Guest Post by Regina Lizik

Last month, The New Yorker published an article by Patricia Marx titled “Pets

Allowed: Why are so many animals now in places where they shouldn’t be?” But

Marx’s comedic attempt to shed light on the business of fraudulent service

animals is more damaging to people with disabilities than it is to those who take

advantage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

There are those who have made a business, or more appropriately an industry,

shilling service animal vests, certificates and other paraphernalia. There is no

doubt that these businesses reap the majority of their income from people who

do not have a disability and merely want to bring their pet into stores and

restaurants. They also money from people with disabilities who are themselves

confused about the law and also from those who are exhausted from having to

defend their service dog and their disability.

This is where Marx’s article misses the point. She presupposes that the majority

of the service animals you see are not real. They are fakes owned by

opportunistic humans who take advantage of the ADA. The last thing people with

disabilities need is for society to have even more reasons to ask us if we are

really sick, exaggerating or even faking our disabilities. This is exactly the kind of

discrimination that Marx, despite its positive intention, is encouraging.

The first case of a fake service animal that Marx cites is one of a service animal,

named Truffles, defecating on an airplane. There are no facts that state Truffles’

owner was not disabled. I hate to break it to Marx, but everybody poops – even

service animals. Service animals are not perfect. They cannot be rushed to the

bathroom at thirty-five thousand feet, which is when this incident supposedly

occurred.

The piece is dripping with sarcasm, of which I don’t object, but this particular

service animals name appears to be the subject of some of this wit. Many people

believe that service animals don’t have cute names. They perform tasks. They

are perfunctory. Perfunctory things don’t have names like “Truffles.” Head’s up

world: my service animal is named Buttons and he is awesome at his job.

There are three assumptions here: 1. A real service dog wouldn’t have an

accident on an airplane. 2. Real service dogs don’t have cute names. 3. Truffles’

handler wasn’t at all devastated and embarrassed by what occurred on the flight.

By virtue of having a disability you are a walking target for discrimination. If you

have a disability that people can see, your target is bigger. It grows all the more if

you have a service animal. You see, most people have zero problem judging you

or asking you to prove your worth as a real person if you have a disability.

Recently, while at a restaurant with my service dog, two man at another table

inquired with a waitress as to why I was allowed to have a dog in the

establishment. She explained to them. They continued to protest. Eventually,

they got up and left without ordering. Buttons did nothing but sit between my

chair and the wall the entire time they were in the restaurant.

Even though I shouldn’t find what they did embarrassing, I do. They are the ones

who should be embarrassed. That’s not how discrimination works. Instead,

people with disabilities are constantly on alert that we will be judged, or even

called on in a major publication, for making one misstep. Instead of it being the

discriminators responsibility to apologize, many of us feel we must apologize for

our disability doing – well, absolutely nothing to affect their lives.

Eating in a restaurant or shopping in a store while someone’s service animal is

present is not a hardship. It does not, as Marx asserts, upset the “mental well-

being of everyone else.” What can upset your mental well-being is being in a

wheelchair and being called a phony because you stand up to grab something

from the top of a shelf. What upsets people lives is when others view your

service dog and cane as props – because, of course, real blind people can’t see

anything at all. In reality, eighty-five percent of legally blind people have some

level of vision.

Marx fosters these judgmental assertions and makes many of them herself.

While she did not interview anyone with a service dog before writing her article,

she did interview someone who, like herself, does not like animals. Jerry Saltz,

who writes for New York and refers to dogs as “dumb,” recalls an instance at

MoMA where a “smug-looking guy” and his dog were “sauntering” through the

museum. After seeing the dog sniff, Saltz assumes the animal must be about to

pee, so he immediately alerts a security guard. Of course, service dogs should

not be sniffing. If a service dog is doing this, they need more training. That being

said, it does happen, even to dogs that are professionally trained. Just like

people, sometimes service dogs mess up. Also, anyone who owns a dog will tell

you that sniffing is hardly an indication of impending pee. Of course, Saltz may

have been completely valid. The dog may have very well been disruptive. If it

was somehow touching the paintings or other art at the museum, the museum

would have been well within its rights to ask the man and his dog to leave.

