” harness, as if he were a duffel bag.
“You’re taking this with you?” an attendant asked, standing in front
of the luxury bus on Eighty-sixth Street. Henry was a Royal Palm, a
breed not known for its tastiness but one that could easily make the
cover of People’s sexiest-poultry issue. His plumage is primarily
white, but many of the feathers are accented with a tip of jet black,
giving him a Franz Kline Abstract Expressionist feel.
“Yes,” I said, handing the man two tickets, one for me and one for
Hope, the turkey’s ten-year-old neighbor, in Orange County, New York.
Henry flapped his wings furiously, dispersing a good amount of down
into the air and emitting noises not unlike the electronic beeps that
a car makes when it’s too close to the curb. Henry had been driven in
from the farm that morning. “Did you talk to the company?” the
attendant asked.
“Yes,” I fibbed.
“Good boy, good boy,” Hope whispered to the heaving bird, as I
strained to lift him up the bus’s stairs.
“He’s my therapy animal,” I primly told the driver. “Do you want to
see the letter from my therapist?” The question was not acknowledged.
“Easy, buddy,” Hope said, helping me to park Henry on a seat next to
the window. Soon the bus was lurching down Lexington Avenue. The
turkey angrily flapped his wings. I hovered in the aisle, because,
truth be told, I was a bit emotional around my emotional-support
animal.
“If you sit with him, maybe he’ll calm down, right?” the attendant
said. I slid in next to Henry, whose eyes seemed fixed on the Chase
bank sign out the window.
“Did you take him for immunizations and everything?” the optimistic
attendant asked. Simultaneously, I said yes and Hope said no.
“How much food does he eat?” the attendant continued. “Like, half a
pound?” A huddle of passengers had gathered in the aisle, and a lot of
phone pictures were snapped. The Jitney stopped at Fifty-ninth Street
to let on more passengers.
“Is that a real turkey?” a woman said to her friend as she passed
Henry. (No matter what the animal du jour, someone always asked me
whether it was real.)
At Fortieth Street, Henry and I, who had pressing appointments in
Manhattan, disembarked (“Oh, no. I think I forgot something,” I said.
“I have to get off”), leaving a trail of plumage behind. The
attendant, who asked for a picture of himself with the turkey, was
more perplexed by our getting off (“You’re going to pay thirty dollars
to get off at Fortieth Street!”) than by our getting on.
Next stop: Katz’s Delicatessen, at the corner of Ludlow and East
Houston Streets. “How many?” the guy at the front desk asked, after
I’d shown him the therapist’s letter and we were joined by two of
Henry’s human friends.
“Four, plus the turkey,” Hope said. We followed a waiter through the
crowd until Henry, whom I’d been leading on a leash, plopped onto the
floor in a spot that blocked traffic. Hope and I dragged him to a
table and hoisted him onto a chair, on which he lay immobile, on his
side with his feet splayed as if he’d conked out on the sofa, watching
TV. A wing drooped over one side of the chair.
“What kind of emotional support do you get from him?” a man asked.
Henry’s E.S.A. badge had come off earlier, when he jumped onto a
dumpster on East Houston Street (“He needs to roost,” Hope’s mom
said), but the news of his presence had spread among the diners as if
he were Jack Nicholson.
Depending on his mood, a turkey’s head and neck can be red, white,
blue, or, if very excited, some combination of the three. After lunch,
Henry’s head had turned purple. His handlers decided that he was “too
stressed” and ought to be getting back to the farm.
“Too stressed for yoga?” I said, having hoped to take the turkey to a
class at Jivamukti. Did my emotional-support animal need a support
animal?
Reflecting on whether it is reasonable to be this inclusive of man’s
best friends, I called the Australian philosopher and ethicist Peter
Singer, who is best known for his book “Animal Liberation,” which
makes a utilitarian argument for respecting the welfare and minimizing
the suffering of all sentient beings. Singer takes a dim view of the
emotional-support-animal craze. “Animals can get as depressed as
people do,” he said, so “there is sometimes an issue about how well
people with mental illnesses can look after their animals.” He went
on, “If it’s really so difficult for you to be without your animal,
maybe you don’t need to go to that restaurant or to the Frick Museum.
”
An alpaca looks so much like a big  stuffed animal that if you walked
around F.A.O. Schwarz with one nobody would notice. What if you tried
to buy a ticket for one on an Amtrak train? The alpaca in question was
four and a half feet tall, weighed a hundred and five pounds, and had
a Don King haircut. My mission: to take her on a train trip from
Hudson, New York, to Niagara Falls.
“Ma’am, you can’t take that,” a ticket agent at the Hudson station
drawled, in the casual manner in which you might say, “No flip-flops
on the tennis court.”
“It’s a therapy animal. I have a letter.”
“O.K.,” she said flatly. “That’s a first.” I paid for our tickets. On
the platform, the alpaca, whose name was Sorpresa, started making a
series of plaintive braying noises that sounded like a sad party horn.
Alpaca aficionados call this type of vocalization humming, and say
that it can communicate curiosity, concern, boredom, fear, or
contentment but is usually a sign of distress. Sorpresa’s wranglers,
who raise alpacas for wool, and who had accompanied us, decided that
she’d be better off staying closer to home. They had no problem,
though, with her accompanying me to CVS and to some art galleries
along Hudson’s Warren Street (man in gallery: “Wow! Are they the ones
that spit?”). In fact, alpacas rarely spit at humans. At Olana, a New
York State Historic Site, showcasing the nineteenth-century home of
the painter Frederic Edwin Church, Sorpresa and I were stopped at the
visitors’ center by an apologetic tour guide. A higher-up named Paul
was summoned, and kindly broke it to me that animals were not
permitted.
“It’s a museum and a historic home,” he said. “There are thousands of
distinct objects in there that are over a hundred and twenty years
old. I’m sorry, but we just have never been able to take that risk.”
While the alpaca stood, perfectly behaved, in the gift shop among
hand-painted porcelain tiles, glass vases, and antique lanterns, and I
fielded questions from shoppers (“Are you allergic to dogs?”), Paul
consulted the site manager in charge of Olana. They called their boss
in Albany to ask for guidance.
When you hear that the livestock in your custody has been granted
permission to clomp through the premises of a national treasure that
houses hundreds of priceless antiques, you do not feel unequivocal
joy—particularly when the beast has been known to kick backward if a
threat from the rear is perceived. Don’t ask me anything about
Frederic Church’s home. Could you really expect me to concentrate on
the art when all I kept thinking was: “Didn’t the owners say that when
the alpaca’s tail is held aloft it means she has to go to the
bathroom?” By the time we reached Church’s entertainment room,
Sorpresa was intently humming a distress signal.
“She needs lunch,” I mumbled, and we made a hasty retreat. When I
returned the alpaca to her owner and told him about our visit to
Olana, he said, “I’m not sure whether it reaffirms my faith in
humanity or destroys it.”
People with genuine impairments who depend on actual service animals
are infuriated by the sort of imposture I perpetrated with my phony
E.S.A.s. Nancy Lagasse suffers from multiple sclerosis and owns a
service dog that can do everything from turning lights on and off to
emptying her clothes dryer. “I’m shocked by the number of people who
go online and buy their pets vests meant for working dogs,” she told
me. “These dogs snarl and go after my dog. They set me up for failure,
because people then assume my dog is going to act up.”
Carry a baby down the aisle of an airplane and passengers look at you
as if you were toting a machine gun. Imagine, then, what it’s like
travelling with a one-year-old pig who oinks, grunts, and screams, and
who, at twenty-six pounds, is six pounds heavier than the average
carry-on baggage allowance and would barely fit in the overhead
compartment of the aircraft that she and I took from Newark to Boston.
Or maybe you can’t imagine this.
During check-in, the ticket agent, looking up to ask my final
destination, did a double take.
She said, “Oh . . . have you checked with . . . I don’t think JetBlue
allows . . .”
I rehashed my spiel about the letter and explained that days ago, when
I bought the tickets, the service representative said that I could
bring Daphne, my pig, as long as she sat on my lap.
“Give me one second,” the agent said, picking up the phone. “I’m
checking with my supervisor.” (Speaking into phone: “Yes, with a pig .
. . yeah, yeah . . . in a stroller.”) The agent hung up and printed
out boarding passes for me and the pig’s owner, Sophie Wolf.
“I didn’t want to make a mistake,” he said. “If there’s a problem,
Verna, at the gate, will help you. Does she run fast?”
I’m pleased to report that passing through security with a pig in your
arms is easier than doing so without one: you get to keep your shoes
on and skip the full-body scanner.
“Frank, you never told me you had a brother!” one security officer
yelled to another, as Frank helped me retrieve my purse from the
security bin. A third officer, crouching to address Daphne, whose head
was poking out of her stroller, said, “You’re a celebrity. Will you
sign autographs later?” The pig grunted. “How is that even allowed?” I
heard a peeved woman behind me say, as I made my way down the jet
bridge with my arms clasped around the pig’s torso, its head and
trotters dangling below. We settled into seats 16A and 16B, since
JetBlue does not allow animals in bulkhead or emergency exit aisles.
