1. Seeing Eye Dogs Are Highly Trained Specifically To Guide Blind People

Dogs don't naturally know to watch traffic and make sure the path is clear before crossing the street. That is a skill they must learn. Additionally, guide dogs must learn to navigate public transportation, stores, restaurants, crowds, stairs, elevators, sidewalks, parks, natural areas, office buildings, and anywhere else their blind handler needs or wants to go.

Seeing Eye dogs spend the first two years of their lives with different people, learning different commands. A foster family trains the puppy from 7 weeks of age to 15 months of age. The puppy raiser teaches basic commands, exposes the puppy to public places, and teaches proper social manners, i.e. remaining calm around other dogs or children, obeying commands, not jumping on people, remaining quiet, and ignoring various distractions.

After learning these basic skills, the dog moves on to formal training with professional dog trainers at the Seeing Eye headquarters. For 4, 6, or even 8 months, the dog learns specific tasks: watching traffic before crossing the street, navigating around obstacles both on the ground and hanging in the air, alerting their handler of stairs, pulling their handler in the correct direction. Hundreds of hours are put into training these dogs. Thousands of dollars are spent on trainer salaries, dog food and supplies, breeding, kennel maintenance, custom harnesses, handler room and board, and travel for the trainer, the handler, and the dog. The Seeing Eye, Inc., charges only a minimal fee to the handler to obtain a guide dog while the organization covers all room, board, and travel costs. Service animal organizations such as The Seeing Eye provide incredible freedom to blind people all over the world.

Support animals, however, are typically trained only to the extent of the handler. Their main purpose is to simply "be." This means the animal's presence alone calms their handler. Sure, some people train their pets very well. Dogs might know basic commands and good manners. Cats might be good-tempered and friendly. But for the "Selfish Sally" who just wants to bring her pet peacock everywhere she goes, she's disrupting the daily flow of life for many people.

2. Seeing Eye Dogs Are Selectively Bred To Be The Best Of The Best

Seeing Eye dogs go through multiple tests before beginning formal training. Vets perform a physical examination to ensure their hip joints are in perfect shape for years of walking. The dog's general health must be near perfect so the handler can focus on maneuvering from Point A to Point B without the distraction of health issues. A trainer will walk the dog around town to test if the dog has the self-confidence to be a leader. If the dog acts afraid or untrustworthy, it will not be a strong guide dog. After these tests, the Seeing Eye chooses the healthiest, smartest, and most confident dogs for breeding.

Support animals typically start as household pets. Some are rescued from shelters. Either way, they may not be bred from a healthy bloodline. The dog may have a history of cancer, heart complications, or chronic illnesses. While some of these animals become highly successful support animals, others are abused, skittish, and aggressive. They may not have the intelligence necessary to fully assist a person with a handicap.

3a. Support Animals Register Online Without Any Doctor's Note, Medical Need, Or Training

As stated earlier, Seeing Eye service dogs are chosen through selective breeding, thorough testing, and months of intense training.

As for support animals, a quick Google search will give you multiple websites that encourage you to register your household pet as a support animal simply so you can take it anywhere, live anywhere, or travel anywhere. Again, for the sake of specificity, I will use one support animal website as an example.

As seen in the above photo, Register My Service Animal, LLC immediately tells you "Any animal can be an Emotional Support Animal." You don't need a doctor's note to register your pet as a support animal, thus encouraging you to register any pet you desire.

3b. Avoidance of negative effects.

The website then describes the benefits of registering your pet as an emotional support animal. They don't write, however, the negative effects of registering your pet because you want it to accompany you everywhere.

3c. Sneaky legal claims.

Register My Service Animal doesn't care how your animal behaves in public. They have that covered with a little legal disclaimer above.

3d. Persuasion to disregard societal standards.

They just want you to register your pet so they can make a profit. The language used on their website entices visitors to break rules set in society."Federal law does not require these animals to have any specific training."

In other words, your pet can be as ill-behaved as possible and you're "legally" allowed to take it anywhere.

"Types of animals that can be registered as Emotional Support Animals include dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, ferrets, birds, monkeys, bearded dragons, and pigs, etc."

So your bearded dragon could be strolling through a store, attack a fully-trained service dog thus ruining that dog for life, and the selfish handler gets away with it.

Any type of emotional support animal needs to be trainable. The animal must understand proper social manners. The animal should also be able to understand that it is providing a service to its handler. Many animals are unable to comprehend that humans have emotions, let alone handicaps. These animals are on this planet to eat, sleep, and survive another day. Dogs, however, have the intelligence to understand that they are working to guide a human down a busy sidewalk. They understand that low-hanging objects may obstruct their handler. And they must understand that it is only safe to cross streets when there are no cars.

Turkeys… Ducks… Bearded dragons… They don't have the ability to discern any of that.

Any animal (whether registered as a support animal or not) which attacks a registered service animal could ruin the years of training of that animal. If a guide dog is traumatized so much that it loses confidence in its work, thousands of dollars and hours of work have completely gone to waste.

For a person with anxiety or depression, registering an emotional support animal is fine and dandy. However, many people find this to be an easy way to take their average household pet wherever they want. For example, a person with a cat decides she wants to take her furry friend to the grocery store or a restaurant. If she has social anxiety and crowds of people cause panic attacks, then having her cat in the business is okay – as long as it's friendly and well-behaved. If her cat swats at people and disrupts other patrons, this woman is giving hard-working service animals a bad reputation – simply because she wanted to spend more time with her kitty.

People need to realize that public places are reserved for hard-working, well-mannered animals. The same goes for humans. You don't go into public and yell at strangers simply because you feel like it. No, of course, you don't. You have better social manners than that. So why is it okay for your yippy dog to do so?