How many people have ESA's or service animals?

Post Reply New Topic

Just a quick poll cause Im curious. And if you have one, is it because you have ASD?


(i dont actually know if you can get an ESA or service animal for ASD. my parents told me ESAs werent a real thing and that people just use it as an excuse to have pets in apartments/dorms and stuff but that doesnt really seem right...)

People are abusing ESA laws, so they can have pets in their apartments, but ESAs can be really great for people with various mental health problems.

I have a service dog. She’s mostly for PTSD, but she helps with problems related to my autism, too.

The term "emotional support animal" wasn't used in the 1970s when I was a teenager but, if ever there was a genuine ESA, it was my cat, Samantha. She was my best friend and my soulmate cat for 20 years.

I had a bearded dragon that was my service animal. People rarely ever game me trouble about her and when they did I'd just flash out her papers and get a perfuse apology. I lived in such a small town and it's not like she was an eight foot snake or tiger. If it wasn't for her my social anxiety would still be at the point I couldn't leave the house. If all those people who gave me trouble knew that... actually I tried to tell them...they didn't care....people like you are the reason people like me have social anxiety in the first place, as*hole. I think there was a law that got passed where only dogs can be service animals. If it had been passed before my bearded dragon died I'd probably kill myself because I couldn't take the social anxiety anymore. In my case a dog wouldn't work for me. People know not to bother service dogs (most of them anyway) and answering questions about a lizard is what helped. Everyone knows what a dog is. Sometimes someone needs something you don't see everyday.

I have a pet dog who helps me tremendously with my anxiety issues, without him I would have a really tough time going outside my house at all and he also helps me when I have anxiety when I'm at home. Don't know how much of the anxiety is related to the ASD, don't know how to define what's what.
In my country it's very expensive to train and get a certified service dog which I think is very sad. It's also, in my case with the anxieties, very difficult to do since it involves a lot of people and a lot of training where you have to go to the trainer and examiner and stuff.
Since my dog is not a service dog and thus is not allowed in a lot of situations, I try to avoid the situations where he can't be with me.

In the US you can have an ESA or service dog for autism.
ESA's exist but only have housing rights, and are still mostly considered pets.
Service dogs have full public access rights and far more training.

I have Asher, my service dog.

I have a service dog for my ASD and social anxiety. He helps a lot in avoiding shutdowns in public places, due to the noise and/or number of people. But it's really hard to find a place that will provide a service dog for an adult with ASD and nothing else one might use a service dog for, many places will provide dogs exclusively for children with ASD. Because when said children grow up, apparently we are miraculously "cured" and no longer require any assistance I was very lucky to find the organisation Paws 4 Autism in the Kansas City area, which, while it focuses on children with ASD, was still perfectly willing to work with me as well.

And emotional support animals are indeed a real thing, but unfortunately there are a fair number of people who try to pass off regular pet animals as emotional support animals or service animals, which only makes things that much harder for those of us who have legitimate ESAs/SAs. Also, I believe the current law in the United States is that only dogs and miniature horses can be service animals. I'm not sure why that is, but I did do a lot of research on service animals and such when I was looking into getting my service dog.

I don't officially have an ESA, but I do have a pet and it is very comforting.