On the floor near our seats, Wolf spread a—I’ll just say it—“wee-wee
pad,” while Daphne arranged herself on my lap, digging her sharp
hooves into my thighs. She sniffed and snorted, detecting the arrival
of the in-flight chips before they were announced.
“If I let her, she’d eat all day—she’s a pig,” Wolf said, searching
her bag for treats. In case of airplane ear, she had also brought a
pack of Trident for Daphne, who likes to chew gum. Daphne thrust her
snout toward the smell of Gerber Puffs, knocking Wolf’s hand, and a
quantity of cereal snacks was catapulted into the air. As the pig
gobbled up every Puff on the seat, a flight attendant passed Row 16.
“Aren’t you adorable!” she said.
“Holy shit! ” the woman in back of us said, spying Daphne. “I feel
like I’m on drugs. Now I need a drink.”
We spent a pleasant day in Boston. One of us grazed on Boston Common,
wagging her tail whenever she heard pop music with a strong beat. We
took a ride on the Swan Boat and then went to the Four Seasons for
afternoon tea, where the letter was trotted out once more. As I pushed
the stroller, its privacy panel zipped up, through the dining room, a
woman, looking aghast, said, “Oh, my Gawd, your baby is oinking!” At
our table, Wolf discreetly fed Daphne some raspberries and a scone,
but drew the line at prosciutto sandwiches.
Just when I thought I had successfully taken advantage of the law, I
almost tripped up. A taxi-driver balked when he saw the porcine member
of our party.
“It’s illegal in Massachusetts to have an animal in a taxi, unless
it’s a service dog,” he said.
“But it’s an emotional-support animal,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied.
“Look, I have a—” I said, fumbling in my purse for the dog-eared piece of paper.
“If a policeman sees me, I’d get in a lot of trouble,” he said.
I was about to give up when he said, “I’ll take you anyway. But it’s
not allowed.”
In point of fact, as I learned when I later looked it up online, the
city of Boston is O.K. with taxi-drivers transporting animals, but
they are not required to do so unless the animal is a service dog.
Back at Logan, Daphne regained her superstar status.
A smiling agent, approaching us at the gate, said, “We heard a cute
piggy went through security.” She added, “If you want to pre-board,
the cabin crew would love it.”
At the entrance to the plane, we were greeted by three giddy flight
attendants: “Oh, my God, don’t you just love her?” “I’m so jealous. I
want one!”; “I hope you’re in my section”; “I’m coming back for
pictures.”
As we exited at Newark, a member of the flight crew pinned pilot’s
wings onto Daphne’s E.S.A. sweatshirt.
“Are you going to ruin it for all of us?” one of my dog-fancying
friends asked, when I told her that I was writing this article. I was
surprised to learn how many of my acquaintances were the owners of
so-called emotional-support animals. They defend the practice by
saying that they don’t want to leave their pets home alone, or they
don’t want to have to hire dog-walkers, or they don’t want their pets
to have to ride in a plane’s cargo hold, or that Europeans gladly
accept dogs everywhere. They have tricks to throw skeptics off guard.
“People can’t ask about my disability,” one friend told me. “But if I
feel that I’m in a situation where I might have a struggle being let
in somewhere with my dog, then I come up with a disorder that sounds
like a nightmare. I like to be creative. I’ll say I lack a crucial
neurotransmitter that prevents me from processing anxiety and that,
without the dog, I’m likely to black out and urinate.”
Corey Hudson, the C.E.O. of Canine Companions for Independence, a
nonprofit provider of trained assistance animals, told me that he has
“declared war on fake assistance dogs.” Earlier this year, his
organization submitted a petition, which has now been signed by
twenty-eight thousand people, to the Department of Justice, requesting
that it consider setting up a registration—“like the Department of
Motor Vehicles”—to test and certify assistance dogs and to regulate
the sale of identification vests, badges, and so forth. “They
responded that they think the law is adequate.” No animals were harmed
during the writing of this article, but one journalist did have to get
down on her hands and knees to clean her carpet.
And, if you've made it this far, here's the link.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/20/pets-allowed
-- 
Aleeha Dudley and Seeing Eye Yellow Labrador Dallas
Vice President, Ohio Association of Blind Students
Email: blindcowgirl1993 at gmail.com
Follow me on Twitter at @blindcowgirl199

The wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse's ears.
- Arabian Proverb