Dogs might be man’s best friend, but they’re also kind of passé. At least, they are when it comes to the rise of “emotional support animals”, or ESAs (which, incidentally, is the same acronym for the disability payment in the UK known as employment and support allowance – probably best not to get those two confused).
Emotional support animals have soared back into the headlines after a woman’s “emotional support peacock” was barred from a United Airlines flight, possibly because that company’s priorities instead lie with having humans dragged off planes.
On the one hand, of course Dexter, the peacock in question, was owned by a performance artist. But on the other hand, which other passenger would really object to a peacock on a flight? Last week I took four flights within six days, a blur of clicks and kicks and trays and trolleys. A peacock would have been great inflight entertainment.
Peacocks, you see, are beautiful creatures. Unlike Easter the turkey, who hit headlines in 2016 after boarding a Delta flight. Turkeys are disgusting. I implore you, right now, to open a fresh tab, and really scour pictures of the things. The bulbous, blood-red giblets, the feathers slick as night. A turkey, though, was among the animals represented in an incredible 2014 New Yorker article on emotional support animals (also known as therapy pets). An alpaca walks into a pharmacy might sound like the beginning of a joke, but it was actually a key premise of the piece. In it, journalist Patricia Marx detailed these animals and how they come to be regulated and prescribed. (Leave it to American psychiatrists to transform Snakes on a Plane from a cult movie into a treatment method).
Turns out, it’s pretty easy to get a licence to carry a pangolin into a bar, or shepherd a sheep into a cinema, at least in the US. Marx paid $140 online, and after a brief telephone call received a letter from a clinical social worker verifying her dog as an ESA (she had actually applied on behalf of a fictional snake).
So it’s clear that emotional support animals are starting to – in some cases quite literally and in public places – take the piss. Here are some other recent examples: a woman in a Wisconsin restaurant walked in with a joey (baby kangaroo), and was told by officials that therapy pets were permitted only if they were dogs or “miniature horses” (do they mean … do they mean foals?) A pig, Hobie, was escorted off a flight for “defecating and squealing” in the cabin, which to be fair is at least 80% better behaved than stag dos I’ve had to share planes with. I’m less clear about actual stags on planes.
The proliferation of more outre therapy pets for indistinct conditions has opened up a schism with those who rely on more traditional support animals to help with their physical conditions. For instance, guide dogs (or, in the US, the tautological “seeing-eye dog”). I think it’s fair to say that a dog trained to help its owner to navigate surroundings, or be physically mobile, or wash, is quite a step above wearing a snake everywhere like a particularly comforting scarf.
But I also know for a fact that coming face to face with the grin of a shiba inu, as I did on a packed London tube last November, can make one feel immensely happier. That’s why universities are combating exam stress with puppies, as is the case in courts. And why, time and again, studies have shown pets to have a positive effect on people’s mental health. Animals are great.
Of course, some would argue that having to share public spaces with animals is detrimental to their own mental health. To which I would say: we already do share public spaces with animals. Who do you think is blasting out music in the quiet carriage? So I say, live and let live. Live and let yap. Live and let squawk. Live and let emotional animal support. I am happy to turn every ferry crossing into Noah’s Ark and stroke every fluffy Freud. Just no turkeys. Turkeys are the devil.