The real crime, it seems, is that the dog and its handler deigned to exist. The

handler was immediately judged as smug and Saltz already assumes all dogs

are dumb.

Saltz’ comment reminded me of an incident this summer I was walking through

an outdoor shopping center with my service dog when a man walked by and

loudly said to his girlfriend “what’s with all these god damned dogs out here

today?” What was with my “god damned dog” was that he was god damned

helping me from smacking my left side into every thing and person that I

encountered. He never considered that, because like Saltz, he immediately

judges people who have dogs in public places.

If Marx’s intent was to inform people about the negative aspects of fraudulent

service animals, she would have been better off interviewing someone who owns

a service dog instead of someone who doesn’t like dogs at all.

Back to the incident at MoMA, according to Saltz, this was a “comfort dog.” There

is no indication of how Saltz knew this, but the animal could have been wearing a

vest stating the fact. Here is where Marx’s article is both right and wrong.

As she states in her piece, emotional support animals are not the same as

service animals. They are not allowed in restaurants or in stores that otherwise

would not allow pets. Unlike service dogs, ESAs are still considered pets under

the law. Many people with ESAs don’t actually understand this. They don’t know

the law. Should they? Absolutely. Instead of informing them about federal

regulations, Marx makes fun of people with mental illnesses such as anxiety and

depression.

She calls their emotional support animals nothing more than “blankies.” If

dismissing mental illness as childish wasn’t enough, she asserts that ESA

owners are irresponsible, allowing their dogs to slobber “all over the shallots at

Whole Foods.”

I know a few people who have taken their ESAs into places they don’t belong.

Instead of demeaning them, I educate them. Sure, I could lash out at them for

making my life more difficult – except they aren’t making my life more difficult and

Marx has failed to explain how they do any more than annoy her. It’s more

productive to educate than demean.

Education really doesn’t seem to be the focus of Marx’s piece. Just as she did

not interview anyone with a service dog, she did not interview anyone with an

ESA or a reputable therapist. Instead, she faked her own documents and

corresponded with a therapist via telephone with a therapist she met on the

internet. There is nothing in her article that discusses the concrete reasons why

people, including veterans, would benefit from an emotional support animal.

There is nothing insightful, only insensitivity. Just as this article fosters the idea

that most people with service animals are liars, it perpetuates the concept that

people with mental illness just need to get over their issues.

None of this may have been Marx’s intent. I certainly hope it wasn’t. She’s fallen

into the trap that so many people fall into, even those with disabilities. We think

it’s okay to judge and make fun of the things with which we have no experience.

Something annoys us or baffles us, so why not laugh at it? It’s not serious, right?

But needing an ESA is serious. With the high suicide rates in this country, is it

really responsible to publish an article that stigmatizes people with depression as

children who still need security blankets? It would also do people well to

remember that some people with PTSD, bipolar disorder and other such illnesses

may qualify for a service animal, not an ESA.

While it is true that there are far too many people without disabilities claiming to

have service animals, Marx’s ignorance on what a service animal really is only

create more hardship for those legitimate SAs. Like many people, she cites small

“purse” dog owners as the main perpetrators of SA fraud. This is because the

only SAs most people encounter are the ones on television or in movies. These

are usually larger animals, like retrievers or german shepherds. If this is all the

entertainment industry tells us of service animals, then it must be all there is to

In reality, service dogs can be of any size, even purse dogs. Small dogs can help

with seizures, diabetes, PTSD and yes, even depression – which in some

instances requires an SA. These are only a few of the things that small dogs

assist with.

Your lack of knowledge about service animals and disabilities does not dictate

reality. Unfortunately, I worry that those who read Marx’s article will be even

more embolden to insist they know can spot the fakers from the truly disabled.

