Emotional Support Animals, ESA’s for short, have become increasingly popular within recent years and especially among college students. Let’s be real, college is a stressful time in everyone’s life and the thought of being able to take your favorite furry friend to class with you may help you if you’re somebody that deals with school-related anxieties like test taking. However, there are a few things that you should know before committing to getting an emotional support animal or getting your pet registered to be one.
To be clear, there are a few misconceptions about ESA’s. A service animal is performing a duty that the owner could not complete as a result of a disability, whereas an ESA is providing emotional assistance that does not require any specific training. While ESA’s and service animals are not the same thing, they do share some of the same legal privileges. For example, both ESA’s and service animals are included under allowed assistance animals under the Fair Housing Act. For a service dog, the owner legally is not required to pay any extra fees for their animals. However, for an ESA it is dependent on the apartment complex or landlord policy about animals.
Another common misconception (and this is a BIG one) is that in order to get your animal certified to be an ESA you have to pay some sort of extra fee to get them put into an active assistance animal registry. This is not true! The only thing that you need in order to get your animal certified is an official note from your therapist or mental health professional. There are actually a lot of scam websites that exist for the purpose of charging a relatively high cost without actually providing legitimate certification for your animal.
Rounding off our list of common misconceptions is that many people, partially because they do not know the difference between a service animal and an ESA, believe that they have legal right to bring their ESA into the classroom. Unfortunately, ESAs are not afforded the same right to public spaces as service animals. That being said, the presence of your ESA in the classroom would then most likely be decided on a case by case basis by your professor. Realistically, most colleges don’t have strictly-followed policies against ESA’s in practice, but just understand that if you are asked to remove your ESA from the classroom you are legally required to do so. That being said, in my time at UC Davis I have been in several classes where ESA’s have been in attendance, and it made my day to see an adorable pitbull in one of my lectures.
There are also some other interesting and important tidbits you may want to know about ESAs. If you are going to be getting an emotional support dog, or if you happen to be a dog owner in general there are some common household items that are poisonous to dogs as well as other animals. A pretty common one that most people don’t know is that many of the essential oils that come in sets meant for diffusers are actually poisonous to dogs. Pet Poison Helpline says, “In dogs, the most common essential oil toxicities that we see are to Melaleuca or Tea Tree Oil, Pennyroyal, Oil of Wintergreen, and Pine Oils.” If you have any kind of emotional support animal, it’s important to make sure you have a safe environment ready for them at home.
Lastly, to point out a technicality, ESA stands for Emotional Support Animal, therefore it does not have to be a dog. There are emotional support cats, pigs, birds, monkeys, and, yes, even hamsters. I don’t know about you, but I kind of like the idea of having a classmate over to my apartment for a group project and saying “Oh yeah, that’s just my emotional support hamster.”
Overall, ESA’s can improve your emotional state, but it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into before you decide to bring home your emotional support dog (or hamster).
Cover photo courtesy of author.