Who Can Benefit from Emotional Support Animals?

Research shows that companion animals offer a variety of mental health benefits, including alleviating worry, reducing feelings of isolation and loneliness, and inducing calm.

Emotional support animals can relieve symptoms and improve the quality of life for individuals with almost any mental health condition or emotional challenge, including PTSD, depression, general anxiety disorder, loneliness, attention-deficit disorder, chronic stress, and even learning disabilities.

When Should You Get a Service Dog Instead of an ESA Dog?

An emotional support animal is a good option if you’re looking for a source of comfort, companionship, and relief from feelings of loneliness, sadness, or other challenging emotions. However, if you require assistance with specialized tasks — be it guidance for the visually impaired or alerts of blood sugar fluctuations — a service puppy will be up for the task.

Service dogs can help with all types of disabilities, including psychiatric ones.

For example, people with schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorders might become disoriented or have difficulty perceiving the environment around them. In these cases, they can come into harm’s way without realizing it. A service dog can alert its handler to dangers or interrupt a risky behavior, such as self-mutilation.

If you’re unsure which type of dog is right for you, discuss your needs with a mental health professional. Your doctor can speak to the kinds of tasks and whether said tasks require the assistance of either an emotional support dog or a service dog. After a consultation with your primary care provider, you’ll be well on your way to the relief you deserve.

What Are the Requirements You Need to Meet to Qualify for an Emotional Support Animal?

While companion animals can be helpful for almost anyone – after all, we all feel stressed, worried, or lonely from time to time – you need a diagnosis and an official letter from a mental health professional to own an ESA dog officially.

Here’s what you need to do to qualify for an emotional support animal:

• Make an appointment with a licensed mental health professional.
• Talk to a professional about your concerns and ask if an ESA dog could benefit you.
• Your healthcare practitioner will diagnose your mental illness and provide a letter prescribing an emotional support dog.

Be sure to keep the letter from your doctor. When working with landlords or businesses that only allow working dogs and emotional support animals on their premises, you’ll need to present proof that you require an ESA’s services – in which case, they may make a reasonable accommodation.

Can You Get an Emotional Support Dog for Loneliness?

You don’t need to be diagnosed with severe mental impairment to be eligible for an emotional support animal. An emotional support dog can be a viable solution if you struggle with feelings of loneliness, grief, sadness, or isolation. For example, older adults who live alone and are thereby susceptible to social isolation alone can benefit tremendously from having a loving and attentive emotional support dog at their side.

What’s the Difference Between a Therapy Dog and an ESA?

A therapy dog works with its handler in a clinical setting to provide therapeutic benefits to patients. So, where emotional support and service dogs live with and serve their handler, therapy dogs might help dozens of patients and spend time in hospitals, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, or mental health institutions.

For example, a psychiatric counselor might own a therapy dog and bring it with them during patient consultations. A doctor might bring their trained therapy dog to a nursing home to bring comfort to their Alzheimer’s patients.

Like ESA dogs, these animals are well-trained and offer comfort and a sense of serenity simply by their presence.

Where Can You Bring an Emotional Support Dog?

Unlike service animals, which the ADA classifies as working dogs rather than pets, emotional support dogs aren’t able to enter public and commercial spaces. Emotional support dogs can’t go where animals aren’t traditionally allowed, such as grocery stores, restaurants, schools, buses, libraries, and shops.

However, there are many business owners and facility managers who do allow ESA dogs. As mental health awareness and public support grow, animals that provide therapeutic relief will slowly gain entry into these once-prohibited spaces.

Can You Take an Emotional Support Animal on a Plane?

On December 2, 2020, the U.S. Department of Transportation revised the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA). As part of the revision, airlines are no longer legally required to group emotional support animals with service animals.

You can still take a service dog in the carrier of a plane, including a psychiatric service animal. But you’ll need to prove that your dog is a true working dog and verify that a licensed doctor prescribed the animal to help you with a disability.

Airlines can choose, at their discretion, to accept ESA dogs, so it’s still possible to fly with your pet; however, most major airlines, including JetBlue, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlines, have stopped accepting emotional support animals in the aircraft cabin.

Contact us today to learn more about our emotional support dogs for sale!

What’s the Best Dog Breed for Emotional Support?

With a winning combination of good temperament, intelligence, and social skills, both Golden Retrievers and Labs make ideal emotional support dogs. At Snowy Pines, we train both breeds to be emotional support animals and believe they are equally fantastic options for anyone looking for therapy, emotional support, or service dogs.