More worrisome is the effect it will have on those whose SA is not a dog. The

majority of Marx’s article on the exploitation of the ADA focuses on her parading

a variety of animals through stores and restaurants as ESAs or SAs. At different

times, she uses a turtle, snake, turkey and even an alpaca. In an attempt to point

out the absurdity of the lack of federal regulations involving service animals,

which isn’t absurd at all, Marx’s article will directly affect those who use miniature

horses as service animals. Organizations, like the Guide Horse Foundation,

provide miniature horses to help the visually impaired. These animals can also

provide assistance to wheelchair bound individuals and those with autism.

Can you imagine the harassment a person with a miniature horse for an SA will

face at the hands of someone who has read this New Yorker article?

It’s true that many people are confused about the laws regarding service animals,

and disabilities in general. But the law is clear. If you don’t have a disability and

you try to pass your pet off as a service dog, you are committing fraud. If you

have an ESA and you try to take your animal into a “no pets allowed”

establishment claiming it is the law, you are committing fraud. You could go to

Educating people about the law is as simple as the paragraph above. There’s no

need to go through an elaborate experiment that does nothing more than make

jokes out of people who need emotional support animals.

The law does not require a service animal to wear a vest, though most do. Marx

notes that the organization Canine Companions for Independence wants the

government to set up a registration and certification process for service animals.

Currently, there is no registration and the law does not require certifications or

even that a professional train the SA. A registration would require people with

disabilities to register our disabilities with the government. I, and I’m quite sure

others, are rather uncomfortable, to say the list, with registering my various

disabilities on a list. Would this list be open to the public? Would it be protected

under HIPPA? These are medical conditions, after all. If it did fall under HIPAA,

as it should, what would be the point? Businesses would not have access to the

list and they shouldn’t. I don’t mind telling people that I am blind, but I do mind

people knowing all of the other disabilities my neurological condition causes.

As to training, many prefer to train their own service animals. This is within their

right. My friend Elsa S. Henry, a blind disability advocate who also suffers from

PTSD, is training her own SA. Quite often, she is accused of faking because she

is training her own SA, even though she is well within her legal right. For her,

self-training results in a deeper connection and helps her and her dog become

more in tune with one another. This is especially important in relation to the

PTSD aspect of her disability.

Additionally, some animals become SAs by accident. There are always stories of

an animal saving someone from a seizure, stroke or diabetic coma. Once that

instinct is identified and put into play, the owner may cultivate it – with or without

the assistance of a trainer.

Regardless of whether or not you train your own service dog, these animals

require hundreds of hours of training. They need high-level obedience and

distraction training.

While service animals may occasionally be spooked by something or catch a

sniff of something, these occurrences must be extremely rare. Once properly

trained, SAs should be seen and not heard. They need to be focused, quiet and

so obedient that they do not disrupt the people or the space around you.

Those last points are essentially requirements, but what isn’t a requirement are

the types of tasks service animals perform. What I mean by that is every person

with disabilities has unique needs and different ways to approach those needs.

Tasks are not one-size fits all. This is where it becomes difficult to have an

across the board test for service animals.

It is easy to test my SA for his ability to guide me around objects and mitigate my

depth perception issues, but that is not the case for everyone. Take for example

service animals for people with autism, a disease with so many presentations,

many of them individual to the person. How does one test for all of these

variations? Not only that, but professional trainers are expensive and not every

geographical area has a readily accessible training program.

Marx and Canine Companions for Independence are right about one thing, the

businesses that charge up to thousands of dollars for listings on a fake registry

and instant certifications should be illegal. They allow people to take advantage

of the law, they scam people with legitimate disabilities and they add to the

spread of disinformation about service animals.

Unfortunately and unintentionally, The New Yorker piece does much of the same.

It encourages people to view service animals and their handlers with skepticism

and reproach, resulting in discrimination and humiliation. Not only that, it boldly

maligns people with anxiety disorders and depression – something for which no

one should be advocating.