Ask About: Service vs. Emotional Support Animals and Service Animal Certification

Are service animals and emotional support animals the same thing? Should your service animal be certified? This edition of Ask About the ADA is about some of the most important service animal information you should know. For a transcript of today's episode, please visit the Ask About the ADA podcast feed on BuzzSprout.

Read the blog version of the service vs. emotional support animals question: Ask About the ADA - Emotional Support Animals

Read the blog version of the service animal certification question: Ask About the ADA - Service Animal Certification

NortheastADA.org

Transcript

>> Hello and welcome to this week's addition of Ask About the ADA podcast, where we answer your frequently asked questions about the Americans With Disabilities Act and talk about how the law might apply to your everyday life and circumstances. This week we're going to answer two questions about service animals. One is going to be about the difference between a service animal and an emotional support animal, while the other is going to talk about certification for service animals. So with that being said, let's jump right in. Our first question is this, the difference between service animals, emotional support animals and therapy animals can be confusing. Are they all covered under the ADA? The answer is no. Service animals are covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act, but therapy animals and emotional support animals are not. A service animal for the Americans With Disabilities Act is a dog or possibly a miniature horse that is individually trained to perform a specific task for a person with a disability. Now of course, emotional support and therapy animals provide companionship. They may relieve loneliness. They do a lot of important functions. However, unlike a service animal, they are not recognized as performing a specific task for a specific individual with a disability, therefore, they are not service animals and they are not covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act. And now let's look at our second question. Is there a place that I can certify or register my dog as a service animal? The answer to that is no. There is no registry or licensing under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Now a Google search, a look on Amazon, or really any search along the internet might turn up organizations that claim that they will register your dog as a service animal if you pay a fee and they'll even provide you a vest or licenses. However, all of that has no legal weight. The Americans With Disabilities Act has no registry and there is no way to federally register a dog as a service animal. This brings up an important point that knowing about service animals and your rights, both as an individual with a disability and perhaps as a business owner, can be very confusing and hard to navigate. 

Always feel free to reach out to your local ADA center to have questions answered and to find out what is the right information. And of course, thank you for joining us here on the Ask About the ADA podcast. Please feel free to call us with any questions at 1-800-949-4232. You can submit a question by email at northeastada@cornell.edu or you can visit us on our website northeastada.org and submit a question there, or also look up some information on service animals. Thank you for joining us and we look forward to talking with you again soon.