Service Animal Housing and Travel – Ferreting Out Some Facts!

What’s more amazing than traveling the world with your best friend? A best friend is someone whose companionship you enjoy a lot. This may be a human being or can also be an animal!

There are a wide number of people around the world, who enjoy the companionship of animals. They like spending time with pets and enjoy companionship a lot. Considering the way animals impact human health and mind, many psychologists often recommend animals to people having some sort of emotional or psychological disability.

Service animals offer the needed support to emotionally or psychologically disabled people. They provide the comfort to the psychologically affected people and slowly heal their disability condition.

Individuals prescribed or medically recommended a service animal often are require remaining with the pets round the clock. They are needed to live and travel with their service animals accompanying them. But, there are certain restrictions to service animal travel and housing. How to deal with these restrictions?

Animals though very effectively provide comfort, love, and support to individuals with certain kind of emotional or psychological disability condition, they can be a serious threat to people as well. This is the reason, there are restrictions to animal housing and travel.

When any individual is medically found to have some kind of emotional or psychological disability and are recommend a service animal or ESA, then these individuals are provided with a service animal letter that helps these disable people to take their service animals with them, wherever they go. The service animal letter acts as the only legal source of protection for the pet as a service animal and allows for service animal travel on planes.

If you are a frequent traveler, then you may have, undoubtedly, observed a noticeable rise in the number of passengers traveling with emotional support animals. In most of the cases, this kind of a support animal is generally considered to be a dog, but the category of emotional support animal stands for all types of animals, and are not only restricted to dogs. In the recent years, passengers have realized the therapeutic benefits of traveling with birds, reptiles and in one case, a diapered ferret. So, if you are like many of such travelers, you might just be roofing your eyes at this new phenomenon and wondering why it might seem that the rights of these few passengers trump the rights of the majority who have all but had it to air travel. It’s time to take a closer look at this trend and get down to the facts.

A Comprehensive Look to the Americans with Disabilities Act

To drill down on this topic, it is necessary to refer to the Americans with Disabilities Act that was revised in 2011 to specifically define a service animal. As per the Americans with Disabilities Act, a service animal or ESA is any animal that performs the task of benefitting an individual with a disability, including physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability.

Though there are distinctions and separate laws in the federal law for service animal and emotional support animal. But, still these two phrases are mixed up as in both the cases, the animals are meant to benefit an individual with some sort of mental or psychological disability.

Service animals or emotional support animals are sometimes referred to as a ‘comfort animals’ or ‘companion animals’. Their presence has a positive effect on an individual with a disability. This is the reason; many psychiatrists use them for healing the psychological or emotional condition of an individual, suffering from disabilities like stress, anxiety, depression, and many more. Animals can provide an effective therapeutic healing for these kinds of disabilities and can bring back an individual to its original state.

The Air Carrier Access Act – Elaborating the Details in Brief!

When pressed for an answer as to why these animals are allowed on flights, air carrier representatives have repeatedly made the claim that they are simply complying with the Air Carrier Act that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in air travel. The individuals with some sort of disability and carrying a service animal with them tend to carry a letter from a licensed medical practitioner that mentions their disability and the need of the animal with them all of the time. This service animal letter acts as an identity proof for the animal and ensures federal protection for housing, service animal travel, and recognition in the law.

If an individual carries a service animal travel letter with him or her, they cannot be restricted to take their service animal for travel in flights.

For better knowledge about service animal travel and housing, consult with our psychologists at PDSC (Psychological Disability Service Center)!! To contact, call at (800) 925-2182!