[NAGDU] Travel and ESA's

[Peter Wolf]

Wow guys.  It was just a couple of hours after writing to you all about how important it has been to me for us in our family to hold a balance between impeccable training and performance with ‘ambassadorship’ as a working team.  It included some of what I consider somewhat intimate sharing about the bond and love side of being a team in our own personal style that meets what we feel to be authentic to us (my wife and i both).  And how well it works.  

Now I’ve read the heads up messages from many of you about the recent disgusting TV show about buying ESA status for pets.  I am just incensed.  I’ll bet many of you can share experiences like ours, of having been snapped, barked and lunged at in airports and other places, or worse.  It now happens every time we fly, which is probably 8 times a year.  It’s not enough that our dogs ignore it.  

If any of you remember, I’ve written that with spatial as well as sight issues, I often have my cane working, even with my dog.  And, I am quick to swing a floor arc around my dog, to arrive the tip on the floor between an incoming fake service dog and my dog.  That’s about all it takes,  No hitting, no violence - just movement distraction and a physical object quickly placed between the dogs as a separating deterrent with lateral movement that seems to be an effective distraction.  It seems to be disorienting to an aggressive dog to encounter an object suddenly appearing from the side.  We keep moving forward, or my dog stops and sits while I address the problem.  I’m vision impaired, not totally blind, so I don’t know how well this would work for some of you.  I can say at the least, this poor dog behavior startles me, and we've been fortunate that none of us have been hurt before.  When was the last time we dealt with this?  Let’s think back…actually…yesterday afternoon.

I am formal calling on all of us to put our collective foot down about the lack of training for ESA’s.  Who is the best, most potent place to begin this process, who do we talk to?  This ethical and behavioral problem has hurt enough of our real working dogs as a group of individuals, and will only make life worse for us as people who have bona fide reasons to work with them.  How can chip in here and name individuals in positions of power to create a change, calling for initiating the necessity of ESA’s to adhere to the same code of conduct that we do?  Let’s do something about this.  

My best,
Peter