Emotional Support Animals: Preserving Your Pet’s Important Role

By Beth Brownsberger Mader







Views

If you rely on your pets to help with bipolar disorder symptoms, you may want to consider having them recognized as Emotional Support Animals (ESAs)

By Beth Brownsberger Mader

My animals have helped me through the deepest of depressions and the highest of highs. They have (literally) walked with me in times of great confusion and even in my recent experience with disassociation. I eat, sleep, write, hang out, drive, camp, hike, and everything, with my critters. They are part of me and I need them in order to be healthy.

My current menagerie is small, remnants of our grand group from our former desert home up north. There we had four dogs and a cat. Two of the dogs, and the cat, lived out their natural lives and then, painfully for the rest of us, and peacefully for them, they leapt over the “Rainbow Bridge” into the beyond.

Since then, we’ve left homeownership, and moved into a rental apartment with the remaining dogs, the enthusiastic lab, Throttle, and the passionate cattle dog, Pika.

I never had to concern myself before about whether I could have my dogs around. I was a homeowner.

Now, living in a rental, things are different. Recently, our apartment complex changed ownership and there was concern that the pets may no longer be allowed. It was time to have my dogs’ status protected; I could not risk ever not having an animal(s) to help me through my days.

Luckily, the law is on the side of the disabled:

The Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act protect the right of people with disabilities to keep emotional support animals, even when a landlord’s policy explicitly prohibits pets. Because emotional support and service animals are not “pets,” but rather are considered to be more like assistive aids such as wheelchairs, the law will generally require the landlord to make an exception to its “no pet” policy so that a tenant with a disability can fully use and enjoy his or her dwelling. In most housing complexes, so long as the tenant has a letter or prescription from an appropriate professional, such as a therapist or physician, and meets the definition of a person with a disability, he or she is entitled to a reasonable accommodation that would allow an emotional support animal in the apartment.

I got the letter from my psychiatrist. Throttle and Pika are now official Emotional Support Animals (ESA)s.

Do you have designated emotional support animals? Does this status help you?

To be continued …

Read Part II

Learn more: